The point is that it doesn't represent itself as "just a puzzle game", it comes across as a game with something to say, and it felt dishonest to provoke questions it didn't really want to answer. I don't care enough about pure puzzle games to have bought yet another one without something else to offer, and I don't think it's unreasonable to call this one out for not fulfilling its promises.
Well, it's a great
puzzler, visually stunning, with some eerie atmosphere and a good premise for the story - I think it was worth the price I paid. I don't expect miracles from a puzzle driven game, because it's impossible to create one, with some exceptions for a specific setting, usually involving being a test subject in some experiment or something completely abstract. In a context of a real world, placing puzzles in almost every room doesn't make much sense.
I haven't heard of Kairo, does that one do meaningful narrative any better?
I don't know what do you mean by
meaningful, again, it's a relative term. But yeah, in Kairo puzzles are a part of the world and they do make a sense. They are integral to the narrative; their purpose as you play is to transform the world, but you have to remember they're not difficult, because that's not what they suppose to achieve, so again it depends on expectations. Kairo is an exploration game mainly - you may even call it notgame - although there are a lot of puzzles, with a cryptic story, told almost entirely without words, so you have to be attentive to your environment to make any sense out of it - but it's definitely there. Some say it's boring, but I loved it.
