About 9 years ago Croteam surprised everyone by releasing a puzzle adventure with genuinely well written plot, instead of a mindless shooter where you kill dozens of enemies per minute. I loved the game, but by the end of the main game playthrough I got a bit tired with it and did complete the Road to Gehenna DLC. So while I was really interested in seeing Croteam revisit this idea again, I also wasn’t sure how one could make a sequel.
As it turned out, they knew exactly how to do it and it goes beyond my most optimistic expectations.
Saying that I was surprised by The Talos Principle 2 would be seriously downplaying the shock and astonishment that I’ve felt. It’s exactly what you expect the story would develop from the ending of the previous game. But that’s the unexpected part, because of how it changes the entire feel of the title, despite being instantly recognizable. To keep revelations to a manageable minimum, I should say that you are no longer alone in your journey and the story is far more… human, I guess, in how it ponders philosophical issues and eternal questions. And because of that, everything is more immediate and more impactful. You don’t read pages upon pages of text on a terminal about some theoretical conflicts of ideas, you see them play out in real time. Dramatized and heightened, but only just enough to sell you on it.
The puzzles and the selection of mechanics for them this time is also extremely well done. There are occasionally weaker and less polished moments, but most of the time the game is extremely well balanced in terms of challenge, complexity and length of each puzzle. And the progression through them also feels somehow livelier than before, even though the structure of the game isn’t that much different on the most basic level. I loved cracking one puzzle after another and there was a genuine sense of wonder every time I’d enter a new puzzle room. And unlike the first game, this feeling never faded and kept me motivated throughout the whole playthrough.
There were a few less exciting mechanics and ones that felt less polished. And the switch from the 2D “sigil” puzzles, where you arrange tetrominoes to fill gaps, to bridge building puzzles, where you use the tetromino pieces to connect different gates might prove controversial. Personally, I grew very bored with sigils in the original title, but these new bridges didn’t feel that exciting either.
The game uses Unreal Engine 5 and looks fantastic in general. Some of its aspects are still unrefined and in select cases there’s noticeable artifacting. I would not be surprised if the developers will keep updating the game, though. Yet despite the engine change, the game feels even swifter and more responsive than the original – something I was a bit worried about. Obviously, there’s no inherent specific way a game would control on a given engine, but after playing a lot of UE4-based puzzle games, which tend to have a less FPS-like movement, I was pleasantly surprised that TTP 2 is extremely fast and simply running around and jumping is as fun as it used to be in the first game.
That said, the levels are a bit too big and sometimes moving around a hub for puzzle rooms is less fun than it could be. Occasionally you’d have the puzzle right there in front of you, but due to deep water or a great height you would need to take a very long way around instead. Which is totally fine during your first run through a location, but when you start searching for secrets and solving hidden puzzles this becomes a bit of a chore. Especially since as with the first game, you only get checkpoint saves. Checkpoints are plentiful, but if you die or get locked in a puzzle (which rarely happens, as most of the time there’s a failsafe) and need to reload, all objects reset to their default state. Since the hidden puzzles usually require several things you need to set up before the puzzle would be complete – if you die, you have to redo all of the steps.
Really, though, these negatives stand out only because they are rare and the vast majority of the game is incredible. If there was some DLC attached, I’d probably not want to play it right now. But it also took me almost twice as much time to complete this game over the predecessor and I started getting bored only just before the game ended. Whereas with the original, I was running on fumes for the last couple of hours of that game. It’s just really well paced and the fantastic soundtrack keeps you going.
If you love puzzle games and are interested in a fantastically written story about post-human people finding their place in the universe, play The Talos Principle 2. It’s everything a great sequel dreams to be. I loved it far more than I loved the original game, which was already a fantastic title and an easy recommendation. So, definitely don’t miss out on this one.