The Talos Principle easily became my favourite game, although I'm only very marginally interested into the puzzle genre. With exquisite graphics, clever level design, impressive story and an astonishing amount of detail, it never failed to keep me deeply captivated, a result of I often found myself aimlessly exploring it's worlds, and just admiring the scenery and thinking about the many questions I had about it. Accompanied with beautiful music that matches it's diverse themes, the outcome is truly marvelous.

I didn't include any spoilers

The puzzle mechanics are very easy to understand and employ, and the game never tries to take advantage of a certain feature that is not exposed to the player, in order to make the puzzles more difficult, in this or any other unfair way. The difficulty is adequate, not necessarily forcing the player to complete all of the challenges in order to progress. If you get stuck in one of the more difficult puzzles and need to finish it, you can use an expendable helping system for passing it. But it has to be found and unlocked first, somewhere in the game. There are mutually-exclusive achievements for both using it and never trying it, to combat some potential morale doubts. The layout of it's mysterious world is very open but with an apparent order to it, so it's easy to distinguish where you should go next, if you don't like skipping things.

The levels aren't artificially restricting the player from going where he isn't supposed to (e.g. invisible walls) and if you're very observant, you can even expose certain level design flaws to get to the finish more quickly (if you don't have moral trouble with it or don't care for the "correct" solution of course), although I'm not entirely sure whether they are rare design flaws or just intentional shortcuts for the player thinking "out of the box". Sometimes, they can be just a part of some additional reward that is not entirely apparent on a first sight.

You'll probably enjoy this game if you're a keen explorer and easily tend to venture off the main path, as the beautiful, open worlds in Talos Principle often call for and even reward the player for his curiosity, with numerous secrets and an astounding ammount of well-crafted easter eggs (I've never seen a game that would have as many easter eggs as The Talos Principle, by the way). This curiosity for finding all the unnecessary secrets on my own and seeking out any parkour opportunities wherever possible has led me to finishing the game in nearly 100 hours, although I'd say it can easily be beaten on any ending in well under 50 hours.

And if you don't mind to read and think a little, you may find a lot of thought-provoking topics and difficult decisions in the conversations you'll lead throughout the game, that produce different outcomes and may have a deeper impact later on. The story also encourages the player to sceptically think his way through, and to many questions the game might put upon you, there will hardly be any direct answers, but staying curious enough about the world and not rushing things will aid you sufficiently in finding them out.


Performance-wise, The Talos Principle was very stable for me. I was able to nearly max it out on a GTX960 with 50+ FPS all the time on FHD, and for around 100 hours of gameplay I remember no more than 3 rare crashes, mostly happening after deliberately attempting to glitch something out. Keyboard controls are cleverly designed and work in every menu, so the game is very controller-friendly aswell. The user interface has a nice minimalistic touch to it and can be customized, or even fully disabled, and it's also adjustable for easy readability on a TV. The game supports OpenGL and Vulkan API. Surround sound could be a little better- I could get it to work only on xaudio2 and not OpenAL mode, even with newest versions, but at least it's there.



I've played The Talos Principle just out of a curiosity to try something new, from a puzzle/adventure genre I never really explored enough, where the only game I enjoyed so far was Portal. Initially, I didn't think it's philosophical sci-fi theme would suit me so well, but now I don't regret trying it a single bit. I even dare to go as far as saying that if you have a taste in good games, and don't have some reluctance to this specific genre, there is a very high probability that you're going to enjoy the hell out of The Talos Principle!

The Talos Principle easily became my favourite game, although I'm only very marginally interested into the puzzle genre. With exquisite graphics, clever level design, impressive story and an astonishing amount of detail, it never failed to keep me deeply captivated, a result of I often found myself aimlessly exploring it's worlds, and just admiring the scenery and thinking about the many questions I had about it. Accompanied with beautiful music that matches it's diverse themes, the outcome is truly marvelous. [b]I didn't include any spoilers[/b] The puzzle mechanics are very easy to understand and employ, and the game never tries to take advantage of a certain feature that is not exposed to the player, in order to make the puzzles more difficult, in this or any other unfair way. The difficulty is adequate, not necessarily forcing the player to complete all of the challenges in order to progress. If you get stuck in one of the more difficult puzzles and need to finish it, you can use an expendable helping system for passing it. But it has to be found and unlocked first, somewhere in the game. There are mutually-exclusive achievements for both using it and never trying it, to combat some potential morale doubts. The layout of it's mysterious world is very open but with an apparent order to it, so it's easy to distinguish where you should go next, if you don't like skipping things. The levels aren't artificially restricting the player from going where he isn't supposed to (e.g. invisible walls) and if you're very observant, you can even expose certain level design flaws to get to the finish more quickly (if you don't have moral trouble with it or don't care for the "correct" solution of course), although I'm not entirely sure whether they are rare design flaws or just intentional shortcuts for the player thinking "out of the box". Sometimes, they can be just a part of some additional reward that is not entirely apparent on a first sight. You'll probably enjoy this game if you're a keen explorer and easily tend to venture off the main path, as the beautiful, open worlds in Talos Principle often call for and even reward the player for his curiosity, with numerous secrets and an astounding ammount of well-crafted easter eggs (I've never seen a game that would have as many easter eggs as The Talos Principle, by the way). This curiosity for finding all the unnecessary secrets on my own and seeking out any parkour opportunities wherever possible has led me to finishing the game in nearly 100 hours, although I'd say it can easily be beaten on any ending in well under 50 hours. And if you don't mind to read and think a little, you may find a lot of thought-provoking topics and difficult decisions in the conversations you'll lead throughout the game, that produce different outcomes and may have a deeper impact later on. The story also encourages the player to sceptically think his way through, and to many questions the game might put upon you, there will hardly be any direct answers, but staying curious enough about the world and not rushing things will aid you sufficiently in finding them out. [h1]Technical:[/h1] Performance-wise, The Talos Principle was very stable for me. I was able to nearly max it out on a GTX960 with 50+ FPS all the time on FHD, and for around 100 hours of gameplay I remember no more than 3 rare crashes, mostly happening after deliberately attempting to glitch something out. Keyboard controls are cleverly designed and work in every menu, so the game is very controller-friendly aswell. The user interface has a nice minimalistic touch to it and can be customized, or even fully disabled, and it's also adjustable for easy readability on a TV. The game supports OpenGL and Vulkan API. Surround sound could be a little better- I could get it to work only on xaudio2 and not OpenAL mode, even with newest versions, but at least it's there. I've played The Talos Principle just out of a curiosity to try something new, from a puzzle/adventure genre I never really explored enough, where the only game I enjoyed so far was Portal. Initially, I didn't think it's philosophical sci-fi theme would suit me so well, but now I don't regret trying it a single bit. I even dare to go as far as saying that if you have a taste in good games, and don't have some reluctance to this specific genre, there is a very high probability that you're going to enjoy the hell out of The Talos Principle!