Yes, it's a remaster, so you're going to see reviews with the usual gripes. If you already have the original then what's the point? I'll give you a few:

1. The rewind ability. In the original game, if you screwed up a puzzle, you had to restart the whole thing. Now you can press a single key to rewind a short time and undo one or two mistakes, saving MASSIVE headaches in some of those later puzzles. I remember having trouble with Prison Break from C7 forcing me to restart over and over again back in 2015. Not this time. An absolute godsend and makes those puzzles with multiple steps way more fun.

2. The pause ability. Look, the recorder puzzles are the worst, we know. But this time you can create pause nodes, so that when the recording plays back, it will stop at those points until you choose to continue it. Back in the original game the absolute WORST was having to time your recordings, especially when they amounted to setting up a few pieces and then waiting for like 2 minutes to ensure you'd have enough playback time to solve the puzzle. Now you just start the recording, pause at the moment you need to stop and think, and resume after. Makes the recorder puzzles way, WAY better. Still not my favorite puzzles by a long shot but I don't hate them with burning passion anymore.

3. New content. This remaster includes both the original Talos Principle and Road to Gehenna, and then a third game "A New Beginning." I've worked my way through the first two and am now tackling the third, and the new stuff is way harder than the other two, so those of you who want a hard mode for the Talos Principle got it.

4. Built-in level editor. While you could create your own puzzles with the original editor, it required a separate download and, at least in my experience, could result in some buggy results when trying to create or play user-made puzzles. Any update to the game would break all the custom content, requiring the creators to remake things over and over. With the built-in editor we can only hope that doesn't happen. Dunno. I'm more excited about this one and I love any game with level editors.

5. Developer commentary. I am a sucker for these. It's especially interesting in this game because apparently they just handed the writers a microphone and pressed "record." We're looking a commentary tracks like eight minutes long that immediately jump into tangents about the ethics of eating animals, the original point of the commentary long forgotten. It's not going to tell you much about the technical components of the game but it will give you insight into the madness behind it.

So, if you don't already have The Talos Principle, you should buy this version instead of the original. If you *do* have the original, I still think this is worth it - even at 40 bucks. Maybe 10 years ago you could balk at an indie game going for 40 bucks, but after all of *gestures wildly at the chaos of the last five years* this 40 bucks is like one meal at the Cheesecake Factory or something. If you can spare a night out at Red Robin you can scrounge up the money for this. And Croteam is legit - these folks should get paid for content this great so if you can afford it you should.

The only significant issue with this remaster is that you need a computer from outer space to play it. That's just what Unreal games are now. This one really pushes the graphics and looks amazing, but I think that even if they kept it simple it would still melt older PCs just because Unreal is like that, even if you use the lowest settings. It's a nasty trade-off and I'll feel bad if I don't at least mention it. Back in the days where I was barely scraping by and I only played games on my dinky laptop I'd be forced to pass this content by and it would make me sad. I don't usually care about high-fidelity graphics or other cutting-edge tech in games as long as they're fun, especially since those high-end features usually lock out players who can't afford the equipment. Gaming should have as few barriers to entry as possible, and while I know devs aren't intentionally gatekeeping their product, the gatekeeping is still happening all over the industry.

70-90 fps with 5080 and 9800X3D in 1440p with DLSS is just not funny anymore. How do you expect people with midrange or budget configs to play this game? UE5 is killing gaming industry.

the original talos principle still runs well on old and modern pc's. can't say the same with reawakened version.

new dlc isn't worth your time. a bunch of random community made puzzles with insane difficulty spike and weird mechanics that weren't used in both original story and road to gehenna.