Agreed! Back in the day I got all stars blind except that one and the cloud. Very irritating finding out I had to start over to get 100%.

Just starting and I can't remember the problematic jigsaw, and my google search skills are failing me. Could you provide a spoiler (or know of a link which describes this puzzle) so others can avoid running into the same problem. Even just mentioning the world the puzzle is in would be probably enough.

There's another way of arranging the World 3 painting in the house. Just don't put any of the pieces together until you've found it and you won't be locked out.

Same thing happened to me-- I was working my way through the stars, but had forgotten this one is impossible to do later in the game :( It's annoying that there's this one specific "missable" in a game otherwise designed for open-ended puzzles.

Maybe they can fix this? It's my only quibble with an otherwise excellent rerelease!

Well, isn't that sorta the point of the puzzle? In a game where most things can be rewound, it makes sense to have a puzzle where the only way to solve it is to "rewind" by restarting the game.

I think it's intentionally designed like this to drive home the theme of an irreversible mistake that you'd do differently if you had the chance to start over. Whether or not it's a good implementation of the idea is up to each player to decide, but I think changing it would make the star meaningless in a thematic sense.

Originally posted by timothymark:

I think it's intentionally designed like this to drive home the theme of an irreversible mistake that you'd do differently if you had the chance to start over. Whether or not it's a good implementation of the idea is up to each player to decide, but I think changing it would make the star meaningless in a thematic sense.

Agreed completely. I personally believe it's a good puzzle, but I understand why others would disagree. However, changing it would not be a quality of life thing, but a destruction of the source material.

I think if that was the motive of the puzzle, moving left/right through the level should clearly affect the puzzle (eg. moving left after completion dissembles it). Since that doesn't happen, I'm inclined to believe it's more of a quirk of implementation than a feature of intentional design.

Either way, would love if it was revisited in a patch :)

I wouldn’t mind this so much if it wasn’t right after a star that takes TWO HOURS to get, while you mostly have to sit there with the game running and can’t even alt-tab out.

Really tired of games that waste the player’s time like this. Braid is great as a whole but I wish this nonsense would’ve been changed. What is actually gained other than making me not want to bother doing all this again and making me quit the game with a bad taste in my mouth because of doing things in the wrong order when there was zero indication or reminders it was an issue? That’s just bad design.

I tend to agree that this type of design decision prompts more frustration than thematic introspection, but at least it has a purpose.

Yes, please let us break-up the puzzle!

Come on guys, how much active playtime does it take to 100% anyway? There is a speedrun challenge so you should already be able to any% under an hour. The rest is not too far off from there. ...well maybe the cloud is, but no one is bound to the computer.

The irreversible puzzle feels appropriate because irreversibility is the main theme of the world it's in. And it's not a big deal to redo the rest of the game if you miss it. And let us appreciate the fact that it is very hard to accidentally mess it up once you know what you are doing.

The thing is, I've done it more than once already now. I don't want to do it again, so soon after I just did it again.

So I've simply stopped playing the game, and seen none of the new content, because going any further on my current save seems silly when it cannot be completed, and the whole thing annoyed me anyway.

There are so many other games to play instead of repeating one that I just repeated for the Nth time and won't feel like re-playing for a while.

Maybe I'll do it in a while. But this put me off playing the game any further for now.

Also, the cost of resetting is EVEN higher now that there's 10+ hours of commentary levels. Seriously, do some quality of life improvements for the fans.

I'd like to leave my $0.03 and note, that speedrun of the game takes less than an hour even with limited skills, and there's no achievement for collecting the stars. Only you will know. ;)