Okay, my actual review (text wall warning)

[syronth]

TLDR;
If you've got a decent PC, like nice graphics with phenomenal art designs and are fully into solving riddles again and again - and again, again, again, this game might be for you. Besides it makes you think about more than just riddles and might even touch and/or provoke you while questioning your own world view. It's got some edges, though, check other reviews if you aren't sure of course. Most of them didn't bother me, I can't report crashes nor any other hard issues. I just had and still have a great time playing it.

Okay ... let's do this.

TEXT WALL ALERT - please leave here now if many words bore you to death or even make you angry :) It's even to large to be posted on the shop site and gets cut, so I just posted the TLDR part there.

Let's start with the technical aspects of this game. From my view it's kind of a showcase for UE5, I've been (and still) playing this game on this rig:
i7 11700k/32GB + SSD + RTX 3090/24GB, HDR Ultrawide @3840x1600 (LG)
Settings: All on ultra & view distance far, DLSS Performance or Quality (depends), HDR On

I hit vsync'd 60 FPS most of the time, the only issue is the foliage, the trees, which has been reported and discussed already and which tank the performance quite a bit if you're closely surrounded by it. In certain areas I could just look up at the crowns of these trees and having ~35 FPS (worst case), which is unfortunate because it quickly gets up to 60 again when I look just away. So I fumbled a lot with the settings until I just gave up and lived with it. Some of these trees have a ton of leaves and I suspect them having to much triangles, and combined with Lumen etc. it just kills my 3090. The other way would've been to turn every dial down but I'm a sucker for graphics, I've played CP2077 at ~30 - 40 FPS most of the time, only when I made a pure, violent "ninja char" later just for fun I went for FPS.

For me personally, TTP2 is the first game which makes it clear what you can do with Nanite and Lumen in UE5 and it's quite a difference. It's true that it's got some issues, Lumen RT doesn't have the same quality than Nvidias path tracing with current DLSS ray reconstruction, it can get noisy but it didn't bother me much. All in all it looks quite next gen to me, especially because I re-played TTP1 right before. While I think TTP1 still looks great (2015 it was quite impressive too), the difference is noticeable. - But only if your rig can take a punch. The major weakness of this engine might be that it just fails to deliver if your rig can't handle it, at (very) low settings I can understand why some say it looks even worse than TTP1, with all the side effects of DLSS etc. becoming more apparent. UE5 demands, period, and if your HW can handle it, it looks quite amazing. I'm looking at my 50th birthday this year, I've seen a lot since the times I played games on a Amiga 500 (even on a C64) and it's insane how far we've pushed graphics since then. And while I got used to it - somehow I had a few WTF moment in this game, this engine is really pushing it and the insane art works did very much go for it. There are other still quite impressive engines out there, no question, like the id Tech engine, but Nanite and these material shaders are one of its kind. I still can't get over the fact that grass is being fully modelled. It looks redonkolous, the amount of detail all over the place while having giant structures and entire mountains in the background is something else.

And I believe CroTeam did a great job utilizing the engine, I'm not saying it's flawless but what is nowadays. As far as I can say (and I'm a bit of a nerd), they did what they could, did it right in the sense the engine needs it (avoiding some real bad things), and are still learning themselves more. Good job, no question imho. But tech can suck and when it can suck it unavoidable WILL suck, that's murphys law for you. Even some high-end rigs will just have problems, mine doesn't for some reason.

Well, that's enough tech talk, the debate is quite heated and I'm not really interested in participating. It's just my 2 cents. :)

About those RIDDLES

A lot has already been said about them, they can be quite enjoyable and sometimes really frustrating. My problem has been that I got really obsessed with solving them (and still am) and often could not just stop playing, while my brain was heating up like my entire rig. I ran into phases late in the game where I just played to get to the next riddle, and the next one. Not good - take breaks, it helps a lot ;-)

There are moments where you can see quite clearly that the designers deliberately put obstacles in your way just to make an easy one much harder which I found annoying here and there, like: "Oh, come on! Really?!". Then again, other ones should be really hard but somehow it took me merely a minute to solve them - it strongly depends if your first take just hits the nail. If NOT - and especially if your cerebral cortex fails to break the chain of thought to start over again, the very same riddles can take much more time to solve. I lived through every aspect of it and the main pattern is simply: re-think and re-think again. Quite often you'll find out that you missed just one important option, like picking up a fan to put it onto a platform switch. The fans are kind of annoying, since you can only pick them up at times, a lot are fixed, so you might have forget about them when you just need one more piece ...

I must admit that at the end of the main story I was kind of tired, the riddles looked all the same to me and I think it would've been great if there were at least one different kind of it with different puzzle pieces. I just had enough of it, it felt worn-out and my cortex was signaling me that enough is enough already, certain neurons and connections were so heavily used that they started to fail or just refused to work. Yeah, I should've taken a nice, long break between TTP1 and TTP2 I guess, and have cooled down my obsession a bit.

All in all it was fun and quite an experience, that's why we play games, aren't we?

About the STORY and PHILOSOPHY
(insert little spoiler alert here)

Oh, well. I got TTP1 when it came out back then and had quite a harsh opinion of this game first. So harsh that I played it to the very end just this year - it's been there in my library all this years but I forget about it. When TTP2 came out I haven't been in the mood for it, so here I am in the year 2025 playing through both of them at once - and loving them overall.

My main issue with TTP1 has been that the reviews back then somehow gave me wrong expectations, I guess. I can't really remember but I think it has to do with the fact that these AIs are quite manlike and I was and actually are still quite tired and annoyed of humanizing AI, the entire anthropomorphisms and cliches surrounding AI because - a lot of reasons I won't get into in this review ;-)

But time passed by and I gave it another shot and decided just to ride with it as it comes and it turned out, TTP1 is quite a touching game, especially the tower ending. I'll never forget TheSheperd, I took him/her with me - unlike Milton I sincerely hated. The dialogs with him were terrible annoying, especially because I only had certain answers to chose from. Yes, I shut him down, I even did not fully read his last messages while doing so. I was pissed.

But this is a review about TTP2, so lets focus on it. Simply put, half of it I liked, regarding the other half I'm not sure about. And the latter one muddles the former for me. Since I'm quite a tech geek and like the idea of exploring space and spread life all over it, the full "go for it" approach offered in the story heavily resonated with me, so much so that I actually was a bit overwhelmed by my own feelings sometimes. The emphases on life being a wonderful thing can be heart-breaking at times, because we do so much to make it really miserable and extremely overly complicated. The brutal dissonance between what could be and what we've got is in the very core of this story, in its fictious history the entire human kind failed at the end and died out, just barely leaving an apparatus behind that accomplished creating a single self-aware AI (story of TTP1).

That's a tough backdrop and a quite difficult story to tell and to spin even further, and imho it has rough edges. If you look at it like a story from a quite good ST TNG (double) episode like me, it delivers. I really liked the optimistic base tone and the quite rational nature of the characters, there's almost no drama and it lacks any kind of actual, toxic hysteria which is such a relieve. No one's screaming around, demanding intense attention, acting like a colossal self important ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. Just sane people with a broad common sense talking about sane stuff. It reminds me strongly of "golden era" SF (Asimov, Clarke etc.) and ST TNG, I really enjoyed it - at least for the most part. But closer to the end it fell more onto the opposite side when there are actually happening tough things while the characters kept being "a tad" to calm and strangely static.

I guess, that's where the budget said no? I don't know - the story overall fell short of delivering some more powerful, stirring scenes in the later game, though I find the ending sequences fitting. Well, in my first play through I went all in on emphasizing optimism and progress, so you could imagine which one I got. ;-)

The philosophical bits are the part were I feel that it misses some point but this is just intentional, I think. It's all an open question and it's up to you to make a point. But regardless, few recordings and messages appeared to me somehow unnecessary. The game tries to not force you into a certain direction although it does it nonetheless imho, so it feels "watered down" to me. However, there're a lot of crumbs that might give you a hunger for more and you can also enjoy the game without thinking about this to much.

OVERALL

I put already more than 100hs into this game, because I'm a very slow thinker :-p. I mean, I actually enjoyed it so much, it's beautiful designed world, that I just wasted a good part of it just walking around, discovering its places, bits of philosophy, its riddles and what UE5 is all about. It emerges all into an very unique experience, one I still didn't finish entirely yet (I got the DLC too).

The only thing that nags me a bit is that is mostly about its puzzles and impressive vistas. It feels like there's missing some stuff that makes it a real grand game. For a modern game it's quite "static", misses a certain, engaging dynamic that makes the story more impactful and memorable. While I really like the characters and certain jokes, they're somewhat superficial and reaching major story points don't feel as satisfying as they could and should be, they seem to pass just by quite quickly. I believe, its a quite ambitious game that is restricted by certain budget decisions and probably for a good reason since this game doesn't really get the attention it deserves. It's a wonderful piece of work, it only challenges your mind (and not reaction abilities) and is almost entirely free of drama and action. No arsenals of weapons, no fierce boss fights, just a few items and riddles, you can solve. It's specifically made for a certain audience and even this one just might not try it out - I didn't care about TTP one or two a lot before, I'm doing it just right now.

And considering that the budget was tight, the team and possibilities not so large as you might think, CroTeam delivered something special nonetheless and it should be praised.

Just sayin' ;-)

Alright, that's enough for today. I'll write such review not again for the next years, I'm a terrible lazy dog, but I felt I had to write this one. I can't keep it shorter, this is already the shortest version I can do. Sorry :) And thanks for your attention.

Baba

[Calabeza]

I actually agree with the point that in the second half the characters are a little too stoic. Perhaps intentional? I did enjoy the characters overall. Their level-headedness was refreshing.

[Jonas Kyratzes]

Originally posted by Calabeza:

I actually agree with the point that in the second half the characters are a little too stoic. Perhaps intentional? I did enjoy the characters overall. Their level-headedness was refreshing.

It's certainly intentional that they behave like serious adults. I do think they have plenty of emotion, but I think everyone who wrote this game would agree that we're tired of the kind of storytelling (so prevalent today) where everyone is an overgrown teenager and all they can ever do is throw a fit. It's become the standard, to the degree that T2 seems old-fashioned, and this probably encourages people to behave this way for real, but it's not healthy. And I think the current state is the exception, really. You watch or read anything from 30+ years ago and it's not like that. Culture has become infantilized and we are deliberately choosing to push back against that tendency.

[syronth]

Originally posted by Jonas Kyratzes:

Culture has become infantilized and we are deliberately choosing to push back against that tendency.

I agree regarding popular movies and tv shows and it's annoying as hell, I simply can't watch them, and just not lets start talking about "plots" in these, it's a straight punch into the face. But literature isn't affected as much, I think, since the target audience is at least able to read an entire book, which is not very likely of people enthusiastically watching said movies/shows. ;->

Regarding the characters, I'm happy you did and do that, as I said - especially early in the game - I really noticed and enjoyed it whole heartly, the game does take its audience serious. And about later in the game, I mean, they're still robots / androids and thus reminding me heavily of Isaac Asimovs creations though they are their own "breed". Being quite stoic is a feature then, I'll just accept it, heh.

I hope that my little review sufficiently confirms that I really like the game, wish you and the team continued success and would love to see more of it. Let's see if TTP3 turns into something. There's still this thing out there, somewhere on the edge of the universe, kind of beyond space and time, which is a mystery even to Athena and is literally crying out to be discovered and deciphered ... :-)

Have a good one!

[MagicMaster]

Originally posted by Jonas Kyratzes:

Originally posted by Calabeza:

I actually agree with the point that in the second half the characters are a little too stoic. Perhaps intentional? I did enjoy the characters overall. Their level-headedness was refreshing.

It's certainly intentional that they behave like serious adults. I do think they have plenty of emotion, but I think everyone who wrote this game would agree that we're tired of the kind of storytelling (so prevalent today) where everyone is an overgrown teenager and all they can ever do is throw a fit. It's become the standard, to the degree that T2 seems old-fashioned, and this probably encourages people to behave this way for real, but it's not healthy. And I think the current state is the exception, really. You watch or read anything from 30+ years ago and it's not like that. Culture has become infantilized and we are deliberately choosing to push back against that tendency.

just wanted to leave a quick thank you because I feel exactly like this. It was so refreshing having characters interact with each other with emotional maturity. (felt a bit like the best Star Trek TNG episodes)
I am a scientist by training and I love the optimistic view on human endeavors and pioneering spirit(I am not sure whether the game only had that kind of undertone because of my dialogue choices) and the value of our scientific curiosity in this game even in the face of potential dangers these bring.

Thanks for writing such an optimistic and mature game during a time where most popular media seems to go for cynic sarcasm.

P.S. if you guys publish the game on Switch 2 sometime in the future, I'll buy it full price for that ;) - after finishing I really regret not supporting the game at launch by buying it full price.

[Jonas Kyratzes]

Originally posted by MagicMaster:

just wanted to leave a quick thank you because I feel exactly like this. It was so refreshing having characters interact with each other with emotional maturity. (felt a bit like the best Star Trek TNG episodes)
I am a scientist by training and I love the optimistic view on human endeavors and pioneering spirit(I am not sure whether the game only had that kind of undertone because of my dialogue choices) and the value of our scientific curiosity in this game even in the face of potential dangers these bring.

Thanks for writing such an optimistic and mature game during a time where most popular media seems to go for cynic sarcasm.

P.S. if you guys publish the game on Switch 2 sometime in the future, I'll buy it full price for that ;) - after finishing I really regret not supporting the game at launch by buying it full price.

Thank you! We've had a few people derisively say "this is like an old episode of Star Trek" and we've always taken it as a compliment instead. The best of TNG is certainly something wonderful to be compared to, and optimistic, humanist science fiction is something we desperately miss.

[ForsakenEagle]

Originally posted by Jonas Kyratzes:

Originally posted by Calabeza:

I actually agree with the point that in the second half the characters are a little too stoic. Perhaps intentional? I did enjoy the characters overall. Their level-headedness was refreshing.

It's certainly intentional that they behave like serious adults. I do think they have plenty of emotion, but I think everyone who wrote this game would agree that we're tired of the kind of storytelling (so prevalent today) where everyone is an overgrown teenager and all they can ever do is throw a fit. It's become the standard, to the degree that T2 seems old-fashioned, and this probably encourages people to behave this way for real, but it's not healthy. And I think the current state is the exception, really. You watch or read anything from 30+ years ago and it's not like that. Culture has become infantilized and we are deliberately choosing to push back against that tendency.

I just finished the game. I was completely impressed with the way this game discussed difficult and complex questions about being human. Human beings are not perfect but have achieved great things. I wouldn't be here sitting comfortably in my home playing games if that wasn't true. It feels like too many people these days take a simplistic and too often cynical view of humanity. Viewing humans as a destructive virus and inherently evil feels like a cheap way to appear intellectual and doesn't provide productive discussion. Pretty much from the first time I visited New Jerusalem I got that TNG feel. All of the characters have their own personalities. They are trying to live in harmony with each other and the world while having mature conversations and disagreements with how to achieve that. All of the logs you find while solving puzzles and the Greek spirits add more food for thought. This is easily one of the best games I've played in a long time.