- More refinement of the first game with a more expansive plot.
- The puzzles never actually got hard like the first game and the mechanics were never fully explored to get a chance to shine.
- A puzzle collectathon is still unique enough to warrant existing.
- The puzzles never actually got hard like the first game and the mechanics were never fully explored to get a chance to shine.
- A puzzle collectathon is still unique enough to warrant existing.
So I enjoyed the first Talos Principle. The puzzles were fun headscratchers, not easy but also not too hard. But that's really all I can tell you about it, except for the musings on humanity and impending apocalypse. And you know what? The second one hits the same notes, for better and for worse.
Talos 2 can't be described without first talking about the puzzles. These are the kinds of puzzles that I really excel at: 3D-space-based, heavy on positioning and really make you use the tools at your disposal. For completion, you have to complete 4 zones of three smaller sections of 10 total puzzles per section. And for the most part, the puzzles are very clever and the difficulty has a great curve. Slowing down and spending the time to really concentrate on what your goal is, what tools you have right now, and sometimes working backwards, you can get the answers within a few minutes.
That said, after about 10 of the 12 areas, I think I was about done. Some of the puzzles became a bit convoluted, like I would place a button, but didn't get the feedback of what that button did, or extremely tight positioning of a laser made progress more of a headscratcher of "Wait, but why?" (that puzzle was "Jailbreak", where I finally lost a bit of interest). Again, great puzzles, and there are definitely people out there that will find each a treat, but I personally thought it a bit too many and the game could have benefitted from cutting a few.
The second thing you have talk about with Talos 2 is the graphics. Much improved, with full DLSS and RT on PC. But you know, the first game did just fine without the extra graphical fidelity, and I don't think it added much here, overall. I'm usually a graphic snob, but it wouldn't have bugged me if they hadn't used the extra enhancements.
The sound and music ARE much the same as the previous game though, to the point where the puzzles SFX I think are literally used over again. The music is just not good, at all. For a puzzle game where you're going to sit in thought for long periods of time, I found the music kind of grating after a while, and there just wasn't a ton of variety. I was hearing the same song over and over again, so I ended up turning it off and just became a podcast/Youtube game.
Philosophy is another massive part of the Talos series, and if you hated it in 1, you'll hate it in 2. I didn't really mind it, though it seemed like the writing staff spent more of their time talking about if robots can be considered human than spending time on the plot and dialogue. There are also the requisite audio and text logs for extra flavor, but honestly this is where the game got a little to "up their own ass". A fun extra, but I ended up just skipping them after collecting them.
So, is Talos 2 a good puzzle game? Yes! I would consider it top tier for 3D puzzle games and would love to meet the psychos who come up with these things. Just be warned that there are some annoyances that may or may not be your cup of tea, but if you're willing to sit and give the game the time it needs/deserves, there's a lot of good content here
Talos 2 can't be described without first talking about the puzzles. These are the kinds of puzzles that I really excel at: 3D-space-based, heavy on positioning and really make you use the tools at your disposal. For completion, you have to complete 4 zones of three smaller sections of 10 total puzzles per section. And for the most part, the puzzles are very clever and the difficulty has a great curve. Slowing down and spending the time to really concentrate on what your goal is, what tools you have right now, and sometimes working backwards, you can get the answers within a few minutes.
That said, after about 10 of the 12 areas, I think I was about done. Some of the puzzles became a bit convoluted, like I would place a button, but didn't get the feedback of what that button did, or extremely tight positioning of a laser made progress more of a headscratcher of "Wait, but why?" (that puzzle was "Jailbreak", where I finally lost a bit of interest). Again, great puzzles, and there are definitely people out there that will find each a treat, but I personally thought it a bit too many and the game could have benefitted from cutting a few.
The second thing you have talk about with Talos 2 is the graphics. Much improved, with full DLSS and RT on PC. But you know, the first game did just fine without the extra graphical fidelity, and I don't think it added much here, overall. I'm usually a graphic snob, but it wouldn't have bugged me if they hadn't used the extra enhancements.
The sound and music ARE much the same as the previous game though, to the point where the puzzles SFX I think are literally used over again. The music is just not good, at all. For a puzzle game where you're going to sit in thought for long periods of time, I found the music kind of grating after a while, and there just wasn't a ton of variety. I was hearing the same song over and over again, so I ended up turning it off and just became a podcast/Youtube game.
Philosophy is another massive part of the Talos series, and if you hated it in 1, you'll hate it in 2. I didn't really mind it, though it seemed like the writing staff spent more of their time talking about if robots can be considered human than spending time on the plot and dialogue. There are also the requisite audio and text logs for extra flavor, but honestly this is where the game got a little to "up their own ass". A fun extra, but I ended up just skipping them after collecting them.
So, is Talos 2 a good puzzle game? Yes! I would consider it top tier for 3D puzzle games and would love to meet the psychos who come up with these things. Just be warned that there are some annoyances that may or may not be your cup of tea, but if you're willing to sit and give the game the time it needs/deserves, there's a lot of good content here
If you loved 1, you will like 2. Unfortunately, it's not as hard as the Road to Gehenna DLC until you get to the gold puzzles.
Would've been one of the greatest puzzle games of all time if it didn't prevent you from actually doing puzzles by making you walk and talk all the time.
The most damning thing I can say about The Talos Principle II is that it bored me.
The open-world design led to a lot of running back and forth, with large parts of the game spent in dialogues with characters, as well as reading text from terminals. While the writing can be great, I found a lot of the dialogues to be tiresome and not very interesting, like these characters -- many of whom being hundreds of years old -- could hardly break away from retreading the same ground in meandering dialogues. Thus, the story was less consistently engaging than the succinct narrative in the first game.
The puzzles prove to be the true catalysts of the downfall of The Talos Principle II in my mind, however. Out of the 132 main puzzles, there was precisely one which genuinely had me stumped for a while (Thrust Vector, in case you are curious), and probably around two dozen which I felt were true 'puzzles' and not simple busywork. The lack of difficulty in the puzzles meant that on top of spending lots of time running around between puzzles, solving the puzzles themselves often felt like a waste of time, where nothing was learned and nothing much was gained.
Of note is my mention of 'main puzzles'. You see, outside of the usual puzzles, there are also story setpiece sections which feature the player manipulating puzzle elements, and there are monuments. The setpiece sections are generally of an even lower standard of difficulty than the main puzzles, and are busywork to the point of not actually having any numbers or names to identify them with. The monuments exist in three forms: pulling a lever in a location based on an image, map, or other similar clue; shooting a laser into a receptacle; and finding and chasing a 'sprite' around the map. The first of these hardly requires thinking most of the time, the second is a matter of shooting lasers across the map, requiring some tedious laser connector positioning across long distances, and the third can hardly be called a puzzle by any stretch of the imagination. These stars were so tedious and pointless that I did not bother getting them.
With all of that out of the way, my experience was far from negative on the whole. There are definitely many points where the familiar brilliance of the writing shines through -- I was particularly fond of the interactive text adventures in the game. There are some stand-out music tracks I quite liked. The elephant in the room is, however, the graphical presentation. The level of detail is simply absurd, the performance is great (other than the random crashes, of which I experienced 17 in 25 hours), and many of the visual designs of the elements of the environments are simply stunning; I was frequently reminded of the likes of BLAME! and NaissanceE, brought to life in real-time 3D at an unprecedented level of fidelity.
Overall, I found The Talos Principle II to be severely lacking as a puzzle game, and not as compelling on the merits of its narrative as the first game, but still good and definitely worth its low asking price.
That said, shout out to Croteam for putting multiple direct parallels between Shakespeare's The Tempest and the story and setting of this game into the text, in a way which could go over the average player's head and still make for a full experience. I would recommend reading/watching The Tempest on its own merit, but I have been mulling the parallels over in my head for the past day and it's been good fun.
The open-world design led to a lot of running back and forth, with large parts of the game spent in dialogues with characters, as well as reading text from terminals. While the writing can be great, I found a lot of the dialogues to be tiresome and not very interesting, like these characters -- many of whom being hundreds of years old -- could hardly break away from retreading the same ground in meandering dialogues. Thus, the story was less consistently engaging than the succinct narrative in the first game.
The puzzles prove to be the true catalysts of the downfall of The Talos Principle II in my mind, however. Out of the 132 main puzzles, there was precisely one which genuinely had me stumped for a while (Thrust Vector, in case you are curious), and probably around two dozen which I felt were true 'puzzles' and not simple busywork. The lack of difficulty in the puzzles meant that on top of spending lots of time running around between puzzles, solving the puzzles themselves often felt like a waste of time, where nothing was learned and nothing much was gained.
Of note is my mention of 'main puzzles'. You see, outside of the usual puzzles, there are also story setpiece sections which feature the player manipulating puzzle elements, and there are monuments. The setpiece sections are generally of an even lower standard of difficulty than the main puzzles, and are busywork to the point of not actually having any numbers or names to identify them with. The monuments exist in three forms: pulling a lever in a location based on an image, map, or other similar clue; shooting a laser into a receptacle; and finding and chasing a 'sprite' around the map. The first of these hardly requires thinking most of the time, the second is a matter of shooting lasers across the map, requiring some tedious laser connector positioning across long distances, and the third can hardly be called a puzzle by any stretch of the imagination. These stars were so tedious and pointless that I did not bother getting them.
With all of that out of the way, my experience was far from negative on the whole. There are definitely many points where the familiar brilliance of the writing shines through -- I was particularly fond of the interactive text adventures in the game. There are some stand-out music tracks I quite liked. The elephant in the room is, however, the graphical presentation. The level of detail is simply absurd, the performance is great (other than the random crashes, of which I experienced 17 in 25 hours), and many of the visual designs of the elements of the environments are simply stunning; I was frequently reminded of the likes of BLAME! and NaissanceE, brought to life in real-time 3D at an unprecedented level of fidelity.
Overall, I found The Talos Principle II to be severely lacking as a puzzle game, and not as compelling on the merits of its narrative as the first game, but still good and definitely worth its low asking price.
That said, shout out to Croteam for putting multiple direct parallels between Shakespeare's The Tempest and the story and setting of this game into the text, in a way which could go over the average player's head and still make for a full experience. I would recommend reading/watching The Tempest on its own merit, but I have been mulling the parallels over in my head for the past day and it's been good fun.
This is superb, quietly the best puzzle game of 2023, beating both the already excellent Cocoon and Humanity, and the best game of its type that I've played since The Witness, to which it owes a huge debt. The puzzles - almost all of which involve reflecting and refracting light in every conceivable fashion - are ingenious without being overwhelming, and the satisfaction I derived from solving them frequently and involuntarily had me guffawing like a dastardly Bond villain - MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! The entire game is wrapped up in some stunning, megalophobia-inducing scenery that triggered many a Neo.jpg 'Whoa' moment. There's a fantastic ambient soundtrack that has immediately entered my gaming playlist rotation, and the whole thing is topped off with a surprisingly moving, poignant story about life, the universe and (quite literally) everything.
I started playing it on Saturday morning and have ploughed 36 hours into it since then, completely transfixed, which I haven't done with a game for ages. If you like puzzle games, games that make you think, or games with huge and imposing monolithic structures popping up all over the place, making you feel exceedingly tiny and vulnerable, then you must play The Talos Principle II. It's truly awesome (in the original sense of the word).
I started playing it on Saturday morning and have ploughed 36 hours into it since then, completely transfixed, which I haven't done with a game for ages. If you like puzzle games, games that make you think, or games with huge and imposing monolithic structures popping up all over the place, making you feel exceedingly tiny and vulnerable, then you must play The Talos Principle II. It's truly awesome (in the original sense of the word).
I wish I was more ashamed to admit that I have finally become the thing I hated. I normally think video games have incredibly shallow takes on philosophy and moral decisions (often boiling down to "must shoot but make sad"), but the Talos Principle games probe and poke at your ideologies in such interesting ways, to the point of making me think "Woah that's kinda deep" on a few occasions. I had to stop and think about how I was going to respond to questions, only to be made to feel like an idiot when the cloud of dust wafts away my arguments like they were silly.
But The Talos Principle games are much more than an interesting philosophical exercise, and it's because of this I believe that it aids the execution of the former. I think TP2 is a perfect sequel. It takes nearly everything about the first game and expands on it.
The choice to add companions beyond a text-adventure friend and Elohim from the sky was genius, and everyone is so well-written and voice-acted that it lets them take you along on their journey and character arc. You really want to consider their own philosophies and points-of-view, and there is not a single character to felt unmotivated in their actions.
The puzzles, while I wish they were more difficult, had mechanics that were distinct from the original. Thematically however, they felt like a perfect evolution, and no puzzle from this game would have felt out-of-place in the first.
Yeah sure the game isn't without its issues. As mentioned I think the puzzles were a little too easy, and the hub worlds, while beautiful, were a little too big/aimless sometimes. I wanted to feel like I'm exploring but trying to find all the collectibles in an area sometimes felt like a chore because of the size. This game has a lot of walking around.
I think the biggest step-down from the first is the removal of the star puzzles and replacing them with the shrines. There were really only 3 or 4 different puzzles duplicated through 24 shrine puzzles, and I would say only half a dozen were genuinely satisfying to solve. The star puzzles were the strongest part of the first game, making you re-evaluate the geometry of the level or solve a puzzle in a new and interesting way. This time it was more brute force the solution by chasing a cloud of dust, or find a part of the level by accident.
There were a few puzzles where I soft-locked myself, and needed to hit the reset button. I always feel like this is a weakness in puzzle design, but I can mostly forgive it here due to the complexity of certain mechanics making it almost impossible for it not to happen sometimes. There were some mechanics I wasn't too keen on (mostly fiddly ones that you needed to wait for or be in a specific position), but these came around infrequently enough to not be a major bother.
The game does run like ass too.
These two games have been incredibly formative for me, shaping my views on video game design, but also broader societal ideas, and honestly I cannot think of any praise higher than that. A must play.
But The Talos Principle games are much more than an interesting philosophical exercise, and it's because of this I believe that it aids the execution of the former. I think TP2 is a perfect sequel. It takes nearly everything about the first game and expands on it.
The choice to add companions beyond a text-adventure friend and Elohim from the sky was genius, and everyone is so well-written and voice-acted that it lets them take you along on their journey and character arc. You really want to consider their own philosophies and points-of-view, and there is not a single character to felt unmotivated in their actions.
The puzzles, while I wish they were more difficult, had mechanics that were distinct from the original. Thematically however, they felt like a perfect evolution, and no puzzle from this game would have felt out-of-place in the first.
Yeah sure the game isn't without its issues. As mentioned I think the puzzles were a little too easy, and the hub worlds, while beautiful, were a little too big/aimless sometimes. I wanted to feel like I'm exploring but trying to find all the collectibles in an area sometimes felt like a chore because of the size. This game has a lot of walking around.
I think the biggest step-down from the first is the removal of the star puzzles and replacing them with the shrines. There were really only 3 or 4 different puzzles duplicated through 24 shrine puzzles, and I would say only half a dozen were genuinely satisfying to solve. The star puzzles were the strongest part of the first game, making you re-evaluate the geometry of the level or solve a puzzle in a new and interesting way. This time it was more brute force the solution by chasing a cloud of dust, or find a part of the level by accident.
There were a few puzzles where I soft-locked myself, and needed to hit the reset button. I always feel like this is a weakness in puzzle design, but I can mostly forgive it here due to the complexity of certain mechanics making it almost impossible for it not to happen sometimes. There were some mechanics I wasn't too keen on (mostly fiddly ones that you needed to wait for or be in a specific position), but these came around infrequently enough to not be a major bother.
The game does run like ass too.
These two games have been incredibly formative for me, shaping my views on video game design, but also broader societal ideas, and honestly I cannot think of any praise higher than that. A must play.
The puzzles were much more unique and diverse compared to the first game, the story was incredible too. At times the worlds were a bit too large/open for my taste, but it did allow for fun secrets and exploration. Slowly piecing together more lore via audio logs or the occasional text entry was also interesting
I really LOVE Talos Principle 2, but it was one of the most tiring games I have ever played. 9/10 is good for this game, aside from the absurd playtime and a few weirdly specific puzzles, it is literally flawless and one of the best that this genre has to offer. Yes, I added the finishing sentence of a review to the beginning because the rest of the review isn’t specifically a review. I will ramble about a problem I actually had control over and talk about a valuable lesson I learned as a game designer. It will probably sound extremely stupid to you, so get ready.
I actually have lots to talk about this game, but 24 hours of puzzles completely destroyed my mind to a degree that even thinking about puzzles as a concept seems like an exhausting task. I wanted to talk about how I liked the narrative threads, how beautiful the game looks, how beautiful the soundtrack is and how well the puzzles are made, but sadly whenever I think about this game playtime is one of the main things that comes to my mind.
I adore this game, but 24 hours was WAY too much. It’s not that the game ever bores you, it’s the exact opposite actually. The game never runs out of new mechanics to give you, puzzles never get boring, and story threads and dialogues always keep you fresh. But man, if you want to see every bit of the story, you have to devote your life to this game and solve every puzzle this game has to offer. The main problem with this is that the maximum time I can play this game in a day is two hours because after that I completely run out of steam and even get to a degree where I start to have headaches. I wanted to see the ending of the game, also I wanted to move on to another game, so I played this game in really long sessions and in the end, I was extremely tired. Maybe a good solution would be to play another game with this one that is the opposite in nature, but I feared that I would have abandoned this game after a while. There might have been even more solutions that don’t come to my mind (thank you Talos Principle 2) but pushing through this game was probably the easiest one to do, so I did that. It was a mistake, but I did it anyway and I have no regrets as it taught me a valuable lesson.
This series is weird man. Not in terms of its story, or gameplay, but in terms of playtime. As a game designer, it gave me a valuable lesson in terms of playtime. The first game was also really good, but the puzzles got really, really hard and combined with the long playtime (15 hours) that game was also really tiring, even more than the second game. This game seemingly solved that problem, puzzles weren’t gradually getting harder, there were easier puzzles between harder ones and there were always new mechanics to keep the gameplay fresh (unlike the first game). When I was at the 12-hour mark, I thought to myself that this game solved the main problem of the first one and I probably won’t get tired at the end of this game like I did in the first one. As I progressed through the game, I gradually started to get tired again sadly. The reason is simple; Even if your game is endlessly fun, even if you have the content to support a long playtime, there is always a degree where your game can be too long.
Even though this series tired me, I’m really glad that I played it. I learned a really valuable lesson about playtime that I don’t think I could have had without experiencing and analyzing it by myself. If you are a game designer, definitely play this game. Even if you don’t learn the same lesson as me, I’m pretty sure you will learn about something equally significant.
I actually have lots to talk about this game, but 24 hours of puzzles completely destroyed my mind to a degree that even thinking about puzzles as a concept seems like an exhausting task. I wanted to talk about how I liked the narrative threads, how beautiful the game looks, how beautiful the soundtrack is and how well the puzzles are made, but sadly whenever I think about this game playtime is one of the main things that comes to my mind.
I adore this game, but 24 hours was WAY too much. It’s not that the game ever bores you, it’s the exact opposite actually. The game never runs out of new mechanics to give you, puzzles never get boring, and story threads and dialogues always keep you fresh. But man, if you want to see every bit of the story, you have to devote your life to this game and solve every puzzle this game has to offer. The main problem with this is that the maximum time I can play this game in a day is two hours because after that I completely run out of steam and even get to a degree where I start to have headaches. I wanted to see the ending of the game, also I wanted to move on to another game, so I played this game in really long sessions and in the end, I was extremely tired. Maybe a good solution would be to play another game with this one that is the opposite in nature, but I feared that I would have abandoned this game after a while. There might have been even more solutions that don’t come to my mind (thank you Talos Principle 2) but pushing through this game was probably the easiest one to do, so I did that. It was a mistake, but I did it anyway and I have no regrets as it taught me a valuable lesson.
This series is weird man. Not in terms of its story, or gameplay, but in terms of playtime. As a game designer, it gave me a valuable lesson in terms of playtime. The first game was also really good, but the puzzles got really, really hard and combined with the long playtime (15 hours) that game was also really tiring, even more than the second game. This game seemingly solved that problem, puzzles weren’t gradually getting harder, there were easier puzzles between harder ones and there were always new mechanics to keep the gameplay fresh (unlike the first game). When I was at the 12-hour mark, I thought to myself that this game solved the main problem of the first one and I probably won’t get tired at the end of this game like I did in the first one. As I progressed through the game, I gradually started to get tired again sadly. The reason is simple; Even if your game is endlessly fun, even if you have the content to support a long playtime, there is always a degree where your game can be too long.
Even though this series tired me, I’m really glad that I played it. I learned a really valuable lesson about playtime that I don’t think I could have had without experiencing and analyzing it by myself. If you are a game designer, definitely play this game. Even if you don’t learn the same lesson as me, I’m pretty sure you will learn about something equally significant.
Surpasses the first game in many aspects. Haven't done all of the puzzles legitimately, but the new mechanics were a nice breath of fresh air. The lore was expanded upon greatly as well and even the story doesn't disappoint.
Talos II offers a lot more story than I anticipated. It's well thought out and offers plenty of moral and philosophical questions. Considering the subject matter I was impressed with how they handled it.
I found the first game tells a better story overall, but this one has a lot more of it and is a lot more ambitious. There is even a robot city of all things.
I find the puzzles in the Talos Principle games to be deeply satisfying. I don't know exactly what it is. I suspect it's something to do with the 3D nature of it, as most puzzle games are 2D, or it may have something to do with the laser beams being put in order that scratches an itch, a feeling that you are constructing the answer. I can't tell.
The game has a lot to say, and I found some issues with the combination of the constant articles and the large spaces. A lot of the story is optional, but I wanted to get into all of it. If you play like that, be prepared for a lot of time away from the puzzling.
I found the first game tells a better story overall, but this one has a lot more of it and is a lot more ambitious. There is even a robot city of all things.
I find the puzzles in the Talos Principle games to be deeply satisfying. I don't know exactly what it is. I suspect it's something to do with the 3D nature of it, as most puzzle games are 2D, or it may have something to do with the laser beams being put in order that scratches an itch, a feeling that you are constructing the answer. I can't tell.
The game has a lot to say, and I found some issues with the combination of the constant articles and the large spaces. A lot of the story is optional, but I wanted to get into all of it. If you play like that, be prepared for a lot of time away from the puzzling.
A more story and character focused entry, Talos Principle II succeeds in many facets of its design but ultimately fails in being a puzzle game. These are the worst puzzles of the Talos games and while new mechanics are constantly introduced, no properly fleshed out levels contain them. While I think there is a lot to like here such as the story, characters, graphics, setting and almost everything else, the game fails at being an engaging puzzle game. Despite this I enjoyed my time with this game very much, just not the puzzle aspects.
This review contains spoilers
This might just be the depression talking but right now I relate more to the misanthropic ancient humans than the robots in the good ending. Sorry about that Miranda.
Love wins.
A phenomenal story filled with incredibly fun puzzles, a great cast of characters, and gorgeous settings. Idk what Croteam has in store next, but I'm excited for whatever it may be.
A phenomenal story filled with incredibly fun puzzles, a great cast of characters, and gorgeous settings. Idk what Croteam has in store next, but I'm excited for whatever it may be.
A decently enjoyable puzzle game that just didn’t manage to fully pull me in. The environments are gorgeous, but they’re also frequently a pain to navigate. (Why does fast travel only work from the shuttle?) The story is intellectually interesting and the voice actors do a solid job (I was impressed by the wide variety of accents on display), but I never felt particularly emotionally invested, and even though the characters do have distinct personalities they wound up feeling first and foremost like mouthpieces for their respective philosophical positions. And as for the puzzles themselves, I generally had a good time solving them and there were some that I found particularly clever, but for the most part they just didn’t hit the highs of my favorite puzzle games.
She talos on my principle until I question existence
I accidentally used cheats to teleport to a storypoint. Erased my entire progress. Fuck this
This review contains spoilers
"This game was good."
I dont know why I have to type that out for myself to believe. I think the only reason I have hesitancy with that statement is because of how much I just LOVED Talos principle 1. I went into that title knowing NOTHING about it. So everything was so different and inspiring.
And in Talos Principle 2 I wasn't nearly in a place in time that left nearly that same impression.
Now that's the most subjective, inner personal, (World revolves around me), take I think I've ever written. Like who am I to judge an entire game based off just because I'm older and was exhausted while I was playing this one. I do plan on returning to it potentially one day to try a different ending.
Some positives
I enjoyed was that the puzzles were an absolute high point here. leagues is better than Talos 1 and those puzzles had some highs as well.
The graphics were jaw dropping, and the environments were bigger than ever. Which of course feed into the narrative it was to tell (Which I wont get into because of spoilers), But I will also talk about this... "Bigness" in the negatives to.
I really enjoyed the story it had to tell. I will leave this here, because its at its best the less you know.
Negatives I had:
Its too too big. I have completionist brain. I have to get all the shiny tokens and coins and bits and bops. So having to wander around these GINOURMOUS maps for sometimes over and hour just for one level is not enjoyable. Especially when some puzzles are just "Find the switch hidden in this huge desert." Having beautiful vistas is wonderful, but after some time they become annoyances and background noise while you chase after the same Star for the collectible.
The lack of reason to explore these large Vistas.
They are OH SO PRETTY. Like easily in the top ten on the PS5. BUT like there is nothing... Any and all secrets of Talos principle 1 have been stripped and simplified to finding cardboard cutouts or purple rings with cute animations. Another thing is The City. I wish the City just had more to it.
The coolest part of the city is the museum where they have an entire section dedicated to Talos 1. Outside of that, there are some NPCs to talk to, 5 data logs to listen to, and 3 interactive adventure computers.
Side content that went nowhere.
Specifically, I want to criticize a side story in this game with Robot 666. There are light spoilers...
She asks you at the beginning of the game if you would like to enter into an underground discussion with members of the City who have great influence. You then answer a survey to find out which of the 4 influences you will match with. All representing different takes on different philosophical beliefs. Then you will go a Long long time without hearing from this group. Only to get one interaction with them. Only for them to never message again.
This feeds into my next complaint, the NPCs. They do talk... a lot. To go from Talos 1 with a very solitary world, you now have a party with you who can have some fun dialogue and moments. I found myself losing interest in them more and more as the game continued. None of them outside of the main two party members Byron and Alcatraz. The others I grew tired of ... and felt less and less likely to search for them in the large open world to get some dialogue and updates on their opinions on philosophy.
All in all, this is a GREAT puzzle game that's beautiful. And the story it tells is amazing. But there are small dings and bumps that make it a very taxing experience.
I dont know why I have to type that out for myself to believe. I think the only reason I have hesitancy with that statement is because of how much I just LOVED Talos principle 1. I went into that title knowing NOTHING about it. So everything was so different and inspiring.
And in Talos Principle 2 I wasn't nearly in a place in time that left nearly that same impression.
Now that's the most subjective, inner personal, (World revolves around me), take I think I've ever written. Like who am I to judge an entire game based off just because I'm older and was exhausted while I was playing this one. I do plan on returning to it potentially one day to try a different ending.
Some positives
I enjoyed was that the puzzles were an absolute high point here. leagues is better than Talos 1 and those puzzles had some highs as well.
The graphics were jaw dropping, and the environments were bigger than ever. Which of course feed into the narrative it was to tell (Which I wont get into because of spoilers), But I will also talk about this... "Bigness" in the negatives to.
I really enjoyed the story it had to tell. I will leave this here, because its at its best the less you know.
Negatives I had:
Its too too big. I have completionist brain. I have to get all the shiny tokens and coins and bits and bops. So having to wander around these GINOURMOUS maps for sometimes over and hour just for one level is not enjoyable. Especially when some puzzles are just "Find the switch hidden in this huge desert." Having beautiful vistas is wonderful, but after some time they become annoyances and background noise while you chase after the same Star for the collectible.
The lack of reason to explore these large Vistas.
They are OH SO PRETTY. Like easily in the top ten on the PS5. BUT like there is nothing... Any and all secrets of Talos principle 1 have been stripped and simplified to finding cardboard cutouts or purple rings with cute animations. Another thing is The City. I wish the City just had more to it.
The coolest part of the city is the museum where they have an entire section dedicated to Talos 1. Outside of that, there are some NPCs to talk to, 5 data logs to listen to, and 3 interactive adventure computers.
Side content that went nowhere.
Specifically, I want to criticize a side story in this game with Robot 666. There are light spoilers...
She asks you at the beginning of the game if you would like to enter into an underground discussion with members of the City who have great influence. You then answer a survey to find out which of the 4 influences you will match with. All representing different takes on different philosophical beliefs. Then you will go a Long long time without hearing from this group. Only to get one interaction with them. Only for them to never message again.
This feeds into my next complaint, the NPCs. They do talk... a lot. To go from Talos 1 with a very solitary world, you now have a party with you who can have some fun dialogue and moments. I found myself losing interest in them more and more as the game continued. None of them outside of the main two party members Byron and Alcatraz. The others I grew tired of ... and felt less and less likely to search for them in the large open world to get some dialogue and updates on their opinions on philosophy.
All in all, this is a GREAT puzzle game that's beautiful. And the story it tells is amazing. But there are small dings and bumps that make it a very taxing experience.
this gonna be so good
Fantastic sequel where you solve puzzles and debate if frogs are human.
At first I really didn't like how story-centric it was (as well as how open the hub worlds are - you wander around a lot before finding the next puzzle). But the story did eventually win me over and I did grow to appreciate the level design and art direction. There's a lot of new puzzle mechanics and a lot of them could have been expanded or explored further.
Overall, I recommend if you enjoy puzzlers or the first one - just be prepared for a more narrative-focused experience.
At first I really didn't like how story-centric it was (as well as how open the hub worlds are - you wander around a lot before finding the next puzzle). But the story did eventually win me over and I did grow to appreciate the level design and art direction. There's a lot of new puzzle mechanics and a lot of them could have been expanded or explored further.
Overall, I recommend if you enjoy puzzlers or the first one - just be prepared for a more narrative-focused experience.
Goes in a pretty different direction than the first one with an upgrade in scope, story, and graphics.
Recombines elements of the old puzzles with interesting new mechanics naturally and intuitively.
Story:
The story takes a different approach too, where the first game focuses on the nature of humanity and personhood, the second game is interested in the value of humanity and seeks to ask the player if human proliferation is inherently destructive or if we can coexist peacefully with the planet.
Some may dismiss it as a Malthusian and misanthropic, but I feel it's a relevant question to ask. Especially in the game's universe where humanity did almost get wiped out by it's own hand.
It's cool to see how the characters in the game are aware of the dilemma between their creator's desire for humanity to live on and their mere existence setting them up to repeat the mistakes of their ancestors.
The game's characters come to different conclusions shaped by the player's responses and choices throughout the game.
Just like the first game this gave me something to think about even after completing it and I'm still not sure of how much faith to place in humanity. I came away with a tentative feeling that it's possible to wield our power properly to maximise pleasure and beauty in the universe.
Puzzles:
The puzzles scaled in difficulty nicely and introduced new mechanics well. Gold puzzles were fun and difficult and put some good twists on previously mastered mechanics.
Recombines elements of the old puzzles with interesting new mechanics naturally and intuitively.
Story:
The story takes a different approach too, where the first game focuses on the nature of humanity and personhood, the second game is interested in the value of humanity and seeks to ask the player if human proliferation is inherently destructive or if we can coexist peacefully with the planet.
Some may dismiss it as a Malthusian and misanthropic, but I feel it's a relevant question to ask. Especially in the game's universe where humanity did almost get wiped out by it's own hand.
It's cool to see how the characters in the game are aware of the dilemma between their creator's desire for humanity to live on and their mere existence setting them up to repeat the mistakes of their ancestors.
The game's characters come to different conclusions shaped by the player's responses and choices throughout the game.
Just like the first game this gave me something to think about even after completing it and I'm still not sure of how much faith to place in humanity. I came away with a tentative feeling that it's possible to wield our power properly to maximise pleasure and beauty in the universe.
Puzzles:
The puzzles scaled in difficulty nicely and introduced new mechanics well. Gold puzzles were fun and difficult and put some good twists on previously mastered mechanics.
play this
A Masterful puzzle game, perfectly satisfying and grants that endorphin hit when you beat a puzzle.
For those who want more, the stars and subsequent puzzle rooms ramp up the difficulty from a 7 to a 10, really requiring some think-outside-the-box solutions.
The story is there for those who want it, with religious overtones. It will make you question morality, humanity, faith, and a multitude of other things, but really it just lost me.
For those who want more, the stars and subsequent puzzle rooms ramp up the difficulty from a 7 to a 10, really requiring some think-outside-the-box solutions.
The story is there for those who want it, with religious overtones. It will make you question morality, humanity, faith, and a multitude of other things, but really it just lost me.
I wasn't expecting such a massive expansion of lore and an entire robot city dedicated to a now extinct humanity, but it was a neat addition to the puzzle mechanics. If you enjoyed the first one, I don't see how you wouldn't like this just as much.
Great game but those OSTs from the first game were really something else! Spent a lot of time in the museum for this reason. While bigger in scope, I definitely dug the vibe and puzzles of the first game more.
This game definitely makes some improvements on the first one, especially being backed by a more interactive story with plenty of characters each with their own motivations and views on the world. While it succeeds in establishing this tremendous world and leaves you with much to consider throughout the playthrough, it unfortunately begins lacking in the puzzles. There are plenty of mechanics that get used to a varying degree outside their own areas, but none of them feel fully explored. This leaves the endgame puzzles feeling extremely lacking and not super satisfying outside of the initial introduction of the mechanics, and I found this especially egregious and disappointing in West 3. While the mechanics are more interesting than the first game, they are not nearly as fully explored or built upon, which is disappointing for a game that presents itself as a puzzle game. However, they were still fun to explore and utilize the new tools to find solutions, and the story was incredibly interesting to follow along to while thinking about applicability to the real world.
Honestly, I expected more of the same. And yeah it is more of the same but it is much improved in every way.
The story is excellent and much more exciting (if not strictly better since the first one also has a very interesting philosophical story). The art and environments are way way prettier. And most importantly, the puzzles are much better and more consistently interesting. The first one's main problem is that it really dragged. Toward the end it had no new ideas and was just adding tedium rather than fun new puzzles. In this one, I never felt like a puzzle was tedious or repetitive or boring. I am somewhat shocked to be giving it the full 5 stars, but it was that good.
The story is excellent and much more exciting (if not strictly better since the first one also has a very interesting philosophical story). The art and environments are way way prettier. And most importantly, the puzzles are much better and more consistently interesting. The first one's main problem is that it really dragged. Toward the end it had no new ideas and was just adding tedium rather than fun new puzzles. In this one, I never felt like a puzzle was tedious or repetitive or boring. I am somewhat shocked to be giving it the full 5 stars, but it was that good.
Good but after 20 hours of the same puzzles with very little variety, I think I’m done here. Finished half the game and it was more game than I was looking for with not quite enough game at the same time. Not sure how else to say that.
Set centuries after the original Talos Principle, its sequel centers on the civilization created by the protagonist of the first game (retroactively named "Athena") after they escaped into the real world. You play as the 1000th android "born" into this civilization, named 1k (everyone else got to pick their names except you I guess). The 1000th android was a targeted milestone in their culture, and your arrival sparks debate of tradition versus progress. Much like the first game, TP2 deals heavily with concepts of philosophy, although I think it's done much better in this game. I found the philosophy in the first game to be a lot of words without much meaning that had little to do with the plot. Here, by creating actual situations and characters, there is some weight behind the concepts they want to convey... even if I'm not sure they quite stuck the landing with the ending. While all this debate about the future of robot-kind goes on, you and a few others explore a series of mysterious structures seemingly created by Athena, now gone missing. These are the puzzles of the game, which I feel are superbly done. I'm a big fan of pure puzzle games which require you to sit back and think for a few moments. These expertly use the concepts and objects to create interesting and unique scenarios. While its predecessor also excelled in this regard, I think the sequel is a tad bit better, although I think some of its backdrops aren't quite as interesting. They add new objects and puzzle types that are interesting, and remove the ones that didn't work in the original (like those proximity bombs). There's a wide gambit of mandatory and optional puzzles, which I enjoyed enough to complete, earning the player a slightly different ending. While androids obsessed with philosophy is a bit of a tired trope, this game does it well, and overall it's one of the best puzzle games I've played in a while.
what if there was a Twitter exclusively for Greek philosophers