TL;DR a Metroidvania for only the most dedicated, but casual fans will probably want to stay away.

Afterimage is really an interesting game. I didn't hate it, in fact the combat was really great and I was pleased with the weapon combinations and abilities, but the rest of the game is just so hostile that by the end I just really didn't want to play any more.

Let's start with the good. The combat is fantastic, you immediately get a choice of four pretty standard weapons: the standard sword, the faster dual blades, the long range whip, and the slow but strong greatsword. Each has their place and those with a preferred build will fit right in, though what is interesting is that you can equip another to the secondary attack and use both at once. I stuck with the sword and greatsword and didn't change at all.

I also think the length in general is pretty good. It took me about 20 hours to get some of the endings, but tuned out after that for reasons I'll list below, I just wish it was a little more engaging.

The art and music are really good. Beautifully drawn detail-rich environments await, with the standard biomes that you would expect (town, sky, lava, ice, etc.) with matching music that never got annoying or wore their welcome.

Ok, that said the navigation and story are a complete mess. First, the map is WAY too big. I love a metroidvania with a large map but this is the limit, for sure. To add, there's a quest log, but there are no map or quest markers to tell you where to go. In a good metroidvania, the visual language is key, it should be fairly obvious where to go, as you'll have max 2 options. Not here. The maps are so large that backtracking is more of a pain than anything and you'll end up spending fast travel resources (which are consumable, what an insane decision) unless you backtrack enough to reach the free, limited fast travel point.

The story also doesn't help. It is so bad and I completely tuned out minute one. If you're starting the game with a jargon info dump, I'm not interested. In a story-driven RPG or action game, sure. But I'm playing a metroidvania for the gameplay first, and if you're not going to give a quest marker or a checklist, or really any direction then you're not ever going to pull me back in.

And then, this game does two cardinal sins of a metroidvania. So I got thorough this one pretty quickly. The bosses are pretty easy and can be taken down in one go, and I was making decent progress until I needed a few upgrades. The amount of time I spent looking and searching and backtracking (again, with no obvious direction or hint), and god forbid the quest log give you any help. I spent probably about 8 hours aimlessly running around. No good.

The second sin is just completing the map. You get the treasure tracker item way late, but the map is so huge, I wasn't going to spend another few hours scouring every singe inch of the map looking for extra currency or items that are worse than my current gear. Not to mention the quest items that I wasn't even sure I needed or were really told to get and stumbled on in passing.

Overall this game is just a mess. The developers just didn't know when to stop with the map and should have kept the story simple. If you are a die-hard metroidvania fan, check this out. Maybe you'll have a better time than I did with this, but it really did try to fight me at every turn.

So I enjoyed the first Talos Principle. The puzzles were fun headscratchers, not easy but also not too hard. But that's really all I can tell you about it, except for the musings on humanity and impending apocalypse. And you know what? The second one hits the same notes, for better and for worse.

Talos 2 can't be described without first talking about the puzzles. These are the kinds of puzzles that I really excel at: 3D-space-based, heavy on positioning and really make you use the tools at your disposal. For completion, you have to complete 4 zones of three smaller sections of 10 total puzzles per section. And for the most part, the puzzles are very clever and the difficulty has a great curve. Slowing down and spending the time to really concentrate on what your goal is, what tools you have right now, and sometimes working backwards, you can get the answers within a few minutes.

That said, after about 10 of the 12 areas, I think I was about done. Some of the puzzles became a bit convoluted, like I would place a button, but didn't get the feedback of what that button did, or extremely tight positioning of a laser made progress more of a headscratcher of "Wait, but why?" (that puzzle was "Jailbreak", where I finally lost a bit of interest). Again, great puzzles, and there are definitely people out there that will find each a treat, but I personally thought it a bit too many and the game could have benefitted from cutting a few.

The second thing you have talk about with Talos 2 is the graphics. Much improved, with full DLSS and RT on PC. But you know, the first game did just fine without the extra graphical fidelity, and I don't think it added much here, overall. I'm usually a graphic snob, but it wouldn't have bugged me if they hadn't used the extra enhancements.

The sound and music ARE much the same as the previous game though, to the point where the puzzles SFX I think are literally used over again. The music is just not good, at all. For a puzzle game where you're going to sit in thought for long periods of time, I found the music kind of grating after a while, and there just wasn't a ton of variety. I was hearing the same song over and over again, so I ended up turning it off and just became a podcast/Youtube game.

Philosophy is another massive part of the Talos series, and if you hated it in 1, you'll hate it in 2. I didn't really mind it, though it seemed like the writing staff spent more of their time talking about if robots can be considered human than spending time on the plot and dialogue. There are also the requisite audio and text logs for extra flavor, but honestly this is where the game got a little to "up their own ass". A fun extra, but I ended up just skipping them after collecting them.

So, is Talos 2 a good puzzle game? Yes! I would consider it top tier for 3D puzzle games and would love to meet the psychos who come up with these things. Just be warned that there are some annoyances that may or may not be your cup of tea, but if you're willing to sit and give the game the time it needs/deserves, there's a lot of good content here

Now this is what I'm talking about. I couldn't remember much of the first game, nor did I play Wounds of Eventide, but I ended up really enjoying the second game; enough that I 100% it.

I wouldn't say this is my favorite Metroidvania series (Hollow Knight, Super Metroid, and Aria of Sorrow still come way before this one), but I still enjoyed my time. The story ain't it for me; its a little too out there and the heavy religion-adjacent themes aren't really that interesting outside the NPC and character designs, but someone out there probably thinks this is entirely their shit and I'm happy for them.

Overall, I'm looking forward to what this studio puts out next, whether they go for Blasphemous 3 or try something different.