The Talos Principle 2

The Talos Principle is one of my all-time favourite games, so after almost a decade of waiting, did the sequel live up to the expectations? To touch upon the plot as spoiler-free as possible, I will say that while the first game was borderline science fiction, The Talos Principle 2 was inevitably going to be more speculative in nature, but I still ended up a bit surprised about how much it veered towards being a space opera. The first game could very well have been a perfect stand-alone story, since the ending had unlimited potential and was almost better when left to one's imagination. Though if Croteam wants to provide more gameplay – which is unanimously a good thing – the story must go on as well. While I'm not entirely unhappy with the direction they chose to take the trilogy, it still feels like more of a soft sci-fi approach than what I had been imagining for over ten years, and thus the storyline had near-zero chance of living up to my personal expectations. With all that said, the story is still told well and works excellently if you take off your thickest science goggles. On the other hand, one might look at all of my criticisms and say that I merely have yet to internalise one of the game's core messages. The new story beats and worldbuilding leaks into gameplay via the fact that you spend a large portion of your time in conversation with others. One could argue that it's identical to interacting with the terminals in the first game, and to some extent it is, but it also has a vastly different atmosphere to it and in some parts you keep jumping from conversation to conversation for an extended amount of time. I liked all of the interactions and the reading in itself, but the amount occasionally felt detrimental to the pacing. I expected philosophical dialogue with my puzzle game, but I received more of a conversation simulator with some puzzling elements. As an example, it took me between three and five hours to get through the prologue, which essentially consisted of conversations and exploration. The twelve main areas all contain 8 + 2 + 1 puzzles, one explorable location, two differing challenges, three terminals, three different audio logs and between zero and two of some lesser collectables. On one hand it felt handy to know exactly what to look out for in every new area, on the other hand it was almost detrimental to the exploration aspect, since it made every area feel like a new checklist to go through. This was counterbalanced at least a bit by including a large amount of Easter eggs and other small secrets to discover. The points of interest are mostly spread out in such a way that you organically stumble upon them as you proceed through the eight main puzzles of the area. For some people (me) it can be tempting to systematically check off all the additional items before starting on the puzzles, which is one more nail in the coffin of the pacing. And of course, for those so inclined, it is possible to skip all the fluff and speedrun through the main puzzles in a dozen(ISH) hours. Meanwhile, my first playthrough of the main game took something in the ballpark of 70 hours. The DLC, split into three different parts, added a chunky 4,5 + 9 + 9 hours of content that fleshed out the story nicely. After 580 words it's finally time to talk about the puzzles (which might tell you something). This entry introduces some fresh new puzzle elements to the series, while still keeping the majority of the familiar mechanics from its predecessor. Though especially after playing through the first and third DLC, you'll have laser puzzles coming out of your eyes and ears. The main game's puzzles were generally in the easier half of all puzzles, with many of them taking around five minutes to solve. If I recall correctly, only one short puzzle where I got stuck on the wrong solution took me 40 minutes. Since this game is much, [i]much[/i] tougher to run it makes puzzles that can be soft-locked annoying as you might be waiting in the loading screen for a while. Thankfully that was barely ever the case during the main game, unlike during some parts of the DLC... Comparatively, many of the new mechanics were especially at first much less intuitive, and there was a host of puzzles where I had to stop and take another look back while wondering "What did I actually do?!" after successfully solving it. Puzzles that leave you with questions like "Was that how I was actually supposed to solve it? Did I break something? What [i]actually[/i] happened?" result in an unsatisfactory feeling instead of "Yes! I finally cracked it!". In total, there was only a handful of puzzles that made me think "Wow, that was super cool!" afterwards. The first DLC introduced some cool new laser mechanics and also featured an annoying puzzle that I stared at for at least 90 minutes until my eyes hurt before finally proceeding to solve it in a minute. The second DLC provided the all-round best experience in the whole game, and I really loved The Hexahedron. The third DLC was by far the hardest, with multiple puzzles taking an hour or two to solve. Still, I managed to solve all puzzles in the game after a bit of grumbling, so not too badly balanced, I suppose. As a more divisive point that's still important to take into account: The Talos Principle 2 looks (in theory) multiple times more impressive and realistic than its predecessor, but at the cost of needing much better hardware to run. If your computer is up to it then no problem here; enjoy the pretty graphics. For me, after having a buttery smooth experience in The Talos Principle, it was a bit jarring to run around with 20–50 FPS with mostly Low-settings enabled and still having major graphical ghosting and flickering textures. Sometimes it would get stuck on 15 FPS for a long while, at which point I'd quit for a while just to have it hopefully cool off a bit. For reference, I'm still running a GTX 1660 Ti from 2019 as my GPU. Achievements were a bit more numerous than in the median game, but you essentially get all of them during a normal, full playthrough. There were only two or three exclusive achievements that had me do a new almost ten hour playthrough, which honestly made for a fun memory game speedrun. All in all, despite suffering from some pacing issues and from how good the first game is, The Talos Principle 2 is nonetheless an extremely solid puzzle game with more sci-fi elements than its predecessor. I can't wait to see how Croteam wraps up the trilogy! (Just kidding – I can wait years for any game! :D) [h1]9,5– / 10[/h1]

I enjoyed this even more than the first game. The visuals are absolutely stunning, with breathtaking scenery and some incredibly impressive structures to explore. The story continues to deliver an excellent narrative, raising thought provoking questions about morality, consciousness, and the meaning of life. The puzzles remain creative, satisfying, and well balanced, with each one feeling fresh without becoming overly difficult. My only complaints are that the Into the Abyss DLC ramps up the puzzle difficulty more than I would have liked, and the open world in the base game involves too much walking, with the puzzles often spaced too far apart, which slows down the overall pacing.

It is a lot more ambitious than the first one. The enrivonments are larger, with lots of area to explore. It's beautiful to look at, especially on a large ultrawide screen with HDR. The music is a solid improvement too. The puzzles are somewhat more complex maybe, revolving around positioning tools with some specific attributes and sometimes, finding ways to "shift" them while mainting some parts active. It is a bit difficult to explain but in practice, it works. It is interesting, I like it. I think most players that liked the first game will like this one. Exploring the vast environments is mostly up to the player, and not mandatory. There is a lot of things you can interact with, but you don't necessarily have to. There is no map, but larger stages will typically scatter signs to guide you through to the next puzzles. I just arrived to the second act after 9 hours and and I know I will enjoy this one even more than the first. Glad I picked up, at last. If I search really hard for a negative feedback... It might be about the dialogs. Essentially, you often get presented with multiple choices after a question and it looks like whatever you choose, the reply is somewhat along the lines of "that makes perfect sense, but have you considered the opposite might be true as well." After a couple of times, it sounds a bit dull and stupid more than "thought-provoking" but it doesn't really impact the playability or anything. As a bonus, the game runs well on my ROG Xbox Ally X. 900p upscaled to 1080p with FSR, graphics mostly at high running at 17W TDP and it plays great. So I can pick it up on the go also. Well done Croteam, well done.