The Talos Principle 2 is a game which begs you to abandon cynicism. It desperately wants you to take a chance and believe in humanity and what we can do when we work together. While its story is much more one-sided in its presentation than the first Talos Principle, ought it not to be? It's only through cooperation and trust in others that this game, let alone our great technologies and cities came to be.
Though I was disappointed by the dearth of easter eggs in this game and thought the puzzles trended easier than the first game, I still had a great time playing through it and taking in the magnificent, digital vistas of the island while engaging in conversation with the superbly voice-acted members of my expedition & New Jerusalem.

While I don't think The Talos Principle 2 achieves the greatness of the first game, it is still a wonderful experience which urges the player to truly think about the themes, situation, and argument at play, and I love it for that reason. While many of The Talos Principle 1's debates were extremely well-realized in the form of text messages with Milton, in this game, I found myself repeatedly arguing with myself, even when not playing the game, about what it was that I believed and which way I should direct the future when the critical moment came to pass. I think that speaks volumes about how much The Talos Principle 2 gets you to ponder about "the big questions" if you engage with it, and I really appreciate it for that.

This game really rocked my socks! First beat-em-up I've ever really liked, if I'm being honest. The RPG mechanics really helped me to stay engaged and I loved the soundtrack by Anamanaguchi. There are a lot of cheap hits and some obnoxious bits of platforming due to the perspective and controls, but they never really impacted my enjoyment of the game. I just wish your characters' movesets were the slightest bit more fleshed out at the start of the game. You're basically slapping the same buttons over and over for the first quarter of the game.
I played through as Kim for my first time, and I'm looking forward to playing it again as another character. Maybe Wallace or Knives next.

One of the best Mario games. Everyone talks about the art and the music but nobody talks about the mechanics! It's so much fun to have to negotiate around the intricacies of how every enemy interacts with Yoshi's eggs & his various states. The physics are also to die for- that level with the spinning logs where you can launch yourself into the air? And they give your flutter jump the boost that you get from landing on an enemy? Just brilliant. So much control is given to the player via slightly obtuse moves and controls, which allows for a lot more evolution in play style & therefore expression of player skill than you would usually see in a Mario game. Just a great time from start to finish.
My only gripe with the game is the method for unlocking the bonus levels in each world. Having to find every red coin is a slog. I think needing to get 90 points per level (or 700/800 or whatever threshold that isn't all-level perfection) would have been a much better choice and allowed more lenient routing for some of the more labyrinthine levels.

Glad I finally got around to beating this one.

So bored that I'm finding it hard to stay awake while playing this. Not worth the time investment.

+ Some of the character designs are charming.
+ I enjoyed a couple of the jokes in the first few hours.

- Levels are too large
- Gating pretty much every move behind playtime & exploration is such an insanely bad idea that I can't understand how it got through any sort of discussion
- Soundtrack has some small charming portions of tracks, but is overall grating and repetitive.
- Yooka and Laylee suck. They're boring. Yooka blends in with the environment, too.
- Collectibles have good collection sfx but generic quills are very rarely clustered for regular high moments?

Seems like a woeful misunderstanding of what makes collectathons so appealing on pretty much every level.