Masterpiece.

Not for everyone though. In order to solve all the puzzles you need your senses intact. Color blind? Skip this. Tone deaf? Probably skip this. Its not a casual puzzler. The game stresses understanding, many puzzles can be easily brute forced but it wont help you in the long run. Some reviewers complain about difficulty spikes, I'm guessing they stubbornly brute forced some puzzles instead of understanding them, leading on to hit a hard stop. Almost no puzzles in the witness are actually challenging once you understand the rules and their dynamic, and the game has one of the smoothest difficulty curves of any puzzle game for those who seek to understand instead of progress.

On the topic of story. Its not a story driven game, but there is a story. Most people will not discover it, as it is possible to "finish" the game without exploring it. But the story is there, hidden deep. The island is also filled with mystery and philosophy for those who enjoy making their own story as they go.

I want to address a complaint frequently brought up about some -specific- late game puzzles in the mountain being lazily designed "Adding annoying and repulsive effects to artificially increase their difficulty". I found these puzzles were deliberately dumb down so the developers could carefully add these effects without hindering the players progress. Why? Let me quote a reviewer "Electron dance" explaining it better than I ever could: "The puzzles reject you and become physically unpleasant to solve. Were you once embraced the mounting climb metaphor, you ignore what it means to descend through the mountains dark belly".

A tip, if you are the obsessive completionist type as this game is played in an open world environment. Be aware that you are capable of stumbling into puzzles and symbols early on that seem impossible to understand. You can always explore something else and come back later when your knowledge has grown.

Happy seeking