Order of the Sinking Star

Is it fair to give such an ambitious game a thumbs down after 3 hours? Maybe not, but I do like to share some of my thoughts as a non-puzzle casual gamer who was genuinely interested. While I knew this game consisted of 4 games in 1 I was surprised how different they were. The first two, Heroes of Hauling and Mirror Isles I genuinely liked, and I appreciated the tempo and the difficulty. As a casual I was pleasantly surprised and figured I might actually enjoy this game with this kind of pacing. However, world 3, Skipping Stones, was suddenly a lot more different with mechanics I did not find introduced well enough. I managed to get through with some effort but then was stuck at the first golden puzzle. Here I found the solution such a step up in difficulty without any sort of hint or introduction it soured the game quite a bit for me. You see, based on world 1 and 2 I expected puzzles that gradually taught me and then became more difficult. With world 3 being so out of the box already in what was basically still the tutorial it made me feel I couldn't trust the game to teach me properly - if that makes any sense. If there is one thing I dread in puzzle games often it is not the puzzle itself, but that the intended solution does not follow from earlier steps, and so I might waste my time looking at a screen for hours because I was unaware I could execute a certain move. Maybe I am too rigid but I expect a ruleset to gradually evolve if that is what the game taught me from the start. Otherwise, warn me or give me a hint at least. In any case, I might have persisted because I genuinely enjoyed the environment and gameplay of Skipping Stones the most. But what made me refund the game was World 4 - Vault of the Beamcasters. Here I quickly found that was I was presented with was less of a puzzle and more a matter of continuous trial-and-error. Without spoiling anything, I did not like the mechanics of this one at all as it left the clean state of the earlier puzzles games for somewhat a lot bigger and messier in scope that was impossible to ponder from above. In other words, I like to contemplate the screen mostly, and then execute moves but in world 4 you are forced to trial and error your way through. I hope some of you might find some recognition in my experience. If you are a hardcore puzzle fan I am sure you will greatly enjoy this game regardless.