The Witness

This is one of the best puzzle games and the ultimate one stroke drawing game. Before this game, I can't even imagine there're so many elements can be added to one stroke drawing. Both the quality and quantity of puzzles in the game are amazing. The first run will take 20+ hours, which is huge for a puzzle game.

Although the game has a reasonable learning curve, it's common to enter areas with unknown mechanisms and this could be frustrating at times. In fact, there's no explanation on any game symbols or mechanisms. It will be very painful if you don't get it from the limited hints. There's a guide in the community provided basic explanation without spoiling which is indeed useful.

There're only two achievements in the game. One for completing the game and the other one is a time limited challenge. The time limited challenge is difficult but doable after a few practices, provided you minimize the use of guides throughout the game. Or else, good luck.

In Braid, the developer's previous game, there's an annoying time limited challenge achievements as well. I hated that achievement all the while. But now after this game, I think maybe I can understand where the developer comes from better. Probably one day I will go back and finish that game.

Overall, this is a must play game for any player love strategy or puzzles.

This game is not for everyone. If you don't like experimental weird shit games, don't get it.
The Witness is hard to describe. A large open world that you wander around in solving puzzles. Why do you solve the puzzles? Some times you can see that they lead to something, some times you do them because, well, this is a puzzle game and you found a puzzle. The entire game is built upon a slowly increasing knowledge base, where you solve an extremely simple puzzle, then a slightly more complex one, until you learn the rules of that type of puzzle. You might need to look at the puzzles from different angles, or listen carefully to sounds, but you can't even carry objects so don't worry about fetch quests. Every puzzle in the game is totally self contained, once you understand the rules. Like a Myst game, keeping a notebook is a must. It has no characters in the traditional sense. No big face slaps of "I AM TEACHING YOU PHILOSOPHY" like The Talos Principle. But it has strong theme, expression, and intent.
Cons:
-Dear god the motion sickness. I don't get motion sickness from games, but hooooooly crap did I have to stop playing this multiple times because it made me sick. This is especially true with some of the very late game puzzles. The worst part of the game by far for me.
-Difficulty that can be frustrating. Almost nothing in the game is difficult in the traditional sense. What makes the game hard is figuring out the rules, and if you don't know a rule it becomes next to impossible. Figuring out some of them can be a challenge.
-Nothing is explained in the traditional sense. The reviews that say there are no tutorials are wrong; the entire game is a giant set of tutorials. But you need to pay attention to every thing you do, in every puzzle, and what it means. Woe to you if you didn't write down your discoveries.
-It's slow. Think Myst, if you played that back in the day. Moving through spaces, exploring them, piecing together from the environment what you are supposed to even do there, if anything.
Pros:
-Do you like learning through doing, rather than having something explained to you? That's the game. That's literally the entire game. And I mean it. It is 30+ hours of tinkering and experimenting and OH SHIT I GET IT! moments where suddenly 3 of the puzzles you left behind, stuck, suddenly make sense and are child's play. Along each of those you will discover something else and another puzzle you couldn't figure out just clicks into place. Or maybe what you discover is a puzzle you didn't even realize was there, but you were staring at the whole time! And you get lost in it.
-It's beautiful. Incredible art direction with layers and layers and layers.
-It has a hard to quantify human "art feel". The frustrations, and the journey. The realizations about the game and about yourself. It'll do things to you that suck, and it'll do things to you that are wonderful. When I beat one of the endings I literally had to stand up and walk away from my computer.
A few ending notes
Looking up almost anything immediately breaks the game. This can be extremely hard to deal with in a context where the answer to not understanding something is to just look it up. A few times in the game I "solved" things a bit faster than the game intended and had to slog through a dozen puzzles of ramping difficulty. If you just look up how a mechanic works, all you're doing is slogging through puzzles that take longer to walk between than to solve. There are multiple endings, and at some point you will probably want to look up some of that because... Well, you probably will. I can't tell you if that is the right or the wrong move. It will make a radical impact on your entire game experience though, and I'm not sure which way is better.
Do I recommend? For me, yes. I also know people that would hate it, and I totally understand why.

most of the bad reviews seem to be people who simply dont enjoy puzzle games and thought for some reason they would enjoy this. this game is NOTHING but line puzzles. it does lots of cool things with line puzzle yes, but at the end of the day if doing line puzzles for 10-15 hours + doesnt sound fun to you, spare yourself the frustration and just dont get it.

I've been playing this game since 2016 – yes, I'm one of those who have played this game for the longest time – and only now have I decided to finally finish it (of course, there were long periods when I just put this game aside).
I like the visuals and the puzzles. However, in my view, the environmental puzzles are the weakest part of this game. They don't require logic; instead, they demand a keen eye and pixel hunting, which quickly becomes tedious. In my opinion, the author is a very talented person, but he failed to realize the difference between SOLVING and SEARCHING. Searching and pixel hunting quickly become boring and tiring. I'm a big fan of puzzle games, but there's a limit to how much time I'm willing to invest in a game. The Witness requires an excessive amount of meticulous exploring and peering into the landscape if you aim to complete it 100%.
So, here's my advice for all newcomers to the game: try the minimal walkthrough on your own (you can finish the game without completing all puzzles), and resort to guides if you aim to finish it 100%. This approach will unveil some interesting endings and game content. Trust me – it doesn't make sense to finish it 100% on your own because it will take an enormous amount of time on average. Plus, you will clearly see (if you follow the guides on environmental puzzles) how much time a puzzle would have taken you if you attempted it on your own.
To sum it up – overall, I like this game; perhaps only Myst surpasses it. But what I don't appreciate is that it becomes tedious at some point, and we, as human beings, just don't like to hit our head against the wall without making any progress. Being unable to solve a puzzle doesn't make you stupid; spending hours and days trying to solve a puzzle that you cannot solve does.

The Witness is a game about walking around an island surrounded by puzzles that disfigure rationality and logic. An encounter between various synchronizations. Elements that are often outside are inside. The veracity of the obvious lies in the veracity of V's voraciousness and its transformative goals in the veridical meanings of what does not appear to be. A unique experience that is tantamount to the submersion of the one who created it.

I appreciate the sense of my brain stretching, and how my knowledge of the mechanics enabled me to explore. I don't know if I've ever experienced a game that gave me a greater sense of logical and spatial challenge.
A note on accessibility: as a partially color blind person I struggled a little with some of the puzzles. There are puzzles that require a sense of hearing.

I finally beat this game after playing it on and off for the past ten years. The game exists in a state of duality, it's both the most peaceful and frustrating thing. It allows you to explore the world at your own pace and yet you feel compelled to keep working on a puzzle until you crack the code. Very enjoyable, and I'm glad I can close the experience as a chapter of my life.