The Talos Principle 2

It's an amazing game. A bit too much chatting with characters for my taste (I want focus on the beauty of the world and its puzzles). The puzzles are a bit easier than in Talos 1, but they have some new intelligent and thought provoking mechanics (like color mixing with the lasers, up-side-down-gravity areas). The 12 puzzle worlds are gigantic compared to Talos 1, lots of stuff to explore, plus the Hub zone with additional puzzles. As I am a Mac gamer on a Mac mini M4 Pro (24 GB Ram, 16 core GPU), I want to add my 2 cents for others who are interested in this game, but don't own a Windows Machine. Officially, it's a Windows-only game, but it can run on Mac: - With the current version of Crossover (24.0.5), the game is playable with some graphical glitches (trees not rendering correctly, some walls are invisible / oddly shaped). This is a bit of distraction and takes some of the immersion into the world, but the puzzles are playable. - With the latest preview version of Crossover (2024-12-20), all the glitches I saw are gone. I.e. I believe we can expect full Mac compatibility with Crossover 25 and have the "original" game experience. I can play Talos 2 lag-free on medium to high graphics settings at around 50 FPS with my Mac mini M4 Pro on a 4K display.

The first game finished so perfectly that I didn't know how they could make a second one... but they did, and it's so good! It could just as easily be another perfect ending to the story, or the middle chapter of a trilogy. The best meals don't leave you wanting more - they leave you satisfied, like this. It's refreshing to see something that grapples with humanity's flaws and capabilities together, rather than uncritically embracing any one perspective (like nihilsm or technological manifest destiny). It was clever for a game focused on philosophy to use the same ancient tradition of explaining ideas via dialogues between characters of opposing viewpoints - not just in the optional "random documents and audio logs" (which are great!), but also in the conversations the NPCs have naturally as you progress through the game, and in the occasional prompts for you to pick a side. The developers understood that philosophy in print is a shadow of its true self, and that the vitality of the subject comes from its true form: debate. Plato, Socrates, et al. would be proud. I like all the new puzzle mechanics, and the way they combine leads to enjoyable new complexity. Some of the more frustrating elements from the first game were cut here, and the star puzzles are all reasonably self-contained now (rather than requiring external knowledge). There's a good mix of difficulties in the puzzles too, so the game ended up well-paced on the mechanical side as well as the story side. The graphics were impressive (especially the colors). I felt multisensory homages to the Myst series in places, in a way that enhanced the experience rather than making it feel derivative. In art (as in philosophy, and all interesting things humans do), we build on those who came before. This game shows that both societies and individuals are complicated. It shows that history is not inevitable - it is made by people's choices. It challenges all parts of the mind, and has fun doing it. You will too.

The Talos Principle 2 has an interesting Premise, and stunning visuals. Sadly, you can't get close to many of the most beautiful buildings and places, they are jus a backdrop with little meaning to the player (though more to the story). It starts a bit slow with confronting you with puzzles, and you can't really break away from the first part without skipping story. The puzzles itself are my biggest gripe with the Talos Principle 2. The developers found quite a few new mechanics to use in puzzles, but then did not progress like the Talos Principle 1, where they got them more and more interwoven, but instead each little Island has a kind of "new mechanic" that you learn from the ground up, and before it gets too difficult, you go off to another island and start anew with a new mechanic. Very few of the base puzzles stopped me very long, most of them I could run through on the first trial, without much thinking. Only the later special puzzles stopped me for longer. Sadly, there also wasn't much of a, for me beloved part, of the Talos Principle 1 - puzzles outside the puzzle, thinking truly outside of the box, connecting different puzzles, bringing parts out, etc. You could sometimes, but it wasn't really necessary except for some of the stars, where you would for others sometimes scour the world for one hidden flame. I still enjoyed it, but the first one burns definitely brighter and stronger.

The Talos Principle 2 is a perfect sequel to the original, and the DLC is completely worth it. I'm normally not into games with DLC on philosophical grounds, but in this case I think it's more than worth it. The Road to Elyxium DLC for The Talos Principle 2 here is really excellent and ties into the main story nicely, and the puzzles are deviously well designed to keep you itching for just one more. Very different from The Road to Gehenna DLC of the original game, which I never really bothered playing because the plot seemed kind of pulled out of an orifice and I'd had enough of the puzzles from the main game.

I loved Talos Principle; its one of my favorite puzzle games. Not just because of its puzzles, obviously, but because of its unique story and philosophical questions. But, its is a pretty simple experience all things considered. This Sequel adds more to the experience than I could've ever wanted. The story is much, much more developed. I love interacting with all these new characters, seeing how far the world has come since the previous game. I love seeing these new environments, new tools, new everything. Its a wonderful experience. I do think that its worth saying, a large chunk of this experience is enjoying the story; if you're not a fan of the previous game's story or didn't care for it, I don't know whether you'll enjoy this game, since the story is much more tied to the overall gameplay now. I don't think its perfect; I think having a mute protagonist is a bit of a weak point, especailly since our character does "talk" to others, but its only though text. I think some of the environments are a little tedious to move around through, taking several minutes just to get to another point to do something very simple. A basic way-point system would've been nice to mitigate some of these issues. But these are just nitpicks. Overall, I'm having a blast with Talos Principle 2. It does so much for me, and its exactly the puzzle experience I've been craving since the first game.