How do you follow up a masterpiece of a puzzle game? With another masterpiece of course! The Talos Principle II is a brilliant successor that builds upon the first one, and a worthy title in its own right. Absolutely recommended!

The Talos Principle II

With a eerily similar start to the first one, The Talos Principle II begins with a robot waking up in a garden, with a voice guiding it to the top of a tower. The voice is that of Elohim, the creator, and the robot is you, the player...

But after a few "systems check", you wake up in a different place, a whole city, New Jerusalem. You are Number #1000, or 1K, the "last" of your kind. A lot of time has passed since the first game, and the protagonist, i.e. the founder, is long gone. As you walk into the city, a mysterious voice appears and the robots plan an expedition to check out a series of new islands that have appeared in the sky.

You are invited as well, being the new one. But you're not here to discuss philosophy, are you?

So begins the journey, as you travel to the megastructure, and solve puzzles. LOTS OF PUZZLES!

Boy there are some nice tricky puzzles. The game introduces a lot of new mechanics, building up neatly over the first game. The accessibility has improved greatly as well, with a mix of puzzle difficulty across each "zone", as opposed to the first game leaving out all hard puzzles for the end.

And it looks so much better than the first one. The size difference shows, ~5GB to nearly 80!

Philosophy is no way less than the first one, and the game is a lot more open-ended. You can choose to solve puzzles, or just explore the world, or both. There are a lot of secrets to find, and a lot of things to do.

In terms of the non-puzzle activities, there are audio recordings and logs similar to the first one. And cross puzzle "monuments" to solve for stars, comparatively easier than the first one. Optional puzzles lurk in each level as well, you're only required to only solve 8 of the 10 total puzzles in each zone. Skipping puzzles is also easier with more accessible "tokens" in case you're stuck on a puzzle and can't move forward.

Of course, a Talos principle game would not be complete without cats!

And lots of cats!

The robots have made a museum!

And you can have an argument with a console, again.

Lots of easter eggs to find as well.

The only downside I can think of is walking, lots of walking to get across the extremely large puzzle areas.

And perhaps, a grind for the platinum, as you can not restore a saved backup, and you need to complete 3 separate requirements to trigger all the endings.

Overall, a brilliant successor to the first game, and a worthy title in its own right. Absolutely recommended!