Agreed. And one of my other problems was that if it took me more than one session to complete a puzzle, by the next day I would forget in which chapter I was in, so it wasn’t easy to tell on what to focus. It seems that the chapter names give you a hint on what you should do (the will, the murder, the escape, etc.), but if you don’t pay attention, or forget it, you end up trying a lot of other things that are not available in the current chapter.
I actually enjoyed this aspect of the game…it kept things from being too sequential. It definitely made it more difficult. Same with all the red herrings.
Speaking of… Gilbert’s Chainsaw used to be the literary opposite to Checkovs Gun. They ruined that this game, and it thought it was great!
“Difficulty By Contrivance” or “Difficulty By Obscurity” are two features of old-school adventure games that not many people miss. 
I like the non-linear game-play, but some puzzles are too spread apart, in my opinion.
The game would become way to linear if all the puzzle were self-contained in the parts. You’re only noticing it because we labeled them “parts”. The part have no structure other than the title cards. In Monkey Island, the parts where also puzzle funnels, and there were only 4 parts.
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I (stupidly) found the hardest part remembering that safes exist. I spend FOREVER remembering that Randsome has a safe with his book in it, and then it took me forever to find the key to the office in the factory.
Apparently pulling on paintings is not something I do 
The green goop puzzle had me a little stumped. I thought the navigators head actually took you to the thimbleberries so I thought that part was just ‘done’ until I remembered the pizza flyer and saw the people walking to the forest entrance. This took me less time than remembering the goddamn safe though
Well for example in Monkey Island, Part II is kinda relaxing after having completed Part I which is tough. You have only a ship to walk around. In TWP once you arrive near the end you have quite some characters to play with, even if the game is filled with hints to solve the solutions, you have a very large town to explore! The wrench was the hardest for me too!
Yes, it’s a problem without an easy solution. I wouldn’t want all the puzzles to be self-contained within parts either. However, there could be a way to “hint” or “nudge” the player into focusing on the puzzles that are solvable immediately.
I like that I was able to partially solve some puzzles on my way to something else. However, I did not like that I felt nudged to solved some puzzles which had absolutely no solution within the current part until another, more pressing puzzle was solved. I ended up in some “funnel” where a single puzzle stopped me from moving on.
Sometimes it’s a missed detail, and other times it’s lack of proper focus.
-dZ.
I looked for help for two puzzles. The hardest was probably the woods secret area. I didn’t realize there was something to find out there, so I couldn’t figure out where to charge the battery. My best guess was that the ghost recharged it. The second was getting the gloves. I should’ve been able to figure that out on my own, but I’d forgotten about the tube shop formerly being a bakery. For this one, I figured Doug would have some gloves.
The hardest puzzle that I was able to figure out on my own was getting the Pigeon Brothers to come to the hotel.
I didn’t have any trouble with the things that seemed to give others the most trouble-- Sexy Riker, the secret meeting, the wrench, etc. The three places I was stuck the longest were totally orthogonal to where most people got stuck:
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I lost 2+ hours in Delores’ flashback trying to light the fireplace to get the ash. The first time I tried to pick up the broken ketchup bottles, it seems I misclicked and hit the fridge instead. Delores said she “doesn’t want to pick that up”, and I figured she didn’t want to touch broken glass. I only found the hot sauce behind the ketchup during a “try every command on everything” sweep.
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Getting the thimbleberry pie. I knew where the bush was, and I remembered that the woman at the tube store used to be a baker. I went to talk to her, but unfortunately did so as one of the agents, not as Delores. I figured it out hours later when I remembered a review that commented on this particular puzzle and the issue of not talking to the right person with the right character. The most recent podcast comments on the broader issue of why one PC “knows” information that was collected by another PC, and that the game would be much more confusing if player couldn’t abstract their mindset into the PCs’ minds. I wholeheartedly agree, as one of the few instances in the game where what the PC knows/wants is relevant is what tripped me up the most.
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Getting through the room of death just past the blast doors. The problem for me here was that I had already solved the puzzle before reaching it. I had already rebooted the computer, and it just so happened to come back online right as I entered the room. I had already tried using the computer again after rebooting, but it said it was rebooting and couldn’t be used, so it didn’t occur to me to just do the same thing again. I became convinced that the factory and hotel were connected by tunnels, and that I needed to do something with Franklin to get into the hotel basement (which is referred to several times) and come at the red button from the other side to zap it.
I really like the idea of changing the number of the graffiti! 
I thought I have to somehow get Edna call the bank accountant or re-route the call with the PhoneTron at the radio station.
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How to get into Sexy Riker’s room.
“Pew, pew, pew!!!”
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It took me some time to associate the rat with the cheese. Being a New Yorker, you learn the f****rs are into peanut butter rather than cheese. Funny that I had solved a similar puzzle much faster in MI2.
I couldn’t get Ransom out of the circus for a while for this reason. But that also shows how well the game was designed. You can solve plenty of other puzzles without having Ransom.
I was stuck in PART 5.
I literally wasn’t able to do ANYTHING !!
I couldn’t even move.
PANIC…
Luckly, I quickly managed to escape, and go for the PART 6…
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Puddle! 
He obviously never pressed it!
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I got stuck with the blood sample early in the game as it was too wet for the BloodTron. I completely had forgotten the drier in the Quickie Pal bathroom. Instead I looked for items which could soak/clean/wipe dry the blood sample.
The Sexy Riker puzzle chain was probably the hardest, and I for a long time I did not realize that I could zap the doors to unlock them. I tried to lure Sexy Riker in his room with 
Franklin and whatnot. Also, I tried to figure out if the phones in the hotel rooms had numbers I could call.
After a while I kind of accepted that some puzzles would certainly be solved later in the game and I moved on to other actions. I was mostly fine with that - besides Xaiver’s crystal, that one kept me busy for a long time before it was possible to solve.
Quite often, I had by chance “pre-solved” puzzles that were more relevant in later stages of the game: I had the 5ct, the flower + book from Madam Morena’s bookstore, the hamburger, traded the hint book etc. - all without really having a reason to do so, just because my weird adventure game logic made me explore everything and I deliberately delayed stuff that I guessed was driving the plot. This made several later puzzle chains feel a bit easy. I loved the less inventory-driven, more world-interaction focused puzzles most because they were less prone to this effect.
Whaat 
Part II in monkey 2 is the hardest and wickedest thing that was ever conceived by mortals…
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Ah the Blood Sample. That one also got me for a while. Interestingly, if you just wait long enough, it dies on it’s won. I also forgot about the dryer. I eventually figured it out, and when I went to dry it, I noticed it had already dried on it’s own. I though that was a very nice way to handle that, in that the puzzle solves itself if you can’t figure it out.
However, it didn’t seem like a great puzzle to me. More of a “we need one more puzzle” type.
It’s pleasing to see that other people struggled with some of the same puzzles as me, phew. Hardest ones for me were:
- what to use the radioactive waste for
- getting the pigeon brothers to the hotel
- getting the battery out of the van
- getting the crystal
As others have said, a lot of the time I got stuck because I was unwittingly trying to do things prematurely, or in the wrong order, or ended up part-solving puzzles that weren’t clear yet. Poor Delores was walking round with foil on her head for quite a while.
But it’s meant to be challenging, and I’m priding myself on getting to the end without looking up a single hint (but crikey, I came close).
It’s quite amusing how I faffed around with some things in retrospect. Some of my more desperate attempts included:
- turning on taps, then going back to check on progress
- endlessly chilling, moaning, despairing and zapping everything in the hotel to attract the Pigeon Brothers
- trying to put the explosive in the pirate hat and spark it (I had the last bit right!)
- trying to put the explosive in the FOIL pirate hat and spark it (still not right, Kate)
I was also determined to get that toaster from the bank manager.
It’s amazing I finished it, really.
Also reading everyone’s stories about how they tried to solve some of the puzzles has filled my eyes with laughter tears. I don’t mean that in a nasty way – a lot of them are pretty logical! – it’s just really funny and interesting how people think about things in different ways.
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