Hi,

This is a great game, i love it but i think there is a huge problem and i haven't seen any complaints about it.

Game is so complicated. I don't talk about skills, spells, anything like that, i'm talking about structure of quests, maps, quest items and puzzle.

Some may like it but there are so many pointless puzzles. I don't want to search a button, key, diamond or something like that to continue my quest all the time. I go somewhere, there is a locked door and i can't open it, why, because it isn't the place i should be in. I forget about there, follow the other road and same thing happens again. I again find a locked door, i don't have a clue how i open it, i google it and find out i need an item. I don't have that item, why? Because i missed it about 20 hours ago. Lets go back to the first area. What, item is not there? Yeah, i sold it, lets visit all the vendors.

Like i said, puzzles, quests and maps are overly complicated, i forget about what i'm doing all the time. I know it's too late for fixing something like this but i wonder, am i the only one who thinks like this?

A lot of people like it BECAUSE it's complicated.
This probably isn't the game for you.

Like i said, i love RPG games and i love this game, thats the only thing bothers me.

I feel you lowlife.

Act 1 is ok for me probably because I've gone through it a couple of times.

Act 2 is where the confusion and frustration kicks you right in the

Sometimes I was frustrated because I missed a small detail and had to look it up online.
But other times I managed to figure stuff out on my own, and enjoyed that.

Some of the puzzles and hidden buttons are irritating, I agree.

I'm at wizards house in hunters edge, according to youtube i need a teleporter crystal and i don't have it. It seems it's in cecil's room but looks like i missed it, so i will go to first area (after about 20 hours) and pick it up, it seems wrong to me.

Cmon, when I was playing it, and found some annyoing puzzle, first I was frustrated. But then I was like "Hey... wait... I'm here for 2 hours, and still can't solve this... It didn't happen to me in any RPG for years...OH MY GOD I LOVE THIS GAME". It was like all this annyoing RPGs I was playing when I was young, where you actually could get stuck, where you could look for solution for days. But when you finally found it, it was rewarding as hell, and you felt sooo proud of yourself. So much better than today AAA hand-holding crap, which even monkey could finish, pushing buttons randomly.

Well, i don't agree.

Don't get me wrong, i don't hate puzzles or hard games. I'm playing this game in hard, i'm playing Dragon Age in nightmare, i love Dark Souls, i love challenge, i only think puzzles and quest structure is badly designed. How finding 4 buttons is fun? How searching all map to find one scroll is fun?

Holy cow, dude...
Remember Zixzax? He tells you that there's another teleporter pyramid. You even get a book about it. You've never used the pyramid?

I know that many games will allow you to sort quest items and even keep you from selling them until they are not needed anymore. This game could benefit from a system like that.

I do find myself coming to the forums for help too often it seems.

Quest tracking is pretty loose I agree, but this problem isn't obvious until you get past Cyseal.
Once you left Cyseal, you'll realize how bad it gets. I literally had to rely on my co-op partner to guide me through cause it was impossible for me to keep track since I was uninvolved for most of the conversation.

In fact, I felt Larian want to make the game slightly open but as a result, many players went to areas out of sequence, faced enemies above their levels and get wrecked. Or encounter puzzles that they may not have a ready solution.

All I can say is, cut down on the puzzles - and less of a huge map where parties have to have to find a specific item to fetch. Make it more focused and compressed like Cyseal. And don't derail the players with too many details like telling them about THE END OF THE WORLD when they barely started on their first murder investigation.

Frankly, the only time I felt there was insufficient information was in the immaculate trials, with the four weighted switches. Otherwise, I think it's pretty well done so far (albeit, I'm only in Heiberheim right now, still looking for the 'WW')

What do you mean with with as focused as Cyseal? I was level 15 before I was even close to clearing the murder case and its not done even now by level 19 ;-)
De-Railing works fine right from the beginning. Actually the only moment in the game that was really challenging was in Cyseal when I reached the light-house and that boss was 3 level above us and even than I can not say that it would have hit us out of nowhere, we knew that his boss was not meant to be done at such a low level.

The high level enemies are sometimes a little challenging, but they are not really unfair ever. And I am running a party that spend not a single point onto perception.

The game is quite fair to players that roam around in areas which they do not belong in. The only exception of fairness might be the beach with the mines. Those did catch us by total surprise, though the level of the npc was a big hint to stay away.

The game is well balanced when it comes to puzzle. You may struggle a little at first with some of them, but you will always find out by yourself. It is more enjoyable that way, because it feels like YOU, not the game, solved the puzzle. Overall, it's a really good thing in the game, that it is not a straight corridor with signs everywhere and markers telling where to go and what to do. It feels a lot more like an RPG, and helps for immersion. It is also a lot more enjoyable.

In the other hand, I think Larian overused a little bit the "tiny button behind the pillar" thing. When it happens once, you think it's fine, especially if some rat hinted you you had to look for a tiny switch. But when it happens 10-12 times, it gets boring and useless. It's not about thinking or puzzles anymore, and you ultimately end up on google looking for screenshots that point the switches. The "where's Waldo" trick can become a fun spoiler if overused.

But they always have done that "tiny button behind the pillar things". It's simply what they do, so it's not a surprise it's in their most recent Divinity-game as well.

I like it.

It is a bit annoying when your high perception char gives you feedback every 5m that he has spotted a massive trail of blood that simply follows down a road as if it were an accomplishment, but doesn't say a word about the tiny buttons for the vial of blood puzzle.

What I dislike is the design choice to have puzzles that unlock more puzzles (Initiation / Source Temple) instead of having a mix between puzzles, combat and a 3rd objective that allows different solution (Intimidating a npc, picking a lock, using an item from a sidequest).

I just did this yesterday and it just increased my appreciation of the game.
It took me a good 15min or so to figure it out and once I solved it, it felt really good because it had all the necessary clues but wasnt overly easy, and best of all was the feeling of solving it without help from google.

However I can understand that many would get frustrated with it. Especially since it's a puzzle that you cant leave and come back to later. There have been some puzzles that I havent been able to figure out so I've had to just leave them be and come back later.

The game has a lot of problems and bad design choices, but amongst all things these puzzles have been one of the things I'm enjoying the most.

Instead of cutting down the puzzles, they should just add alternates ways to solve them. Let's say you find a locked door: then find a key OR find a spell to destroy the door OR find someone who will open it for you. Just like how you have several ways of solving the murder case. Doesn't hurt the game and improves replayability.


This. I think they should be a couple more fights and xp-ing before the murder case in Cyseal. It would help new players to get the hang of the game, get some gold/gear and have some fun before tackling the tedious murder case and/or trying to get out of Cyseal to face numerous undead enemies. I'm afraid a lot of new players might get bored trying to solve the murder case for hours right after the tutorial part of the game, especially if they're not familiar with other "free-roaming" RPGs. And I agree that the "End of Time" first discovery should happen AFTER the murder investigation, for clarity.

The camouflaged items and switches are absolutely maddening. It's what I call "artificial difficulty increase via crappy interface". And while I can deal with camouflaged items somewhat by using the "highlight item" function, it's a drag. E.g. in Skyrim, if a key is on a table, you can clearly tell that there's a key on a table and not some funky half-blended texture. And since the highlight function doesn't highlight switches, you have to pixelhunt like you used to in old games like Myst. It's boring and tiresome.

Skyrim is a good example. Huge open world but even without markers you know what you're doing. Quests doesn't spread out like in Divinity. You don't miss quest items. You know what you're searching for.

About puzzles, they are not fun. I know you can't create puzzles like Portal's but you don't need to. You don't have to put so many pointless puzzles in an Action-RPG game. Like i said, ofcourse some people like it and it's only my opinion.

DOS is not an Action-RPG game. It never purported to be, and is the first in a resurgence of games that a lot of people love and miss from the old days.

I'm probably making a bit of a generalisation, but the kind of people that prefer games like DOS over games like Skyrim prefer harder difficulty, greater complexity, less hand-holding, and fewer 'usability' features than you get in an Action-RPG. People that like the thrill they get when a hunch pays off, having kept hold of an item that has no obvious, immediate purpose pays off later in the game etc. People that don't want to complete quests one after the other, but explore the world and find new things to interact with, without necessarily being 'led' in a certain direction. I would welcome some feedback on my analysis of the CRPG demographic.

You're welcome to your opinion of course. But I feel that what Larian wants, and what a lot of the kickstarter backers (I wish I had known about it myself) and a lot of people that prefer this kind of game over Action-RPGs like Skyrim, is more of an 'old-school' experience.

There's a real divide nowadays between the people that will cherish the opportunity to find that hidden object, to solve that daunting-but-ultimately-easy puzzle, and the people that want their overlord dictating their every move.

All I can say is that Larian made this game with the first group in mind. Not that they did it perfectly, but people of that mindset will have an easier time understanding their puzzles, feeling when something is amiss and realize they are actually missing something.
This obviously doesn't cover the whole problem, but I think the discussion will flow smoother if people taking part understand what side of the fence they are on and agree to not let those irreconcilable differences get in the way of a good discussion.

Carry on.

I haven't played Baldur's Gate or Planscape Torment so i don't know if they had puzzles like this so maybe i'm wrong, maybe "oldschool RPG" games were similar to Divinity.

I'm talking about something else. For example i love Portal and other puzzle games, i don't hate puzzles, it's like making a great FPS game and putting driving missions in it with horrible driving mechanics. You don't need to do that. You don't need to put crafting system if it's not good enough.

This subject is a tough one. On one hand I love puzzles. Even difficult ones. But there has to be a solution other than "try every single order possible" available. There has to be a clue set, not an obvious one, nearby or something within an acceptable range. SOME of the puzzles are just time wasters. Not clever. Not fun to solve. When they finally do get solved, be it by luck or using the web, its more of an annoyance than a sense of "i did it!" and that's not how it should be.

At the very least they should do two things I think:

1) Create a filter for quest items. So if I picked up a quest item 30 hours ago I don't need to spend another hour looking through the billion items in my wreck of an inventory between four characters.

2) Make quest items unsellable and undroppable.

The most ridiculous "puzzle" I've ever seen I encountered recently in Ubisoft's M&MX...in order to get promoted to Archmage it required a test of stepping on the correct floorplates laid out in a 3x3 grid. Get this: no less than *21* plates had to be stepped on *in the correct sequence* before the door would open. Miss one grid in the sequence and you had to start over. But, since the game never informed you that you had made a mistake you didn't know it...the game didn't inform you of how many correct moves you had to make to open the door, either. I spent two hours on it before looking up the answer and I was really pissed because *nobody* could figure that out on his own--I'm quite sure that *everyone* had to cheat to get that particular promotion--which is rather important in the game, imo--if you have a mage in your party.

*21* moves in sequence--*21* correct steps in perfect unbroken order--with no hints whatever as to what was expected. If the puzzle had been laid out so that 6,8,10, or even 12 correct moves would have opened the door, I would have eventually solved it on my own. But *21* perfect, unbroken, sequential moves??? No way. Not possible. Brains don't figure here--the test was deliberately unsolvable so as to appear "hard." It was not hard at all--just impossible to complete without looking up the answer. That's the sort of "puzzle" which is no puzzle at all--terrible, the developers cheated on that one. Every other puzzle in the game I solved on my own, some more difficult than others--but all of them were solvable by the player--with that exception.

At least in your example Waltc, the reward is definitely worth it. It's worse when all you get is a few xps and a random item.

Seriously, why bother trying to be subtle with the murder case when you can break into every room of Esmeralda's house and gather clues as well as any valuable items you can steal. This is something I don't like there, this murder case turns out to be much more of a burglar's work than a detective's work. And you get more rewards from stealing than what you get at the end from solving it... what DO you really get, by the way? Nothing. I don't usually touch anything else than the clues, but that's because I'm rping my way through the game.

Stealing stuff should be harder. For example they could tag a "stolen" keyword to some items (paintings, gold cups, etc.) so that only shady merchants will accept to buy them. It's getting ridiculous when you steal a painting from an NPC's room and sell it to HER a couple of seconds later.

(double post)

Here's the thing. Different gamers like different things. Some game designs are not for all players.

Some designs are just bad, sure, but when lots of people love a game, or game feature, that you hate, odds are it's not a total piece of crap. It's just something you don't like.

OK. Carry on telling everybody else that they're having fun wrong now.

I don't mind the puzzles in DOS. They make me think like I used to when playing games like planescape torment. Now that had some downright evil puzzles if I recall. I don't want a game where you have to go from point A to B or fetch and deliver quests. I like variation. I agree though that the quest items could have been done better. Its strange this was overlooked because if you ever played Divinity 2 in that game they had the quest items in a different inventory slot where they could not be removed or took up space. I think the inventory in DOS is the one thing I would criticise the most as it easily gets jumbled and difficult to manage despite the filters. It should also have the option to sell all junk items like some other RPG's do. That saves a lot of time.

Yeah, stealing is a bit easy - the part with "shady mercant" would be better..even better if you would have to join a thiefguild to prove you are "worth".
So we plundered every single house und mostly resold back to the owner. ;-)
But itï½´s the best way to get enough money for all those nice tomes e.g.

The rest... KEEP the game as it is.
Itï½´s very refreshing that there isnï½´t always a yellow questionmark to see where a questgiver is.

@lowlife: which puzzles are u talking about?
Havent come to a single one be now.
The journal is your best friend with EVERY info you need (if you cant remember what was told some time ago)
Example?... There is a murder..investigate, got to arhu...the murderscene is locked, go to that guard...other plane-back again...scene..loveletters..ask around...go to morgue..go to graveyeard..dog barking at grave (even without patpal its obvious that there MIGHT something be fishy..so take the shovel and see whats inside)...sheep..go back to morgue...3 suspects...investigate further...find possible facts...ask about..get more info...go to healer, look at evelins house...read...go to beach... should i realy carry on???? The game itself takes your hand and guides u every single moment.

About "area beeing to hard"..the guards tell you that u are to "inexperienced"..just another word for "stay inside and to more quests to level or they rip your...". At the beach, there are very big footsteps...
Its an RPG...so sneak ahead and see what will come. Running with blaizing weapons (and closed eyes) into an battle is plain stupid...scout, look for a better approach. Perhaps you could get somewhere to lure the enemies into water, near an oil/ooze barrel, or just to a doorway where they have to come one by one.

For me, my wife and friends..its one of the best rpgï½´s in the last time. hope to recive many many addons (land, quests etc)

Please show me the other players that love having important quest items mixed in with everything else in their inventory to be sold, lost, etc. You said there are lots of them, so go ahead.

You can't be serious.

I'm one. I'll take it one step further, I'd rather the game didn't tell me what the key I just picked up is for. Seriously how the hell does my character know that that particular key is for an ornate chest?

Because people label their keys? It's not so common anymore, now that the only thing most people lock is their car, post office box, and front door, but in situations where you have keys for lots of different things, people frequently label them.

Nope, I love the puzzles.
And then I mean puzzles, not the "find the tiny button game"

Take them out and what... just have this game be as mindless as all others? I'm glad my brain got a good noggin' again... felt good. Even though I seemed to have dumbed down lots... poor me. Modern games, what have thy done to me... I'm so dumb

I also agree completely with this.

Do people really think pixel hunting or arbitrarily stumbling upon critical items in unrelated areas engages their brains?

How? Just, how?

A lot of people seem to like it, but it stinks of Stockholm syndrome to me...

Well... anything that creates any kind of stimulus engages our brains.

It's just whether we appreciate the stimulus or not.

As an example I'll give you: the acorns in BG2:SoA. If you find them the first time you play the game, and happen to carry them around with you until the Windspear Hills, there is a sense of accomplishment when you can finish the quest. If not, maybe you want to improve your experience by finding them/carrying them around the next time you play the game.

Pixel hunting is a bit different, but there should be the occasional non-combat barriers towards getting further into a dungeon etc. (mirror dungeon was nice). Maybe it's best when there's a bit of variation in how this works, like different types of puzzles, but if you had a 'secret' lair you'd want to keep it secret right. It's also a quirk of the game that it breaks immersion and the fourth wall a lot (earth statue as a prime example, which I personally found hilarious).

At the end of the day, Larian created the game they wanted to, and people will discuss whether or not they like this particular feature or not. It's only really if there is a mass consensus on a particular feature that it becomes less of a debate and more of a dubious design decision (Tenebrium, difficulty post cyseal are the things that spring to mind, and I'm not even sure there is consensus on the latter).

I can see myself trying a door and finding it locked. Then I open my inventory and move each of 100+ keys from my inventory one at a time to see if any of them will open the door. Then after 20 minutes of completely wasted time and frustration I push myself away from the PC and my chair runs over the cat, killing it. Why do you hate cats?

Puzzles? They are too few of them and they are easy. It's basically just there, just explore, check everything and read books/notes/tombstones.

Maps? There is like... one or two maps? Take the key from A, go to B, use key to open hidden C (D person mentioned it's there somewhere along with 'muahahahaha' before he died). And there are waypoints.

Quests? Just explore. Talk to people, read stuff. It's like walk in the park. You cannot block/bug a quest or anything.

Game is perfect as it is! I wouldn't mind if puzzles were bit more challenging (but I'm not that picky)

@ LeBurns; Use locked door. It opens? You have key. It doesn't? You don't.
What's with manually dragging a hundred keys?

And I would agree about the pixel hunting, but you do have to inform me about the "random item in another area" part with examples... since I don't think that ever happens, but go ahead and prove me wrong.
If you mean the Star Stones, then I would say... duh, and slap you. I hope it's something better than that.

That's how it is now. That's how I like it. Others seem to not want to know what key is for what, meaning you'd have to check every single one of them one at a time. Not what I want, and I doubt many would. But that was my point.

No it's not... you simply click a door/box, if you have the key it opens... you don't need to know it's that one, there's no manual dragging required. You can never look at the keys tab in your inventory EVER and nothing goes lost...

I KNOW! Others want it more complicated. I DON'T. Read the posts.

He's just saying he wants all keys to read 'key' instead of 'key for this specific location'... not manually having to drag keys over to a door to unlock them, while all are called key to boot.

As far as I can tell, it is all apart of the style of the game, it's made to be this way, and as a few other users have said, this is probably why it is so popular at the moment. Personally, I'm loving it and have only just put a few hours in. If you pay close attention to the details, what is happening and who is saying what, it really isn't too complicated that it becomes unenjoyable. It's all apart of the charm

At times I feel like I'm playing the old kings quest games where you had to pixel hunt and combine random items to make things work. A few puzzles I just have to brute force my way through since there wasn't a enough info on what you needed to to in the area. Sometimes I can't tell if stuff is just bugged. I know the there was one switch near the winter king that you have to be at just the right camera angle in order to hit it even once your perception spots is. The immaculate prison is another I have multiple prison keys for it, but none of the doors will open.

Just remember that when you finally find the candle and head down stairs to already have the hammer and stake with you so when you open the casket you can kill the vampire. Man those games were such a headache.

And you're right, this game reminds me of that a lot. Too many times I find myself running to the forums for help with some area, quests, puzzle. Sure the second time I play the game all will be fine, but this first time it's very frustrating. I wonder if the first time I played BG1 if it was like this. I replayed that game so many times that I just don't remember. I'm sure 10 years from now I'll think this game was just perfect also ... if I haven't croaked by then.

for the puzzle, I don't think it's too complicated; all but one, for me, have more or less explicit clues, you just need to be thorough, checking everything that might give you info...rats are your best friends.

I do, however dislike button hunt (again and again~); high perception should make it easy though.

the only puzzle or "solution" I haven't find clues is the closing the rift: that only kind of weapon can destroy the bloodstone. well, maybe it's in some books or conversations somewhere?

Speaking of which, you can craft wooden stakes in D:OS, but there isn't a single vampire in the entire game.

What gives, Larian?? Way to be a tease.

Spoiler alert;

yeah, I picked it up on my second playthrough, the first time I didn't pay attention. s

IMO the pixel hunting for random switches is a bit unnecessary, since at that point, you obviously know what you're supposed to do, but have to pour over every square inch of the screen. There should be a perception check that just highlights them.

It would be nice if ALT highlighted containers, switches and doors in addition to loot (like it did in BG2) but oh well.

I've thought about that, but I fear some rooms would just light up the whole screen. It can be pretty bad just highlighting the items you can pick up. Besides where would all the fun be in the button hunt if the button got highlighted.

I like it, how it is. I donï½´t like ideas like quest items should be not droppable etc. Why? This game is hard and old school and I love it this way. You just have to use your brain, read books and conversation. And there could be a option in game settings, if you want to highlight also switches etc. But I would not use it

I believe the frustration sometimes also stems from the fact that the game only checks the keys in the character interacting with the door. Meaning if Rodeerick picked up the key 5 mins ago, and Scarlett tries the door, it will remain locked.

Player would be fooled into thinking they don't have the key, when in reality they do.

But usually I just fireball locked doors. Easier that way.

Some men aren't looking for any keys... Some men just want to watch the doors burn...

I have to agree somewhat. There's at least one reason modern games have these features that us "old school" gamers don't like: the removal of frustrating game mechanics.

In a way, it's like buying a classic car. Nobody buys a classic car for their daily commute because they prefer it "old school". It's great to look at and talk about, but in practice it's a huge pain in the butt to use.

One example, the "respec" feature wasn't around in the 90's and early 2000's. If you messed up your character's specs, you had to re-roll. That could mean losing dozens or hundreds of hours of gameplay, and it's extremely frustrating.

Nobody can honestly say they enjoy developing a character for months, only to restart over again because you reach a point where you can no longer progress (if you put points into the wrong skills).

Eventually, everyone just uses the same template that's known to work, and innovation goes out the window.

My point is that all this "hand-holding" everyone keeps talking about was integrated into games over many years in order to reduce frustrating experiences. Eventually these became the standard. Some of it I don't like, but most of it I do. A game that is less frustrating is more fun.

I'm really liking the game as it is. It's definitely a harder game than recent games. I feel like this is Baldur's Gate 3. I'm glad there's no quest markers. I don't particularly like puzzles with random solutions, like all the switch puzzles. I prefer that a solution can be discovered somewhere. That's my main complaint. Crafting is sometimes a bit awkward. I think it could have been done better, but it's not so bad. Just about everything else is top notch. I'm so glad I made the decision to buy it. I kept looking at it and deciding not to. I never heard of the game until I saw it on Steam. Wasn't sure what it really was. Once I did some reading on it I knew it would be good. I heard they're adding more npcs that can join your party, but I wish there were more already in the game. I would have liked some options.

I agree with the OP. The puzzle that had you searching for stupid switches on a wall was annoying especially in a game that had (up until that point) had emphasis on alternative solutions and methods to everything.

The puzzles in this game don't encourage intelligent thought but rather good perception. On the opposite hand, most of Divinity 2's puzzles required you to think and time movement rather than spot a ridiculously small switch that is almost camouflaged within the environment. Original Sin's "puzzles" felt very cheap in comparison.

That being said, there were some very good puzzles in this game involving interaction of the environment that I loved.

The internet is there for people who want to not get lost. The game is there for people who don't mind if they do.

There's a difference between getting lost and things being incredibly obtuse.

Here's an example of a relatively obtuse quest in Baldurs Gate 2 - the one to get Lilacor in the sewers. This quest requires four items and has a riddle for each.

They're all in the Sewers map but one of the four requires something that breaks the usual rules of the game. There's a carrion crawler that isn't hostile, it is someone's pet. This needs to be killed for the "best friend's blood". There IS a clue to this, but it still breaks the normal rules of the game (that non-hostiles cannot be attacked without reprocussions) so it can be difficult to figure out.

Many quests/puzzles in Divinity are like this, but without the clue. Turning off candles, turning on candles, moving pictures, etc. They're all against the other rules of the game and there's no clue that moves you towards thinking differently.

There's also the fact that sometimes the solution to the puzzle ISN'T in the same area as the puzzle itself (like the barrier mentioned in the OP) which encourages you to wander aimlessly as you decide if the solution is here or elsewhere.
I've played so many different RPGs from different eras and this is the first where almost all the solutions to puzzles I've just had to google. Especially ones based on buttons!

That's because you are really lowlife :P. Joking. But anyway, it probably means this game is not for you. Do you want Larian to dumb down the game and make it Call of Duty to just satisfy you one gamer? We have enough of dumb games.

Please for god's sake if you find it difficult you can always google for hints and walkthroughs. The game cannot be dumbed down to catered to simple minded people. Thank you.

I completely agree with OP. I also agree with the 2nd post saying that this game isn't for people like us, because we don't like this sort of game. That's true.

However when I bought the game I wasn't thinking about the puzzles. I saw the cool game mechanics like creating surfaces and having elements interact with each other during combat. I love the combat in the game. Unfortunately I rarely get to fight because in between I have to search youtube for how to open/obtain all the doors/quest items in between. So I wish those who like to solve puzzles a good time, but I'm done with this game.

Edit: I just saw the post above mine saying that the other option would be dumbing down the game to COD level.. That's not true. I myself played Planescape Torment and Baldur's Gate multiple times because I do like RPGs with a story and the occasional puzzle. But the problem with this game is that the puzzles are bad. Also the journal is no help at all. For example I have so many open quests with the last line saying: 'This and that is solved, now this guy should be pleased.' However the journal does not say where the guys are, where I met them and so on. Am I really supposed to keep track of all that? Why do I have a journal in the first place if I end up taking notes manually..

Maybe read the other posts? Honestly "The puzzles are obtuse" is different from "REMOVE PUZZLES".