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The Talos Principle 2
Released On: Nov 2, 2023
88
8.7
Where to Buy
Where to Buy
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 44 Critic Reviews
88
95% Positive
42 Reviews
42 Reviews
2% Mixed
1 Review
1 Review
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 44 Critic Reviews
88
95% Positive
42 Reviews
42 Reviews
2% Mixed
1 Review
1 Review
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
For me, The Talos Principle 2 is more than just a puzzle game. It is a game that makes you think in every respect. One with which gets your gray matter firing in the best possible way.
The Talos Principle 2 is Croteam’s largest and most realised project yet. It’s in every way a natural step from the first title, a beautifully written and challenging one. This game may very well be one of the best narrative puzzle titles I’ve played in quite a long time.
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 77 User Ratings
8.7
90% Positive
69 Ratings
69 Ratings
1% Mixed
1 Rating
1 Rating
9% Negative
7 Ratings
7 Ratings
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 77 User Ratings
8.7
90% Positive
69 Ratings
69 Ratings
1% Mixed
1 Rating
1 Rating
9% Negative
7 Ratings
7 Ratings
I wanted to cut 1 point for some really stupid decisions in game design, but I haven’t - the game is definitely a masterpiece, and various unimportant things won’t change that.
A worthy continuation of the first part, expanding its idea in all possible directions - scale, depth, quality and variety of riddles, storytelling. This is where the real game of the year is!!
P.S. By the way, the game was a pleasant surprise for me - I didn’t know anything about the development.
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I played the original talos principle on an iPad a good number of years ago. I Never managed to finish it but I always planned to come back to it someday.
This sequel is far better in story, layout & puzzles.
The difficult puzzles simmer away in your mind after you log off, often for you to realise the solutions while out exercising or at work!
The story is very interesting & sticks with you.
Overall this is definitely the best puzzle game since portal 2.
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PC
The Talos Principle 2 is quite simply one of the best games of 2023, and while I was hoping it would play a bit better on Steam Deck, it is essential. If you have the option to play it on console, I’d get it there. The Talos Principle 2 is just stunning on PS5 and Xbox Series X. If you are ok with some visual compromises to play on a portable, I can’t recommend The Talos Principle 2 enough on Steam Deck. I’m looking forward to grabbing the PS5 physical edition when it releases in the near future.
The Talos Principle 2 takes all the genre-defining traits its 2014 puzzle predecessor championed, and improves them. Those familiar with the original will fall in love all over again, while newcomers will be kept on their toes from beginning to end.
Original and imaginative experience for a puzzle game that delivers on what it is.
Too bad for the attention, overly zealous, towards a narrative aspect that should have followed the example of the first chapter to replicate its success. However, The Talos Principle 2 remains an essential title for all puzzle game enthusiasts, who will find plenty to sink their teeth into, especially (and it is highly recommended) if they aim for completeness.
If you’re just in this for the puzzles, then The Talos Principle 2 is a fantastic puzzle game that, despite its difficulty, carefully crafts itself to be accessible to everyone with innovative mechanics that all interlink in ways that will keep surprising you. Taking the game as a whole package though, the narrative greatly drags it down both in terms of the quality of the writing and how it’s implemented as part of the experience.
What a game. Really enjoyed the 1st Talos Principle and this is a nice evolution. Clever people puzzles, stunning graphics and an interesting story/mysteries.
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PC
GERMAN Review ! - The Talos Principle II
Dieses Spiel ist ein Meisterwerk, welches von Entwicklern stammt, die nicht jeder direkt kennt. Von den Macher der Serious Sam Reihe stammt nach 9 Jahren nun endlich die Fortsetzung von The Talos Principle 1.
Dieses Spiel beinhaltet eine tolle Grafik sowie eine wunderbare Philosophische Story über die Roboter der Zukünftigen Zeit. Durch die epische Musik und der neuen einfallsreichen Tools, wird das Gameplay Erlebnis noch einmal versüßt. Die Welten sind von der Architektur her, sehr kreativ gestaltet worden. Mit dazu, sind mir bis jetzt keine Bugs aufgefallen, die das Spielerlebnis beeinträchtigen. Zwischendurch gibt es auch mal eine Abwechslung, wenn Filmsequenzen auftreten oder man in jedem Gebiet, Konversationen mit den BOTS führt. Der Spielspaß dauert zwischen 20-30 Stunden.
Contras:
- Wie im vorherigen Teil, gibt es keinen Co-op! Ich hoffe für den Workshop oder als eine DLC Kampagne wird ein Coop-Modus freigeschaltet
- Sehr schöne, kreative und große Welten die jedoch zum Vorgänger deutlich weniger Secrets & Eastereggs haben (zumindest habe ich wenige gesehen) sowie manchmal leer anfühlen. Wer den Vorgänger gespielt hat, weiß Bescheid wovon ich spreche.
Fazit:
Jeder Cent hat sich für dieses Spiel gelohnt, für 30€ (welches sogar wenig dafür ist) hatte ich 30 Stunden Spielspaß. Freue mich und hoffe auf ein DLC des Spieles, sowie eine weitere Fortsetzung der Reihe. Das Projekt ist sehr gut gelungen und unter anderem im Vergleich zu Serious Sam 4. Außerdem wünsche ich mir, dass die selbe Performance auch für das zukünftige "Serious Sam" gezeigt wird. | Game of the year 2023 |
PS: Habe mir einen Bart wachsen lassen wie Prometheus.
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PC
The Talos Principle 2 is the best puzzle game since The Talos Principle, and is likely the second best such game of all time, lagging behind only Portal 2.A direct sequel to the first game, this game looks at the society that the robots built after waking up at the end of the first Talos Principle. With humanity extinct, robots need to figure out what they want to do as a society – some of them want to limit their growth to only 1000 robots, while others want to expand and explore and make a better society, as the ones who set the process that led to their creation in motion wanted. After “Prometheus” shows up in town shortly after the creation of the 1,000th robot, you, number 1000, are sent on a mission along with several other robots to find the source of the “entity”. In the process, you discover a giant megastructure surrounded by a bunch of puzzles reminiscent of the first game, and are left to try and determine what exactly is going on – and this time, you interact with other robotic people and engage in roleplaying dialogue choices that end up determining how people perceive you and what the robots want to make their future into.
Overall, the game is pretty great. The core of the game is puzzles – each world contains 13 puzzles, in the form of 10 standard stages, two “statues” that give you “sparks” if you solve their puzzles, and one “golden door” puzzle that is only unlocked when you complete every normal puzzle in the game.
While the Talos Principle 1 felt like it ran out of ideas in the middle, and resorted to making really big/long puzzles, The Talos Principle 2’s central conceit is that each of the 12 major areas of the game (and eventually, a thirteenth “area” of sorts) contains a new gimmick. The game starts out with a tutorial area as well, meaning there are, in effect, about 14ish areas in the game, with well over 100 puzzles in total.
The gimmicks in each area end up working pretty well – some of them are pretty basic, like having a drill that can put a hole through a certain kind of wall, while some of them are more wild, like being able to transfer into multiple robotic bodies or teleport around the map. Some of these puzzle elements show up again in later areas, allowing you to mix them together, while others are mostly confined to one **** end result of all this is a game that is constantly feeling fresh; every area feels like it has enough puzzles to explore the idea without belaboring the point, and when you run into some of these features again in later levels, they are combined with fresh twists to keep things interesting and novel.
The puzzles are also mostly quite short and snappy – generally speaking, there’s only 1-2 “core insights” you need to complete each puzzle, but the puzzles, despite their apparent simplicity, make you feel quite clever for solving them. The game does a good job of teaching you the game mechanics, and there’s only a couple puzzles in the game (mostly the “statue puzzles”) which felt like “they hid the piece in the couch cushion” rather than that you were missing a key insight. The puzzles are fun, interesting, short enough that you don’t forget what you’re doing, but hard enough to feel satisfying to solve. Moreover, because you don’t have to solve EVERY puzzle in every area, players who aren’t quite as good at it still have some outs – and there are also a (very limited) number of puzzle bypass items, that allow you to bypass puzzles – but you don’t get “full credit” for solving them, and you can retrieve these solution tokens by solving the puzzles properly. I didn’t end up using them at all in my playthrough, but it was a nice way to keep players from getting stuck if they were having problems.
The game also keeps things interesting with its philosophy as well. Not only is the philosophy highly topical, but it is very interesting and humanistic – ironic, considering that everyone in the game is a robot. But the game’s philosophy is very cerebral, and the game works really well at encouraging the player to embrace hope over despair and cynicism. The message came through very strongly, and while you do have the choice to make the wrong choice, the game’s stance on what you should be doing is quite clear – you should be embracing the future and trying to build a better tomorrow, and take responsibility for the world and its environment. Given how many writers embrace techno pessimism, it was nice to see a work of art that pointed out how shallow and **** such takes are.
If the game had a flaw, however, it’d be in the core plot. While I loved the characters and philosophy, the game sort of embraced a sort of magic-as,technology thing that felt a bit out of place given its theming. While I get why they did it, and I did appreciate the moral choice it presented as well as the argument it presented for metaphorically accepting fire from Prometheus, I felt like it was a bit weirdly fantastic given how grounded the game is otherwise.
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Summary The Talos Principle 2 is a thought-provoking first-person puzzle experience that greatly expands on the first game's philosophical themes and stunning environments with increasingly mind-bending challenges. Born into a new world where biological humanity is extinct but human culture lives on in a city of robots, you find yourself swep...
Platforms:
- Xbox Series X
- PlayStation 5
- PC
Initial Release Date: Nov 2, 2023
Developer:
- Croteam
Publisher: Devolver Digital
Genres:
