Compare this to Portal/2 please

[himmatsj]

How is this game compared to Portal/2? Are the gameplay mechanics similar? Difficulty levels?

Thanks!

[Astéria]

You can't compare Portal² and TTP. These are two fundamentally different games. The only thing they have in common is being FPS puzzle games.

[😎Macula😎]

Yea the only comparison made here is first person and puzzles and if you liked portal you might like talos but mechanics are still completely different you don't get for exemple a portal gun with which you make portals to pass through etc.

In this game you just move devices around to solve a puzzle and get sigils to unlock other devices and levels to advance in game and there is also philosophical side of this game too.

P.S. If you wanna check out game before buying try demo you can find download demo button on store page of this game.

[himmatsj]

Of course I dont want a "same style" game that uses a gun/portal mechanic.

What I mean is that in terms of puzzle solving, is it as logical as Portal?

[tpi2009]

Yes and no. Meaning, many times you can solve them faster by thinking out of the box and use the objects and the environment around you to your advantage, rather than the conventional solution. Once you are familiar with the story, you'll realize that you gain from doing a bit of both.

[interzoid]

Puzzle solving is as fine-tuned as it could be. Bonus sigils will require some out-of-the box strategies.
I'd say yes, this is similar to Portal2 in the way it merges well-thought puzzles and a compelling storyline. Ofc P2 is more polished and cut to the bone, but the work Croteam has done is wonderful.

[checkers_of_shalmone]

The comparison to Portal isn't totally unjustified in this case, due to the presence of lasers and boxes.

[Cyberpunk]

In terms of difficulty:
If Portal 1 is 2 and Portal 2 is 1 this game is at about 500.

[VorlonScout]

I think there are some direct comparisons to be made, and they're all pretty favorable (in my eyes).

(Wow, this got long. I guess I have opinions about this. :)

The Portal games remain among my all-time favorites, and The Talos Principle is the first game since Portal 2 that has truly scratched my itch for a game with satisfying puzzles AND a compelling narrative. For comparison and clarification of what I mean, some other games that have come along in the interim:

• Antichamber - Very good puzzle design, and I did enjoy the game quite a lot, but the total lack of any kind of explicit story (no text, no voices, no meaning besides "interpret this abstract world however you will") knocked it down a little bit in my eyes. I wanted there to be a bit more to it than there was.
  
• Quantum Conundrum - With one of the original Portal devs leading the team, I had high hopes (even if the kid-oriented/cutesy theme wasn't right in my wheelhouse). I hated it, because partway through the puzzles started being less about thinking your way through problems and more about jumping/timing your way through them. Some people adore twitch/reaction puzzle gaming, but I personally have absolutely no use for "you know exactly what you need to do, but now you have to spend an hour trying to actually get your fingers to do it" puzzles.
  
• Magrunner: Dark Pulse - This was the biggest letdown ever. There was a nominal story, but it was poorly presented, made little sense, featured painfully bad voice acting, and its puzzles descended into twitch gaming even more than QC's did. I stopped playing and deleted it in disgust about 2/3 of the way through.

Now, back to Talos Principle...

The Talos Principle's puzzles are entirely about thinking your way through them -- I can't think of a single one that requires twitch-level reflexes (and only a couple that require timing of any sort). Like Portal's puzzles, the early ones are pretty straightforward, and the game does a good job of teaching you puzzle elements and strategies individually and in simple combinations before forcing you to deal with the really complex stuff. There are also some impressively original puzzle elements in this game (most notably, I think, the last one you unlock). It's definitely not a re-hash of Portal puzzle elements minus the portal gun.

(Oh, also, I don't agree with the poster above me -- while I do think the hardest puzzles in The Talos Principle are tougher than Portal 2's, it's not that extreme. I'm not of the mindset that harder always equals more fun, but I also don't mind a challenge if the learning curve is reasonable, and I think Talos strikes that balance well.)

There's a definite story (and backstory) progression in The Talos Principle. It's not as explicitly laid out as Portal 2's (though I think it's more explicit than Portal 1's), and there's a lot more reading of text involved. For some people, that's a big minus -- but it worked well for me, and I'd honestly much rather have to read a bunch of text than listen to sub-par voice acting. What voice acting there is, I was very happy with. Whether you find the story itself as good or as compelling as Portal 2's is very subjective -- to me, it was about on par, but it's a very different style of storytelling.

The Talos Principle's biggest improvement over Portal 2 in terms of gameplay, I think, is the non-linear puzzle flow. In Portal 2, if you're stuck on a test chamber, you're well and truly stuck until you figure it out. Talos does "gate" your progress to a certain extent, but there will almost always be several puzzles for you to work on at any given time. Being able to take your mind off of a particularly nasty puzzle and come back to it later is a wonderful thing.

There is one area where I would ding The Talos Principle in comparison to Portal 2 (and in general). There are a small handful of puzzles -- somewhere between two and four of them, depending on how charitable I'm being -- whose design I consider "cheap". By that, I mean that they require some combination of mechanics/techniques not found or even hinted at anywhere else in the game and/or blind luck to discover a "trick" required to solve them. (I'm sure some will disagree with me on this, and that's their prerogative, but this is my review.) The good news is that -- I don't think this is really much of a spoiler if you've seen forum post titles, but I'll tag it anyway -- all of them can be considered "bonus" puzzles because they aren't absolutely essential, in that you can reach the game's primary ending without them. I'd have been happier if those puzzles were designed differently, but they didn't adversely affect my overall enjoyment of the game.

tl;dr version: To me, The Talos Principle is the best successor to Portal 2 gameplay that I've yet encountered, without feeling like a Portal 2 knockoff at all. I would (and have) wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone who enjoyed the Portal games.

[😎Macula😎]

kviri really outdone himself with review of this game I don't think you gonna get better explanation then this I totally agree with everything he said.

[Sygmaelle]

Talos is harder because it involve more elements than you could have in Portal 2(and yes im totally speakin about the old facility) that you have to juggle with in a completely out of the box way.

Portal was more about beein logical. Talos is about beein creative

[Machin Shin]

both are puzzle games but the environment in this game is so much more beautiful and what i can see so far Talos is larger

[checkers_of_shalmone]

Originally posted by kviri:

There are a small handful of puzzles -- somewhere between two and four of them, depending on how charitable I'm being -- whose design I consider "cheap". By that, I mean that they require some combination of mechanics/techniques not found or even hinted at anywhere else in the game and/or blind luck to discover a "trick" required to solve them. (I'm sure some will disagree with me on this, and that's their prerogative, but this is my review.) The good news is that -- I don't think this is really much of a spoiler if you've seen forum post titles, but I'll tag it anyway -- all of them can be considered "bonus" puzzles because they aren't absolutely essential, in that you can reach the game's primary ending without them. I'd have been happier if those puzzles were designed differently, but they didn't adversely affect my overall enjoyment of the game.

No. I cannot agree with "subjectively". This is why: The first red puzzle abuses a certain player personality that always proceeds with games linearly, analyzing decisions for the "best possible result" on their first playthrough - usually at odds with the "lazy" puzzle player that gives up really easily and forces backtracking on them. The first part of this puzzle fits this description. You also say that there are 2-4 of them: I see An Escalating Problem, Dumb Dumb Mine, and starsA2, A3-2, A5-1, A7, B1, B4-2, B7-1, and C5-1.