TL;DR: The Anniversary Edition is a must have for fans and people new to the game alike. Its also a lovely resource, a guide, and a museum for gamers, game developers, admirers of art and storytelling, and it's a joy to visit.

I am playing Braid for the third time (the Anniversary Edition for the first time) and I look forward to every moment I spend in this work of art.

Long version:
Tim made a mistake....in fact, he made several mistakes because of which the princess' love turned into contempt and he lost something irreplaceable.

Tim owns up to his mistakes and apologises, and he asks if that does not make things right, fix everything as long as he does not make that mistake again?

In an ideal world, wouldn't the response be "It's okay, don't worry about it, I still love you?" Has he not suffered enough with his guilt, his regrets?

But if we forgave so easily, would it not mean we were suppressing ourselves and brushing away our hurt?

Maybe.

I think it’s not just Tim who has made mistakes, but it’s implied that even the princess may have made mistakes. But Tim can only take responsibility and fix this, on his own if he has to.

Forgiveness is a tricky fish to catch. Tim does not forgive himself and cannot let go. So he must set out to find the princess again to tell her he made a mistake and he can fix everything. Tim is sorry and he knows he can make it right, somehow.

His tiny apartment is surrounded by a world that is burning and turning to ashes soon...so he must venture inwards to understand the pieces that he lost somewhere, to put them all together and get his princess back.

This is my third time playing the game (first time playing the Anniversary Edition) and I hope to find some peace, some distraction from my own mistakes. An escape from my own burning world, if you will. Because, just like Tim, I too have made several mistakes recently. Broke a few hearts.

The Tim inside me believes that if he can only rewind and revisit everything, he can understand things better and mend what has been broken into tiny pieces. To quote Tool, he knows that the pieces fit.

Unlike Tim though, I find myself trying to hold back; I am trying to talk myself out of this madness, this obsession. Rumination leads me to this rabbit hole.

But time and memory are strange things....one moment, I find myself outside of it, the next, I relive those mistakes as if they just happened.

Forgiveness is stranger still. Every moment Tim spends obsessively seeking the princess and her "forgiveness", he is denying himself his own forgiveness. Its not the princess' forgiveness he really needs, but his own.

We are all flawed and incomplete...like pieces of jigsaw. Seeking to fit somewhere and be completed. But sometimes, like Tim, we forget that its okay to be flawed, its okay to make mistakes, and suffering from a broken heart and having broken dreams is all part of life.

Sometimes we learn that lesson the hard way. Our obsession, our overthinking and self-destructive quest to experience that beautiful moment over and over, to fulfil that dream, to keep a paradise that is not meant to stay...it just leads to more pain and suffering. And one mistake turns to many, and we end up hurting someone, something, or our self.

Be kind, rewind. Lets figure this out together with Tim.

tedious garbage + whiny developer = forgettable uninspiring crap

I don’t understand this game. I first saw it years ago in some kind of indie game documentary alongside Fez and Super Meat Boy and the art style and time mechanic caught my attention. I finally got around to trying it out and I was thoroughly disappointed. The time mechanic was fun and cool at first, but got pretty annoying and confusing after the first two worlds, and the addition of more time mechanics just made it worse. I got a decent amount of puzzle pieces on my way through the levels and finished all of the main levels. However, once I realized that I likely needed to get all of the puzzle pieces in order to advance, I tried to get a few that I missed, but quickly accepted that it wasn’t going to happen.

I don’t know if I’m just stupid or if the game is designed badly. The game is very widely loved, but I’ve played through and enjoyed many other puzzle games and puzzle platformers, so not sure which one it is. There seemed to be some kind of story with the books, but I read through them all and couldn’t care less about it. The art style ended up being the only thing I liked about the game after playing.