Medium difficulty investigation/RPG games: Let's find a game that makes you think

[Spore]

Do you guys know any good games that aren't incredibly difficult brain teasers but games that do not throw the solution into your lap? Genres is largely irrelevant though I highly appreciate something with character development (on a crunch side, so levels, unlocked abilities aka Zelda/Okami. Also I would probably hate something with only one viable answer or stuff with "weird logic" (see Monkey Island).

So far I can only come up with Okami (puzzling!), Papers please and maaaaaybe Planescape: Torment (talk your way out of relevant fights). Oh, and Portal 1 and 2. The Talos principle sounds interesting but I would be sad to dish out 40 euros and then play it for just an hour (I am incredibly picky with games).

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

Some of the puzzles in some of the quests in the MMO "The Secret World: Legends" has some devilishly hard puzzles and investigations that, and this is the first time I've ever seen this, require you to go outside the game to solve. Stuff like looking up Bible passages, finding old composers, and following websites they've set up are involved. Best puzzles and riddles I've yet seen in a game!

[Drascin]

Talos Principle can be regularly gotten for 10 bucks on steam, so you probably should pick up that one when it's on sale.

Lufia 2 was one of the more puzzly RPGs I remember. There were a LOT of puzzles in its dungeons. And by the second half of the game a lot of them weren't exactly trivial!

Legend of Grimrock 1 and 2 have a lot of puzzles as well, since they're drinking from the half of the dungeoncrawler genre that felt dungeons were about the puzzles.

And of course there's the actual puzzle game genre. In there I'd recommend Opus Magnum - like all of Zachtronics' games, it's a mechanically-simple, brain-complex puzzler. Unlike most Zachtronics games, it's actually very accessible to a normal human being :smalltongue:.

[Brother Oni]

Papers Please isn't a puzzle game. It's paperwork checking game with morality choices.

What platforms do you have available? I'm assuming PC only?

[Cespenar]

The recent Into the Breach has some pretty good chess-style brain teasers in the disguise of X-COM like combat, so that's worth a look.

Apart from that, most puzzle games, like The Talos Principle, actually don't have any character development, so, eh?

[BeerMug Paladin]

I doubt it's what you're looking for, but Zelda: Breath of the Wild has simple little puzzles scattered around all over the place. Nothing very seriously think-y, but there's bound to be an occasional puzzle you encounter which you're not sure how to solve immediately. And some of them have pretty clever logic behind them.

It's hard to think of games with puzzle elements and character progression. The only thing that comes to my mind beyond that is tactics games in general.

[PhantomFox]

The Phoenix Wright series perhaps?

[Brother Oni]

Apart from that, most puzzle games, like The Talos Principle, actually don't have any character development, so, eh?


It's hard to think of games with puzzle elements and character progression. The only thing that comes to my mind beyond that is tactics games in general.

Depends on what exactly is meant by character development. If you meant crunch wise, then there's possibly a couple:


The Sexy Brutale (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sexy_Brutale) is time travelling puzzle game where if you're successful in saving a person, you unlock more abilities, which let you save more people.
Majora's Mask, which is much in the same vein, where as you solve more puzzles, you unlock a greater variety of abilities to do more in the allotted time.
Tecmo's Deception series, where after you complete each level, you gain points to unlock more traps, which gives you more options to solve the next level. It has puzzle game elements in the sense that trap placement and chaining is critical to the game, although I agree its very much a third person action.
There's a whole bunch of Match-3 style games that have a wafer thin plot holding them together (eg the Puzzle Quest series).
Shandalar (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic:_The_Gathering_(1997_video_game)) is Magic the Gathering with RPG elements, although not really a puzzle game.


Fluff wise, there's some games where the character develops as they go through the plot, with their personality changing as they become more experienced, like The Sherlock Holmes series of games, where the titular protagonist develops as the case does.

[Winthur]

Do you guys know any good games that aren't incredibly difficult brain teasers but games that do not throw the solution into your lap? Genres is largely irrelevant though I highly appreciate something with character development (on a crunch side, so levels, unlocked abilities aka Zelda/Okami. Also I would probably hate something with only one viable answer or stuff with "weird logic" (see Monkey Island).

Might & Magic 3-8. You are thrown into the world with little explanation, it's an RPG, and it has puzzles and dungeons full of gimmicky stuff in them that can take a while to figure out.