[Finished Every Puzzle] Here's how long each of them took me and some interesting graphs!

[Adrylek]

Hi! I’m someone who played Talos 1 the year it came out, then Gehenna, then a bunch of Talos 1 Workshop maps (huge shoutouts to Rebirth), and even replicated the laser mechanics as part of a month-long programming project where I had to prototype a game of my choice. So, I went into Talos 2 very familiar with the laser mechanics. I was eager to find out if I’d struggle with new puzzles or my familiarity with the mechanics would be a big advantage.

If anyone’s curious, here are a couple of images from that project: https://i.imgur.com/Fb7eexY.png

Since I recorded my full playthrough, after beating the game, I decided to time how long each puzzle took me. I wasn’t planning on doing this while playing, but I was compelled to for two reasons:

1. Sounded fun
2. To confirm whether my suspicion regarding the difficulty curve was correct

I found the difficulty curve in Talos 2 to be very particular. In the first third of the game, I was pleasantly surprised, because the puzzles definitely struck me as being harder than the ones in the first half of Talos 1. However, my perception was that not only did the difficulty curve not go up, but rather, that it decreased. I wanted to verify if the data would confirm that or if it was just my imagination. In my eyes, Talos 1 didn’t handle the difficulty curve in the best way; to make things harder, they tended to make levels bigger and add more components, to the point that they just became more tedious, increased the possibilities of what you could do within levels, but rarely added interesting spins to the established mechanics or enforced truly difficult solutions. I appreciate that Talos 2’s approach to difficulty aims for clever ideas over cumbersome design, but I was admittedly disappointed that the difficulty never ramped up, and some areas late in the game took me less time to beat than the first ones. I had a ton of fun with the game, but I spent the whole playthrough eagerly awaiting a difficulty bump that never came.
When measuring how long a level took me, I started timing the moment I entered the level, and stopped the moment I reached the end flame. I didn’t play the game with this in mind, so my goal wasn’t always to beat the levels as fast as possible. This means that times include me voicing out my thought process, messing around with the mechanics, experimenting with potential cheese, and executing the solution once I found it. I played the game in order, doing every puzzle in an area in one go and without skipping any. Once I did all the normal and lost puzzles, I went through the gold ones.
Here’s a graph of how long each level took me. If you’re curious about any of them, I’ll leave a link to my full playthrough VOD at the very bottom.

FULL GRAPH: https://i.imgur.com/zf95xLj.png

At a first glance, it doesn’t look like there’s any difficulty increase, and the two levels that took me the longest are in the first third of the game, albeit one of them is a gold puzzle. I’ll break the results down into separate areas.

East 1 - Grassland Ring [RGB Mechanic]

GRAPH: https://i.imgur.com/DNNRnw7.png

1. RGB Shifting: 02:52
2. Reconnection: 02:53
3. Castling: 02:45
4. Alternative Option: 01:36
5. Through the Door: 03:19
6. Alternatives: 01:35
7. Self-Sufficiency: 06:10
8. Entanglement: 09:34
Lost 1 - Elevation: 03:11
Lost 2 - Interconnectivity: 03:23
Gold - Jump Start: 15:55
Average: 04:50
Total: 53:11

Notes: Really interesting first area, I enjoyed the RBG mechanic. My initial worry that it could make things too convoluted didn’t come true, likely because the level design was pretty tame. Most puzzles did their own thing, and a couple of them were slightly tricky, which made me excited for what would come later.

East 2 - Wooded Plateau [Drill Mechanic]

GRAPH: https://i.imgur.com/rpYemLf.png

1. Quantum Tunneling: 03:31
2. Mutual Aid: 03:46
3. Backup: 14:54
4. Placement: 03:53
5. Duet: 16:07
6. Passage: 05:38
7. Eye of the Needle: 14:40
8. Seesaw: 08:02
Lost 1 - Keeping Connections: 08:29
Lost 2 - Loop: 26:43
Gold - Lonely Heights: 30:55
Average: 12:25
Total: 2:16:38

Notes: I feel like this area was what set up the belief that this game would be harder than Talos 1. Four puzzles over 15 minutes long was not something I remembered facing in the first half of Talos 1, so provided the difficulty curve would ascend, the end game was bound to get challenging. The average is more than double the average in the previous area, and looking back, I feel like the reason lies in the Drill mechanic, which takes some time to become familiar with and not forget crucial details like being able to pick up items through holes. The gold puzzle “Lonely Heights” sits at 30:55, which is the longest one so far, but that’s because for the longest time I didn’t realize that the fan lifted the box as high up as it does, so for 20 minutes I wasn’t sure what to work toward. I was very on board with the drill mechanic at first, but I have to say that despite how many times it returned, it didn’t make for super interesting puzzles in the end.

East 3 - Eastern Wetlands (Inverter Mechanic)

GRAPH: https://i.imgur.com/Rk6fNfg.png

1. Inversion: 02:17
2. Energy Maintenance: 06:09
3. There and Back Again: 05:55
4. Refraction: 01:57
5. Imprisoned: 03:24
6. Hidden: 05:18
7. Backward Propagation: 02:51
8. Positional Interchange: 41:00
Lost 1 - Transposition: 04:42
Lost 2 - Preconnected: 04:19
Gold - Non-Overlapping Magisteria: 1:02:50
Average: 12:47
Total: 2:20:41

Notes: All right, what happened here? The inverter mechanic is a nice twist, but it hardly redefines the game, so I expected these puzzles to be normal laser puzzles with a new coat of pain. And that’s exactly what they are (not complaining, the raw laser puzzles are my favorite), but what’s with those two huge bumps? Well, “Positional Interchange” and “Non-Overlapping Magisteria” are not only the two longest puzzles in this area, but also in the whole game. Considering that no other puzzle in this area gave me trouble, are those two really that much harder? Well, yes and no. I think “Positional Interchange” is a significant difficulty bump coming from the first 7, but not as much as the graph would make you think. It’s the normal puzzle I spent the longest time on in the game, but that's mostly on me. As for “Non-Overlapping Magisteria”, that’s what we in the business call a skill issue. It was 6AM, I envisioned the final laser formation I wanted to create, but spent nearly an hour failing to create it. The next day, I beat it in 5 minutes. Despite my inability to think properly at the time, I’d still say it’s a top 3 hardest puzzles in the game. The average is a bit higher than in the previous area, but it’s greatly skewed by the two anomalies.

North 1 - Desolate Island (Clone Mechanic)

GRAPH: https://i.imgur.com/UbN3pjv.png

1. Mind-Body Dualism: 01:16
2. Leg Up: 03:10
3. Dual Stream: 02:28
4. High Ground: 10:19
5. The Gift: 09:54
6. Two-Body Problem: 05:10
7. Redshift: 03:24
8. Drilling Party: 06:40
Lost 1 - Passing Through: 05:10
Lost 2 - Interplay: 14:59
Gold - Vantage Point: 10:40
Average: 06:38
Total: 1:13:00

Notes: Sadly, this is one of the weakest areas. The clone doesn’t add much that you haven’t seen in Talos 1, and it’s not the most fun mechanic to play around with either. I recall some puzzles that were neat and others that didn’t do much. One of my companions said “Nice job 1k, that was a hard one” after solving “Redshift”, which was one of the quickest ones in this area. I’d be interested in seeing if people actually had trouble with that one, because it seemed like a really straightforward one. “Drilling Party” felt like the kind of puzzle that would’ve flooded the second half of Talos 1, but surprisingly, it was one of the best ones here thanks to there not being an overabundance of dozen-step puzzles. The gold puzzle “Vantage Point” was nice, but it didn’t feel like one that stood out from the others in difficulty or design.

North 2 - Flooded Valley (Accumulator Mechanic)

GRAPH: https://i.imgur.com/8KXyxKQ.png

1. Absorption: 07:13
2. Triptych: 01:32
3. Crossing: 06:05
4. Wellspring: 08:52
5. Balance of Forces: 04:13
6. Reconnaissance: 04:50
7. Rainbow: 05:35
8. Remember: 06:34
Lost 1 - Field of View: 02:27
Lost 2 - Lateral Inhibition: 06:07
Gold - Embodied Cognition: 20:55
Average: 6:46
Total: 1:14:23

Notes: Yes, Puzzle #1 was the second longest one out of the normal puzzles. I didn’t know how to reset the color stored in the accumulator, so in my case the puzzle was figuring out what the little clock icon next to the button prompt meant. I’m very much a fan of the accumulator mechanic and was pleased to see it every time it returned. I recall some fun ones in this area, like “Remember”. “Embodied Cognition” was a sweet gold puzzle, but I don’t think it should’ve taken me 20 minutes. Really enjoyable set of puzzles, I just wish the accumulator had featured in harder puzzles later on.

North 3 - Lost Marshes (Item Swapping Mechanic)

GRAPH: https://i.imgur.com/TKxbjJH.png

1. Substitution: 01:35
2. Possibilities: 01:50
3. The Wall: 01:57
4. Prison: 14:45
5. Twice: 10:05
6. Up and Down: 04:20
7. Propulsion: 01:58
8. Transmission: 24:08
Lost 1 - All Around: 12:45
Lost 2 - Elegance: 05:50
Gold - The Rearranger: 06:45
Average: 7:49
Total: 1:25:58

Notes: Item swapping wasn’t the most thrilling mechanic, but I enjoyed what it brought to the table in a few levels. My problem wasn’t the mechanic itself but rather that some of these puzzles were the most dull ones in the game, especially the gold puzzle, which really disappointed me. Unfortunate events happened in both longest puzzles here: in “Prison”, I straight up missed the imprisoned connector for a good 10 minutes, and in “Transmission”, I forgot the slightly important detail of Jammers being able to jam doors. It still must be the hardest one in this set, though.

[Adrylek]

South 1 - Southern Coast (Teleporter Mechanic)

GRAPH: https://i.imgur.com/w6duF77.png

1. Phase Entry: 02:01
2. The Escape: 03:39
3. Through the Wall: 05:03
4. Pushing Through: 04:35
5. Dyad: 02:36
6. Translocator: 02:11
7. Remote Interchange: 05:23
8. Switcheroo: 10:47
Lost 1 - Aerial Warp: 12:58
Lost 2 - Minimalism: 09:20
Gold - Pillars of Ascension: 12:57
Average: 6:30
Total: 1:11:30

Notes: The teleporter mechanic. I’m not gonna lie, I wasn’t a massive fan. Some of these puzzles blend in for me, and they overemphasized a few applications like being able to take items through gates with proper item management, which made this area fall more on the tedious side of things. “Switcheroo” was a rare case where the solution benefited from janky mechanics in being able to grab and place objects from unreasonably far away. Adding the fact that, in difficulty, the average per puzzle is the lowest since the very first area, it turns out to be pretty unremarkable overall. It doesn’t help that "Pillars of Ascension" is the least fun gold puzzle. A shame, because in the visual side of things, this is definitely a top 3 area.

South 2 - Verdant Canyon (Gravshifter Mechanic)

GRAPH: https://i.imgur.com/DjuXODq.png

1. Mountaineer: 03:10
2. Spiderweb: 03:17
3. Upward Migration: 06:11
4. Lateral Thinking: 10:29
5. Recycling: 04:23
6. Other Side: 03:18
7. Delivery: 10:25
8. Step and Release: 25:43
Lost 1 - Question Block: 09:27
Lost 2 - Stowaway: 04:28
Gold - Outside the Box: 16:19
Average: 8:50
Total: 1:37:10

Notes: The anti-gravity fields were a good addition to give the puzzles some extra depth, although I’m not sure I’d say the same about the Gravshifter device itself. It was usually used to maneuver items around, and some of these puzzles fell into the category of “okay, I know what I want to do, time to spend a couple minutes arranging it all”, and it’s hard to shake off the feeling that I’ve seen this in Portal 2 before. They were fine, but the ones without a Gravshifter like “Lateral Thinking” were more interesting to me. Don’t be deceived by the 25 minutes in “Step and Release”, I just missed that I could walk up to one of the item tables on the ceiling. The gold puzzle “Outside the Box” struck to me as possibly the worst puzzle in the game. Placing a Gravshifter on the ground that gets hit by its own gravitational field doesn’t make it move in the slightest, but if it’s on top of a box, it just sticks to it for dear life. It feels like a bug rather than a mechanic, so I’m a little bitter they framed it as a hard puzzle when it’s just a janky interaction showcase. Pretty enjoyable area overall.

South 3 - Circular Oasis (Moving Puzzle Mechanic)

GRAPH: https://i.imgur.com/UY8IWZ4.png

1. Centrifuge: 03:55
2. The Passageway: 07:31
3. Dismantling: 06:10
4. Control: 12:59
5. Bridging the Gap: 02:10
6. Displacement: 03:25
7. Above: 30:43
8. Preliminary: 05:15
Lost 1 - Transfer: 06:22
Lost 2 - Convolution: 09:55
Gold - Thrust Vector: 31:19
Average: 10:53
Total: 1:59:44

Note: Some of the puzzles in this area were really cool. The theme of moving platforms isn’t that crazy, but that means that they resort to the good old simple lasers, which I’m a sucker for. The difficulty curve did momentarily go up here, and I was genuinely stumped in “Above” because I didn't realize that the red source wasn't fully surrounded by a fence. I ended up taking a connector outside the puzzle and using it to unlock the end from the very top of the area, which took a long time to execute properly. I did notice that they basically repurposed some of the Gehenna puzzles, and “Bridging the Gap” is a very blatant example of that. “Thrust Vector” is a top 3 puzzles in the game. Challenging, it has a neat solution, and a really cool atmosphere.

West 1 - Western Delta (Moving Box Mechanic)

GRAPH: https://i.imgur.com/y7yYquZ.png

1. Servitor: 04:13
2. Supportive Apparatus: 11:03
3. Automatic Doors: 04:30
4. Surfing: 5:00
5. Nuisance: 3:06
6. Elements: 02:42
7. Breach: 16:08
8. Transference: 04:58
Lost 1 - Jailbreak: 15:47
Lost 2 - Vertical Locomotion: 02:49
Gold - The Mule: 12:02
Average: 07:29
Total: 1:22:18

Notes: The moving box thing. Definitely felt like a filler mechanic, and the puzzle design didn’t help a ton to make it stand out. Looking through the level list, I hardly remember most of these. “Surfing” at 5 minutes is an approximation because I lost my recording of it. “Jailbreak” was a nice idea, but the solution didn’t turn out to be that interesting, and there’s a part where you can easily get softlocked trying to understand what’s going on. “The Mule” is a fairly weak gold puzzle that doesn’t feel too different from the normal ones. To me, the clear standout is “Breach”, which felt fresh and had a fairly tricky solution.

West 2 - Anthropic Hills (Activator Mechanic)

GRAPH: https://i.imgur.com/2VVMpIc.png

1. Universal Activation: 04:42
2. Chain Reaction: 07:29
3. Permeability: 02:12
4. Conveyance: 08:35
5. Balance: 07:44
6. Ascent: 08:36
7. Closed Off: 03:58
8. Backwards: 06:41
Lost 1 - Slide: 16:55
Lost 2 - Two to Three: 03:41
Gold - Hollow: 17:22
Average: 08:00
Total: 1:27:55

Notes: It was really cool to see this mechanic near the very end. It’s similar to a mechanic I had theorized way back, and it made most of these puzzles feel like their own thing. The fact that an activator can activate another activator doesn’t feel super intuitive at first, but you come to internalize it soon enough. “Slide” felt like a major standout, with a really cool solution and a step up in difficulty. On the other hand, “Hollow” is a bit more lackluster for a gold puzzle, and I just mistook the color of the last receptor for blue instead of green since it was behind two blue doors. I ended up cheesing it, but I feel like it would’ve been one of the fastest gold puzzles if not for that.

West 3 - High Plain (Concise Laser Puzzles)

GRAPH: https://i.imgur.com/pmI9EEw.png

1. From Within: 02:11
2. Chicken Flight: 12:31
3. Precision: 01:18
4. Duality: 01:25
5. Rerouting: 05:50
6. Mobile Instruments: 05:17
7. Gateway Switch: 19:08
8. Photon Sail: 09:55
Lost 1 - Alternator: 04:19
Lost 2 - Hexahedral Stacking: 02:52
Gold - Windstream: 19:58
Average: 07:42
Total: 1:24:44

Notes: I was more than okay with the final area being small laser puzzles, but some of them (especially the first four) feel like they could easily have been placed in the first 20 minutes of the game. 12 minutes in Chicken Flight are from trying to cheese it to no avail, and when I started to try to beat the level the right way, it was another two-minute little puzzle. It feels like they tried to do what they did in the special world in Gehenna, but some of these fall a bit flat, and it was amusing to see them repurposing the first step of “Small Space, Big Solution” in “Duality”. If I had to highlight one, it’d definitely be “Gateway Switch”, which took me straight back to Rebirth, a Talos 1 fan-made set of puzzles. “Windstream” is also a good one, but it shouldn’t have taken me as long as it did, and it doesn’t feel like that fitting of a closing puzzle.

Area Breakdown

GRAPH: https://i.imgur.com/CMwB5G2.png

Despite the fact that certain levels can skew the average for their individual area, this goes in line with how I perceived the difficulty during my playthrough. If there’s a moment where the difficulty increases, it’s in South 3, but otherwise, it stays pretty flat and even dips after the East areas, with North being the smoothest road. Of course, this is all based off my data, so I’d be interested in seeing if other people would output entirely different results.

Length per level type

GRAPH: https://i.imgur.com/H71PIpf.png

So, even though there’s no tangible progression over the game, is there one within the individual areas? My perception was that puzzle#1 always introduced the mechanic in a throwaway puzzle that had no complication. Then, puzzles#2-6 were simple but could randomly throw you for a loop very sporadically, and then there was a significant spike in puzzles#7-8. That can be seen reflected in the graph, but keep in mind that individual puzzles can easily influence their type, as can be seen with “Non-Overlapping Magisteria” single-handedly adding 4:30 minutes to the gold average. I never picked up on whether the lost puzzles were supposed to be harder than the normal ones, and by the looks of it, they sit between 2-6 and 7-8.

Length Ranking

GRAPH: https://i.imgur.com/DOYmbEp.png

Full-game average: 08:23
Total time on puzzles: 18:27:12

Total puzzles over 30 min: 5/132
Total puzzles between 20-30 min: 4/132
Total puzzles between 15-20 min: 9/132
Total puzzles between 10-15 min: 17/132
Total puzzles between 05-10 min: 39/132
Total puzzles between 01-05 min: 58/132

Final Thoughts

I had a lot of fun playing this game. I’m very much here for the puzzles, and the puzzle design felt like a step up from Talos 1. The ratio of dull puzzles is lower, and so is the ratio of tedious puzzles, but like I’ve said many times throughout this post, I very much wish there had been some harder puzzles, either sprinkled throughout, or optionally at the end. I’m aware there’s been mention of a future DLC, and I’m looking forward to seeing many of the introduced mechanics being expanded into more challenging levels. The formula of introducing new mechanics with two or three throwaway puzzles per area got pretty stale near the end too, where solving puzzles in a couple of minutes because they have a new mechanic that frankly doesn’t need that much explaining didn’t feel right—I wish the mechanic introduction puzzles had a bit more faith in the player, especially the first couple right after the initial tutorial. With that said, throwing new mechanics throughout the game is the primary thing that sets this game apart from Talos 1, where the late-game additions were hardly ever mechanical and only reiterated on what had already been done before. I’m sure that’s why the second game was a lot easier to blast through and I could barely put it down.

That’s all I’ve got to say, as I already ranted at length about the game in my playthrough. If anyone wants to give it a watch, here’s the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ay7ej8-Eyw4

Alternatively, here's a playlist with every individual level from my playthrough: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLks8d45lUmNmmmrju0MCLpwAOI5bAxb__

[ComicGirl]

Hah, thanks for your post, it's been fun to be able to compare my impressions with yours. Though I didn't measure my time, it was interesting to know that some puzzles that took you a higher time seemed relatively easy to me (Gateway Switch for example) and vice versa (my biggest struggles were Passing Through and Pushing Through - it was really hard for me to understand how the force fields would behave). I feel like West 3 in general was, like you said, too easy and it's puzzles could have been placed closer to the beginning of the game. And the most hard locations for me were 2 and 11 cause of very underexplained new mechanics.
The golden puzzles are still ahead of me and I am very scared and excited at the same time, seeing these sharply increased completion times. :)

[TheTitaniumDragon]

Always interesting seeing data like this!

I actually beat the game without getting the achievement for spending 20 minutes trying to solve a puzzle, so obviously my times were greatly truncated relative to yours.

I think that the puzzles in this game were massively better than the first Talos Principle; the first game was lacking in variety and a lot of the "hard" puzzles were just really long and tedious rather than actually being especially difficult. The Talos Principle 2's puzzles were all about having "key insights", and once you had the key insights, you could solve them in short order - the hard part was figuring out what you were doing wrong and doing it the right way, not tediously running back and forth across a huge level like happened all too often in the first game's mid-to-end (though not the very end, ironically - the first game's ending was a lot better than the middle was).

You definitely had more trouble than I did on some puzzles, though - Rainbow, for instance, took me literally 30 seconds to complete, because I realized immediately on entering the puzzle that there was only one possible way for that puzzle to be solved because of the arrangement and the colors of the laser targets, and so I immediately set it up that way.

I think the reason why TP2 seems easier is:

1) The game does a much better job of tutorializing the player, resulting in the player getting a better grasp of what they're supposed to do.

2) The game doesn't use the "hide puzzle pieces from the player" method for almost any of its puzzles (the statue puzzles being the exception, and even then, they were way better than the first game's star puzzles).

3) The game doesn't make puzzles longer to "make them harder" like the first game did. This makes the game seem easier, but those really long puzzles were mostly not really hard, just tedious.

4) You can learn tricks from puzzles and then apply them to other puzzles - for example, once you solve one puzzle with the solution of "use the fan to blow around a connector to allow you to turn on and off laser targets remotely", you can apply that to other puzzles. It's hard to come up with it the first time, but once you do, it becomes more obvious you should do it. And once you figure that out, you can apply it in other places, too - Thrust Vector, for instance, is basically the same kind of puzzle, it just doesn't use a fan to reposition the thing.

The one time I left a puzzle to solve another puzzle, the next puzzle basically showed me the mechanic I needed to use to solve the previous puzzle that I'd just skipped. And thre were some areas where I did the puzzles out of order, which helped me with some of the other puzzles.

5) The names of the puzzles are often a hint to what you are supposed to do. There were a few puzzles where I left and came back to see the name of the puzzle and it helped me immensely.

That said, I found out now that I actually misinterpreted a few "hints" that ended up ironically making them easier. I took Non-Overlapping Magisteria, for instance, to be a hint that you should look outside the puzzle for the answer - when you realize that the beam for the pandora box goes right over the puzzle, you realize you can exploit that fact to solve the puzzle by just beaming a laser straight from that to the inner lasers, letting you bypass a lot of the puzzle. Likewise, Jump Start hinted to me that you need to get on a box and jump off it to get on top of the wall, allowing you to send the beam to the right spot - the actual hint was supposed to be that you need to "jump start" the box up into the air, and then reposition your now unnecessary piece.

I will also note that it's possible to jailbreak pieces out of a number of stages. I exploited this to solve a couple of the gold door puzzles, and actually thought that I was supposed to in several cases because it seemed like that would be the sort of out of the box thinking they'd expect for you to engage in for the end-game puzzles. Turns out, that was not the intended answer, but hey, if it works, you solved the puzzle, right? :V

[MikedeKokkie]

I think there's only 2 golden gate puzzles that aren't cheesable, that kind of sucks tbh.

[Rushin]

Most people: bro puzzles seems way too easy

This mad lad: puzzles are objectively too easy, here is vast mathematical proof with charts and graphs.

[_onyx_]

And some puzzle for hours and hours do not find a solution. Look it up on the internet. Then when they have learned the solution, they make a video quickly doing a puzzle and brag how easy these puzzles are.

But hey whatever gives you joy.

[ray73864]

Interestingly, it took me about 30secs to figure "Mobile Instruments" out, but that's mostly because you can actually get out of the puzzle and then just walk into the area to use the palm reader on the device. It's just a matter of using the hexahedron on the fan, getting on top of it, turning the fan on, jumping over to where the platform is, then making a running jump for the wall that the receiver sits on, from there, you just jump out of the puzzle and into the area you need to get into.

[gamatecal]

I tend to disagree with most of the points here. The difficulty that came with Talos 1's harder puzzles, and subsequently its difficulty progression, was getting to that end goal and realizing, "oh ♥♥♥♥... I actually need that cube/connecter/etc". Additionally, trying to achieve a select handful of puzzle room's secret star was an additional layer of difficulty, or its full levels secret. These are not at all apparent in Talos Principle 2, as everything is telegraphed, making secrets not secrets at all.

This iteration of Talos Principle doesn't enforce that, but instead presents simpler designed puzzles that are more accessible to a wider audience. While this may be good from a game design, and arguably a business standpoint, it ultimately makes the puzzle design weaker as Talos Principle 1 is far more complex in its puzzle designs. Iterating puzzle mechanics, combining many puzzle mechanics, and establishing rules that make the end game puzzles intricate.

Let's look at all puzzle games in the past, and compare on how they introduced puzzles, and its difficulty progression. These are tried and true experiences on why the game was amazing.

The Witness
1) You're introduced with a string of panels that tutorializes the puzzle mechanic
2) Each new area imposed a new mechanic, that implemented a more advanced mechanic
3) Later in the more advanced puzzle areas, it'd telegraph's larger implementations of these mechanics, most times combining other mechanics
4) Near the end, it'd combine multiple mechanics, making it more difficult, establishing a full set of rules on how to solve puzzles in a defined manner

Beyond that, the witness introduces secrets that can be discovered outside of the main game, and are discovered and learned near the end of the game, or by accident. What made it the most interesting, were those combinations of mechanics, and finding the secrets hidden within.

Talos Principle 2 has none of that, Talos Principle 1 did

Let's look at another game

Monster's Expedition
1) Establishes the games mechanic... which is the whole game (super clever)
2) Open world mechanic that allows you to progress in paths to the ending, or branching paths to more difficult puzzles
3) Realizing multiple islands are a connected puzzle, making the complexity of those puzzles interesting
4) Even grander expansion establishing a "global" puzzle, that leads to a more intricate solution

Talos Principle 2 has none of that, Talos Principle 1... kind of does

I could name more, but to get my point across, lets go with Talos Principle 1

1) Each area establishes a mechanic
2) Progression in each area adds complexity to those mechanics
3) Each area has a few "puzzles within a puzzle" and grander secrets that use logic
4) After collecting all the secrets, you presented with a set of large, complex puzzles iterating on all or most mechanics
5) and more puzzles

Now here is Talos Principle 2

1) Each new area introduces a new mechanic
2) All puzzles are bite sized, and introduces an interesting interaction for that given mechanic
3) ...that's it.... Golden puzzles are no different...
4) ....

That's literally it. There is no discovery, no challenge beyond the base mechanics, no secrets. The game hand holds you the whole way, except the puzzles themselves. You're told what to do, and there is nothing to look out for. The game is extremely tame in its approach from the first game, and it's not what Talos Principle 1 was at all. There is 0 progression beyond the main game besides the normal-like gold levels. There is no complexity except for like... 2?

I do love this game though, but as a puzzle experience compared to Talos Principle 1, this is a far, far weaker version in comparison, in all aspects.

[[OPP]SuperCow]

Cool data, appreciate the effort!

I'm probably a casual Talos player in that I'm here to be challenged to a reasonable degree but also really enjoy the thinking aspect of the story and the beautiful graphics. I try to find secrets but am fine to move on if its taking me too long. I probably got like 1/2 the stars in TP1. Maybe less. But still, my experience of ~25 hours was epic enough that I'd put TP1 in my top ten games of the decade list.

I'm about 1/4 of the way through TP2 and so far it has been an amazing experience. I will note that I've been able to get all the stars through what I've played so far, so maybe it is a bit easier? Overall I'm OK with the curve being tamer as long as it stays engaging and fun which it seems like it is going to be. Hopefully they add some really hard levels to an expansion to sate you puzzle fanatics out there but as a casual who is OK missing a few of the hardest things, this game has felt soooo fun so far.

[Drothen]

Originally posted by TheTitaniumDragon:

Always interesting seeing data like this!

I actually beat the game without getting the achievement for spending 20 minutes trying to solve a puzzle, so obviously my times were greatly truncated relative to yours.

I think that the puzzles in this game were massively better than the first Talos Principle; the first game was lacking in variety and a lot of the "hard" puzzles were just really long and tedious rather than actually being especially difficult. The Talos Principle 2's puzzles were all about having "key insights", and once you had the key insights, you could solve them in short order - the hard part was figuring out what you were doing wrong and doing it the right way, not tediously running back and forth across a huge level like happened all too often in the first game's mid-to-end (though not the very end, ironically - the first game's ending was a lot better than the middle was).

You definitely had more trouble than I did on some puzzles, though - Rainbow, for instance, took me literally 30 seconds to complete, because I realized immediately on entering the puzzle that there was only one possible way for that puzzle to be solved because of the arrangement and the colors of the laser targets, and so I immediately set it up that way.

I think the reason why TP2 seems easier is:

1) The game does a much better job of tutorializing the player, resulting in the player getting a better grasp of what they're supposed to do.

2) The game doesn't use the "hide puzzle pieces from the player" method for almost any of its puzzles (the statue puzzles being the exception, and even then, they were way better than the first game's star puzzles).

3) The game doesn't make puzzles longer to "make them harder" like the first game did. This makes the game seem easier, but those really long puzzles were mostly not really hard, just tedious.

4) You can learn tricks from puzzles and then apply them to other puzzles - for example, once you solve one puzzle with the solution of "use the fan to blow around a connector to allow you to turn on and off laser targets remotely", you can apply that to other puzzles. It's hard to come up with it the first time, but once you do, it becomes more obvious you should do it. And once you figure that out, you can apply it in other places, too - Thrust Vector, for instance, is basically the same kind of puzzle, it just doesn't use a fan to reposition the thing.

The one time I left a puzzle to solve another puzzle, the next puzzle basically showed me the mechanic I needed to use to solve the previous puzzle that I'd just skipped. And thre were some areas where I did the puzzles out of order, which helped me with some of the other puzzles.

5) The names of the puzzles are often a hint to what you are supposed to do. There were a few puzzles where I left and came back to see the name of the puzzle and it helped me immensely.

That said, I found out now that I actually misinterpreted a few "hints" that ended up ironically making them easier. I took Non-Overlapping Magisteria, for instance, to be a hint that you should look outside the puzzle for the answer - when you realize that the beam for the pandora box goes right over the puzzle, you realize you can exploit that fact to solve the puzzle by just beaming a laser straight from that to the inner lasers, letting you bypass a lot of the puzzle. Likewise, Jump Start hinted to me that you need to get on a box and jump off it to get on top of the wall, allowing you to send the beam to the right spot - the actual hint was supposed to be that you need to "jump start" the box up into the air, and then reposition your now unnecessary piece.

I will also note that it's possible to jailbreak pieces out of a number of stages. I exploited this to solve a couple of the gold door puzzles, and actually thought that I was supposed to in several cases because it seemed like that would be the sort of out of the box thinking they'd expect for you to engage in for the end-game puzzles. Turns out, that was not the intended answer, but hey, if it works, you solved the puzzle, right? :V

Its not necessary, iv solved all golden gates after long time of thinking without the usage of outside parts, but some of them requires you to step back take a break and come back later to realize what you missed (at least in my case)

[Wintermute]

Honestly, gold and west-3 puzzles are what half of the game should have been difficulty-wise. They aren't that hard still, but at least they are interesting. And I don't oppose the idea of easier puzzles being in the mix - TL1 green puzzles were also easy. But it also had yellow and red ones, with reds being "optional" for tower ending. TP2 just stops at yellow difficulty.

[Shoah Kahn]

Originally posted by Rushin':

Most people: bro puzzles seems way too easy
This mad lad: puzzles are objectively too easy, here is vast mathematical proof with charts and graphs.

Yeah... Just what I was thinking. That, and that he has too much time on his hands 🥴

[Rushin]

@Shoah Kahn: I respect it though.

[Grigou]

Wow... i stumbled upon this while looking for something else, i mean guys, just play for fun, why do you even time how long it takes you to solve a puzzle?

[Tsunero]

Non-Overlapping Magisteria is the only puzzle I still don't fully understand even after solving it. I just ♥♥♥♥♥♥ around with the lasers and positions until it somehow worked. LOL