No one has rated this review as helpful yet
Recommended
0.0 hrs last two weeks / 49.1 hrs on record (39.2 hrs at review time)
Posted: 16 May, 2021 @ 12:20am

This is absolutely one of my favorite puzzle games now. Bought the game on a whim and went in blind and was not disappointed. The mix of puzzle elements along with the map designs means you'll never grow tired of any one mechanic or story element.

Puzzle mechanics:
The game does a fantastic job of introducing new puzzle elements with simple setups to teach you how and when to use the new items. The difficulty is also extremely manageable and never too hard. They will make you think a bit, but never a situation where you feel genuinely stuck. It had a natural progression of logic for me, that by the end I could easily organize what I had, what needed to be done, and what the "problem" was (what piece was missing etc.). This led to a satisfying game cycle that never got old. This is all broken up by story elements, along with tetris style puzzles that utilize the secret stars you collect throughout each world.

Story:
The story is a kind of found evidence/journal type. You are expected to piece together the information on what events led you here, along with documents that further explain the philosophy the developers were going for. It leads you to want to complete the puzzles to get to a new terminal to read the new files to gather more "pieces to the puzzle", pun intended. Culminating in what some may say is a lackluster ending, but satisfying in how it fits perfectly into the setting and themes of the game overall.

Graphics/Maps:
The visuals on this game are fantastic and beautiful. The map layouts are expertly designed and allow for many "exploits" to be executed. Exploits in quotes because they may as well be legitimate solutions since some are almost as complex as the intended way. This leads to multiple solutions for many of the puzzles. The creativity of a person's mind has no bounds and many people find their own solutions that are completely different than someone else's.
The developers put a lot of thought into the layouts, things are never just randomly placed. If something looks out of place, there is probably a reason for it. Exploration is rewarded with easter eggs or hidden stars.

This gets compared to Portal a lot, so to compare to it:
This game is about the same to pick up, but greatly expands on puzzle logic makes you feel like you are actually learning. Not as frustrating as Portal can be since the game is much longer and guides you smoothly into each new element.
Which leads into a greater reward for completing the puzzles.
Portal may have you do 2 or 3 things to solve a puzzle, but Talos has you set up much more and requires more precision to solve the puzzles.

I absolutely recommend this game to anyone who is a fan of puzzle games.
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