Talos Principle 2 is a game I’d been looking forward to for years. The original Talos Principle was one of my favourite puzzle games, and I couldn’t wait to see how they would expand on the original. I had pretty high expectations , and after playing the game, I can definitely say that it didn’t exactly live up to these high expectations, but it was still a very worthy sequel.

The game retains the high quality of puzzles, and I found all the new tools introduced really satisfying to use (except the gravity mechanics, which I found a bit lacking). The RGB converter was a big standout for me, as it felt like a natural extension of the games design. I ended up enjoyed nearly every puzzle in the game, apart from a few exceptions. However, while the puzzles individually may be satisfying, the pattern of the puzzles is very formulaic. Each area revolves around one mechanic, with the difficulty resetting to a baseline at the start of each zone to get the player accustomed to the new mechanic, which causes the difficulty to be all over the place. The mechanic of the two optional ‘lost puzzles’ in each area could have been a way to ensure more challenging puzzles in each area, but the difficulty for them is often varied too. This leaves the endgame gold puzzles as the only puzzles that are meant to be a real challenge, which is a bit of a disappointment as someone that was looking for a bit more of a challenge. With the game having a currency to allow you to make a puzzle easier (being able to get it back by clearing the puzzle normally), it feels like a missed opportunity to go a bit more wild the the puzzle design.

Something that’s worth bringing up before my next point is the size of each world, as they are all pretty big. There’s nothing wrong with how they look, with the size allowing for massive, beautiful structures that tower over the player and are amazing to look at. Exploring these maps isn’t too bad when you’re exploring for the first time, as puzzles are placed in a way so that you can get to the next one pretty quickly, and often hit a decent amount of collectables with a short detour. However, these maps become incredibly irritating when you begin to do the optional star puzzles.

The star puzzles are the most disappointing and often tedious part of this game. Stars in the original Talos Principle always felt unique in how they were found. Some required exploration, some required you to use the objects in a puzzle in a unique way, and some even required you to smuggle objects out of puzzles. All of them felt really satisfying to solve.
In Talos 2, there are three types of statues that relate to how you get the star. Prometheus statues are by far the worst: you have to find a flame and follow it around the map, catching it as it stops in certain spots. A majority of the time, there is absolutely no thinking to be had here, with only a couple of times where it would stop in a spot that required some sort of puzzle solving.
Sphinx statues had the most potential, as they require you to solve a riddle in the form of a image on the statue. However, most follow the exact same pattern of either showing a picture or map with an ‘X’ marking the right spot, or some sort of pattern that often relates to some incredibly out of place objects hidden in the map. They’re usually incredibly easy to figure out with nearly no thinking required once you find the right spot.
Pandora statues are, in my opinion, the most interesting. They require you to fire a laser of the right colour into the box the statue is holding, which usually means that you have to go back into certain puzzles to get it to work, often having to divert the laser into receivers across the map to transfer it, or find a hidden tool in the map to assist you.
Regardless of the quality of the puzzles, they all require you to go searching across the map, which gets really tiring with how large the worlds are. Running around to find little switches across the whole map for sphinx statues isn’t fun. Chasing a flame across the map for a prometheus statue isn’t fun. Running around trying to find a tool tucked into a tiny corner of the map for a pandora puzzle isn’t fun. These puzzles could have all been so interesting, but they just end up a letdown for the most part.

Luckily, I don’t really have any problems with the rest of the game. I know some people have issues with the addition of characters that you can talk and interactive with, but I found all the characters really enjoyable, and there’s enough personalities across them that I’m sure you’ll be able to find at least one you enjoy talking to (Yaqut being my favourite). The story itself is pretty good too, with it still having that focus on philosophy that was so present in the original game, along with some pretty nice story beats. The music in this game is great too! I don’t have much to say about it and a lot of it was moreso background noise for me, but there are a few points in the game where it really stood out.

At the end of everything, is this still a good game? Of course! My biggest issue was with optional content for the game, and regardless of my issues with how difficulty was handled, it doesn’t affect the quality by any means. Besides, it makes the game a bit more accessible which is always good! Besides, we always have DLC as a way to up the difficulty. This game has so much content and was clearly made with a lot of care. With how cheap the game is (being underpriced, in my opinion), it’s 100% worth a shot.