Only 365 puzzles? That isn’t nearly enough to satisfy moi. Up till now I’ve never seriously tried to take any of my handhelds or consoles online, but now I find myself tempted like I’ve never been before. I’m going to fight the feeling for a couple of days and see if it goes away. Picross 3D is just a game, after all, or so I keep telling myself.
They kind of ruined things with the time limits on the hard puzzles, though. The limits were still generous enough that you wouldn’t get a Game Over from them, but 5 minutes to solve a hard puzzle or lose your gold star? That’s too little. It puts unnecessary pressure on that shouldn’t be there. In my opinion, a “hard” puzzle should be hard because it’s hard. Not because of the clock counting down and making you panic. It should be hard like a cryptic crossword is hard (I hate cryptic crosswords). Take all the time you want, google all you like, if you don’t know the answer, you don’t know the answer.
Then again taking the time limit away wouldn’t make a difference because of the cheating-friendly Quicksave option. Most games with quicksave delete them as soon as you reload from the save, but P3D keeps them permanently. Quicksave before a risky move, try it and reload if it doesn’t work out. Challenge = annihilated. To my credit I was pretty good about not abusing that option until the last few stages of the game, but sometimes you just have to guess. It’s that simple.
Much I enjoyed Picross 3D though, I don’t think I have a future as a puzzle gamer ahead of me. It will always be one of those genres where I try something new like once or twice a year. And I will continue my tradition of hating dungeon puzzles oh, so so much. Still it’s nice to refresh my spirit sometimes by doing something completely different. Oh well, now back to the RPG grindstone.
