Been playing this on and off since last February... finally finished, with all the endings ('cept a couple whose trophies autopopped prematurely from some weird glitch). To be honest, gonna really miss this game. Lot of fun, great world, loved bein' in it, roamin' around.

Spits you back to your last pre-endgame save after you finish, so final runtime is about 92 hours, plus the time from doing the different endings - just south of 100, prolly.

Got Platinum.

Fucking incredible game. The wait for the finale will be long indeed.

Almost 5 stars, but tbh despite all the many open-world games I've played... this might be the first that felt like it had Too Much? The overwhelming quantity of types of minigames eventually felt like they were getting in the way of the actual game.

Still, great game. Had a great time, except for a few frustrating bits.

Will not be going for Platinum; simply Too Much.

93 hours

They put so many "If you're contemplating suicide or self-harm" messages because this is so bad.

Knocked an extra half star because the last chase sequence was so fucking annoying. "Oh hey, what if we made everything look the same, and it's an annoying-ass maze, and also now you suddenly need to collect these photographs before there's finally an end, somewhere". Fuck you! Eat my shorts!

A poor man's PT. A poor man's Alan Wake 2. A poor man's The Virgin Suicides.

If you feel you need to experience this, just wait for like Markiplier or someone to play it.

I'm terrible at puzzle games, but these make me feel like a damn genius. Plenty of very difficult and sometimes very frustrating puzzles, but always so immensely satisfying when you finally figure it out. Brilliantly designed puzzles, real top-shelf stuff.

It's been a long long time since I played the first one, so it's possible I've misremembered it and built it up in my mind as slightly different than it was, but I remember finding it very thought-provoking and intelligent, and very good at getting you to think about your own beliefs and your views of the world/universe. And I don't want to be too harsh but... I didn't find this one as philosophically interesting, which is disappointing, for a series so clearly centered about philosophical questions.

The core debate of this game is essentially "risky growth versus safe stagnation", which as far as philosophical questions go is right up there with "if we had Foresight, should crimes be punished before they happen?" in terms of "this has such a universally agreed-upon answer that the question is no longer interesting." And whereas I mainly remember the first game as posing lots of interesting questions, this one was a lot more interested in just giving us an answer. There's not even an illusion of ambiguity; one side is presented as definitively in the right, in just about every narrative way possible.

Not to mention, even when I agreed with the points the game was making, I was frequently unimpressed with the ways it made them. As an example, in the philosophical war between hope and cynicism, it boils down to emotional appeals and presumptuous accusations of "why do the people who think we'll repeat the mistakes of the past hate themselves? hate humanity? why don't they believe anything good can happen? that makes me so sad." and so on, in that fashion (the vaguest inclination toward caution or skepticism is equated to self-hatred to an almost axiomatic degree in this game). And I'm a firm believer in holding onto optimism (Despite It All), but the way they framed the discussion like that often felt disingenuous and unconvincing.

Maybe not helped that it was also often so abstract and simplified as to be hard to engage with meaningfully, which makes sense considering the game is more interested in being philosophical than political (despite frequently invoking politics). But I do wish they'd found a way to be more balanced and ambiguous, instead of boiling it down to one side saying "what if Everything Went Wrong?" and the other side saying "ah, but what if it didn't?" and then just holding that note for the entire game. Again, don't even disagree with the overall thesis of the game, fully believe we can learn from the past and change, but so unpersuasive and uninteresting to just have The Wrong Side make all these arguments, and then counter with stuff like "why does the bad man think the evil thoughts? why not the good thoughts instead? did he hate good? was he too stupid/cynical/immature to consider another way? did he just WANT bad, due to his character flaws? hope feels better."

Philosophically and existentially, this left me with no real questions after the end credits rolled, no profound thoughts to ponder on, nothing to make me wonder about the world or my place in it. Which is a bummer.

But god, the game itself? Like, I cannot stress enough, so fucking good. The pinnacle of puzzle design. I highly implore you all to play both Talos Principle games.

Wow. What a game.

I'm almost mixed on giving it 5 stars because, like the first game, the gameplay here isn't always necessarily the most amazing, but, like the first game, but to a significantly greater extent, the game almost sort of transcends itself.

Heard someone say this is the first post-PT game to take what that did and really expand on it in ways that go beyond mere imitation, and I concur. The looping segments are very good, and the game excels at really messing with you.

And the narrative here is just incredible. Especially love the use of live-action cutscenes, really gives an uncanny feel to it. I was disappointed with the 2 DLCs for the first game when they came out, and mostly disappointed when I played them again recently, but the way this game pays them off and makes them worth it... truly remarkable.

Tbh my only real complaint is that I found the boss fights kinda annoying. Segments leading to them, great, fights themselves, bit frustrating; maybe just dumb on my part.

But this was an incredible game, and truly memorable.

If there's an Alan Wake 3, I hope it doesn't take as long. But if it does, if this is any indication, it'll be worth it, and continue to push the medium forward.