Mofo Byron stole a puzzle from me, he deserved everything that happened to him.

---

The Talos Principle 2 is probably the best looking game I've played this year. The visuals are stunning and the sound design is incredible. The world building is intriguing and animantes you to explore the whole map, the difficulty of the main puzzles are brilliant if you ask me. They are rarely so hard that you get stuck for a long ass time, but you still have to think a good amount to solve most puzzles. So congrats to the whole team for pulling that off.

The budget for this game had to be absolutely massive compared to other puzzle games and I'd recommend it to everyone.
I'm impressed that this is not a full price game to be honest, content-wise they could've priced it like one for sure.

I also appreciate that they put so much work into different endings which you wouldn't expect from a puzzle game, even tho the first game did kinda the same.

Although I enjoyed most parts of the game, there are also some criticisms I would like to make:

• When I think back to the first game, the interaction with Milton was a critical point in the story. This time around, they went for a more streamlined, plot-driven, less cryptic story. They still tried to tackle all these philosophical questions, but I didn't felt as challenged as much in my believes, as when I talked to Milton. It was unvelming to be completely honest because this was the main thing that stood out to me in the first game.
  
  
• As already said above, the went for a more plot-driven story, which I understand since the budget was probably so high they didn't wanted to take any unnecessary risks. Sadly, I think this was more or less poorly executed. The obligatory dialoge was well written, but everything else felt like it was written last minute. Like in the first game, a lot of the story is told through written text, but I feel like in 2023 it's a lazy way to tell a story in video games. You also get calls from your colleagues throughout the whole game in which they tell you how to proceed, what they think about all that stuff and so on and it feels like they didn't found another way to include the plot into the gameplay. I still think the plot itself is good, but I could've done without the few cutscenes because they broke the immersion for me. Personally, I would've prefered to stay in first person during those.
  
  
• Most of the environmental puzzles are great. That said, I don't quite understand why some of those had to involve jump & run elements. Some ideas just felt out of place. Some of them also felt really unnecessary, since it's a puzzle game and the main goal should be to solve them, they ask you to find insanely well hidden objects, without any hint where they could be on these open worlds, to even think of a solution. And exactly those ones also feel like they break the rules you were introduced to on the first few open worlds.
  
  
• Breaking rules is something that not only encountered me at the environmental puzzles, but also at the "normal" ones. Technically the never really broke any rules, but they demanded mechanics you were never really introduced to which was kind of a bummer.
  As stated above, the mandatory part of the game is not incredibly hard to solve. But as soon as you get to those golden gates, my god, the difficulty spikes like never before. Even tho I get why this was done and that it's also part of non-verbal communication when it comes to the plot, I felt like the spike was way to big.
  
  
• I also have a big problem with the UI. I assume they didn't wanted to take any risks because of the budget, but I feel like this game doesn't need any UI, specially, and I can't stress that enough, SPECIALLY no markers. They are used in such linear parts of the game that they just ruin the immersion for me, like, completely. I also feel like they were a bit lazy with the loading screen when resetting a puzzle as it just shows you a static image rather than a cool, game related animation like in the first game. But I liked how they concealed it while traveling.
  
  
• Let's get to a really minor part. The game really tries to animate you to keep going, it rewards everything you do with sound cues and beautiful visual effects. Like already said, they nailed that part completely. What I don't really get is why there is an achievement for beeing stuck at a puzzle for 20 minutes straight. I don't feel like this should be honored honestly, I would've rather prefered an achievement, like in the first game, for not using any help thoughout the game.

I know it sounds like a lot, but I can't stress enough how good this game is nevertheless. If you like puzzle games even in the slightest, please, go, support the devs and buy this game.

I know that a lot of people think this game is incredible and I think most of them do because they are flashed, or rather blinded, by the main gameplay mechanic in this game. And I have to give it to the devs, it's an outstanding idea and I'm glad they managed to pull it off on a technical level. I also think the artstyle and environmental design is top notch. They were clearly inspired by superliminal, which also shows in some levels, but I'll get to that later.

I heard from some people that they think the game is overpriced, which I can't argue against, 28 bucks for ~3.5h of fun is rather high, but since it's a indie game I'm not really bothered by that.

Nevertheless, I think this game has sever problems when it comes to nearly anything else:

• The plot and message in the game are not well implemented into the game. I don't know how often I've seen this this year, but telling your story through audio logs and letters it not a good design when it comes to video games. They even had a great idea to build up on when they pulled you out of the simulation, but forgot about that part of the game afterwards completely. What the game wants to convey to you could have been realized without a single line of text & solely through gameplay/worldbuilding & would have left a much more lasting impression in my opinion. That's where this medium differs from movies, for example. You have the opportunity to convey elements via gameplay. And you can actually see signs towards the end that this was attempted, but it seemed rather awkward and inconsistent to me in context of the rest of the game.
  
• Apart from the story, it is of course first and foremost a puzzle game, which felt more like a walking simulator. It rarely took more than a few seconds to find a solution & you literally run through the levels, even new puzzle elements don't change that. Personally, I think this is due to the core mechanics of the puzzles & it's actually a struggle to design challenging levels. For the same reason, Entropy Center is also less challenging than Portal, the mechanics just barely allow it in the first place.
  Speaking of new puzzle elements, as you can already see in the trailer, a lot of it revolves around a camera and the pictures you take. The core element is photography. Apparently, the developers themselves got tired of it after a while, either due to a lack of creativity or, as I believe, because they simply wanted to have certain elements in the game.
  
• In Superliminal, the core mechanic is perspective & everything revolves around optical illusions. You'll see these optical illusions eventually in Viewfinder too, but unlike in Superliminal, they don't make sense in any way. You can even see how the textures of the models are suddenly switched or the models themselfs even pop in. In these levels, photography plays no role at all, it's like playing a different game.
  
• Later on, they also work with elements that can't be depicted in the photos & you can photograph through elements. Maybe I'm alone in this, but I don't like it when something deviates from reality in this way. A photo is created by the incidence of light on a sensor. Such elements simply don't exist, are never properly introduced into the game & give me the feeling that they were looking for a new technique because the initial idea doesn't provide enough to design a whole game around.
  
• Something smaller, but which bothers me almost as much in games, is an ugly menu-screen. In-game, the game looks very stylized, but this menu, my god. As this is the first impression of a game, in this case it's like the cherry on the cake of disappointment for me.

All in all, I'm left with a game that is clearly inspired by many other puzzle games and had an incredibly cool idea, but unfortunately the implementation, both in terms of the story/narrative and the gameplay, is completely flawed.
For me, it remains a below-average puzzle game that dazzles with a few very cool moments.