The Talos Principle

I dont necessarily love puzzle games, but rich story, philosophy and striking visuals kept me playing this one to the end. Certainly recommend to everyone who has ever wondered what does it mean to be. :)

Very, very rewarding to explore in. You run behind the puzzles? There's another puzzle that'll get you the star. You run behind that building? There's a short QR-code conversation. You translate the "corruption" in some of the text files? You get secret messages. There's just so much to do here. (SPOILER FOR EASTER EGGS): Aim a connector at the moon? You get the Aperture Science logo! Additionally, slowly realizing the lore over time made me genuinely sad. This is one of my favorite games of all time.

Fun puzzles, charmingly optimistic story

The game was fun, story keeps you invested, but it was even more fun finding illegal parkour cheese for half of the end levels.

Excellent story and good puzzles. A few of them are very linear, but Road to Gehenna is pretty challenging overall. I didn't enjoy any recording puzzles.

Love the scenes in this game. Feels like I'm travelling to different parts of the world.

If you love Portal, its that plus critical thinking and philosophical reasoning. As a fan of philosophy, this game tickled my brain in the best way possible. We need more games like this.

Even though I like the idea that the author put work on lore and concepts behind the game, there two main factors that make me give a thumbs down:

1. Too many puzzles; Many of them are filler: The number of repetitive puzzles grow fast, and many of them are just too easy (even the special ones). Half of the puzzles could be removed, keeping only the most creative ones.
2. Too much text: There's too much text that doesn't really add much to the game. It's, somewhat, "Lore", but could be removed without impacting in the Lore or the puzzles themselves.

I understand making a puzzle game is very hard, but I just don't feel like recommending this one. It becomes boring repetitive with too much unnecessary content.

5/10

Currently replaying a few years later, this time taking the story seriously. Talos is so unique and brilliant on so many different levels, it's maybe one of the most recommendable games out there to people who aren't a fan of the medium, despite how bizarre it is. The (mostly) god awful stars and real time drone-mines bring the game down for me, but at the same time add to how strange the game is in comparison to all other puzzle games. The game's crowning jewel are its world class OST and perfect atmosphere. It looks beautiful, it sounds beautiful, Talos is such an amazing game all-round (maybe even better than its sequel...)

Gives a good brain massage.
The tricky puzzles challenge your perceptions skills and are very satisfying to complete when you've tried, failed, tried and failed again.

8.5/10 I would rate it higher but the "Time Flies" puzzle killed this game for me. Keep in mind that up until this point in the game, I beat every puzzle in the previous zones and all the rooms before the "Time Flies" puzzle's room!

"Time Flies" has one of the most convoluted puzzle designs I have ever come across in a game. It was so bad I had to look it up and even after I looked it up I couldn't even remember all the steps. I just gave up on any idea of beating this game. The time mechanic is horrendously designed.

UPDATE:

I beat the game. The time mechanic is still horrible, but the overall game was fun in the places where the puzzles didn't absolutely suck.

Some puzzles require you to think and get adjusted to them, with these puzzles I would pick the game up, play, then put the game down. I would come back and repeat this process until I solved the puzzle. This was an enjoyable way to play the game.

The other two types of puzzles I found myself solving fit into a different category, puzzles whose final state I know immediately. The difference between the puzzles in this other category is the way in which you are asked to solve them.

The good puzzles allowed me to piece meal the solutions and didn't put too many parameters in front of me.

The bad puzzles put too many parameters. What is a player to do when faced with all these parameters? Reduction. Reduce the problem into a set of smaller problems, decompose the original problem into smaller, easier to solve problems. Now what happens when there are many small problems? Do players magically hold all these smaller problems in their head? This is why the bad puzzles are BAD! These puzzles are completely unforgivable!

When the order of the smaller problems is well understood and when the number of the smaller problems is naturally reduced over time, then puzzles will be less frustrating. In addition, reducing the need to solve these smaller problems in parallel also makes them less frustrating.

Imagine you want to vacation somewhere, let's say Peru, but you also want to vacation somewhere else, let's say France.

You have to pick one or the other. But your spouse asks you to plan for both in case you can't go to the other. Now imagine you find out earlier on that you can't go to Peru.

There's no need to plan for the Peru trip, but for some magical reason every time you plan for the France trip your brain is trying to plan for the Peru trip. And worse you constantly are trying to think of every detail in your mind about both trips.

You get annoyed because you are trying to focus on planning for the France trip. This is why the time mechanic sucks because some of these puzzles don't consider the process of reduction.

You go to Peru or France, you need know how you will get there, how long you will stay, when will you leave, where will you stay, what will you do, on and on and on. To effectively plan you will break down each of those questions into sub questions until you can properly answer all the sub questions. You focus on one thing at a time so that managing the trip is doable. Managing the trip is not solving the problem.

I will reiterate MANAGING the trip is not SOLVING the problem.

When designers put the responsibility of managing the solution to a problem on the player, they better give the player damn good tools to manage the solution. Trying to put everything in my head is a bad solution to managing the solution. It is not impossible to design good puzzles where reduction and parallelization are simultaneously required, just difficult and probably not worth the effort.

On a side note, Shepherd is bugged in the final level, the solution I found was to limit my fps to 60 fps in my graphic cards setting. It is likely that someone did not foresee the game running higher than 60 fps and causing an issue when this game was first released so that is forgivable.

Play this game at your own peril. I'm not saying it's bad. It is good, but it's design falters in some places and when it does it can be incredibly frustrating.

What is human?

Nice puzzles, simple concepts. One of my pet peeves is having to replay puzzles from the beginning if you fail, which makes some of the more difficult puzzles all the more frustrating.

holds up pretty well visually and has a lot of interesting puzzle design going on! really fun lil experience

Probably the best 3d puzzler that I've ever played and that includes the Portal games. No real criticisms. Combines decent puzzles with great atmosphere and a reflective philosophical bent.

Excellent game, challenging puzzles and interesting history and gameplay.

Didn't find the puzzles all that interesting
Although there were *some* interesting puzzles, most were completely trivial
The fact that every puzzle starts with a fetch quest for the required items to solve it doesn't help either

awesome story! enjoyed the puzzles and thought put into this one

Guys, make a new game. This one's fucking awesome but really doesn't need to be touched further. Do something new! Y'all rock!

Amazing game, especially if you don't mind getting stuck for a while and frustrated on some of the more difficult puzzles later in the game. The philosophy aspect can seem a bit contrived and pretentious at first, but it definitely gets better, arguably making the game the masterpiece many say it is. My only complaint is that I find a couple mechanics not very fun (puzzles with a lot of mine spheres and the self recording puzzles as these can be annoying to execute even when you figure out the solution). There is a remaster/remake coming out very soon that may be worth playing instead, but even this original from 2014 has aged very well graphics wise. If whatever reason you can't get through TP1, the second game is a lot more polished with much more fun puzzle mechanics, but I'd still recommend playing through TP1 first.

Great game. Beautiful graphics with a story that hooked me in till the end. Loved solving every single one of the puzzles (maybe except the drone ones).

The story and conversations I had with Milton teased my brain made me question quite a lot of my thoughts and beliefs. Never has a game left such an impression on me in a long time, probably ever.

10/10.

Great puzzle game revolving around philosophy and what it means to be human and alive. The puzzles are nice, the world is eerie in a way that lets wondering what is going on. For me the best part is gathering all the bits of information and data to understand what it's really happening. It really makes us think about life and consciousness. I genuinely recommend it.

I thought I would enjoy it. The Greco-roman ruin aesthetics are my favourite.

It's a shame most puzzles fall under two categories; too easy or too frustrating. I sure enjoy having to be very precise or I'll be blown up and have to restart again and again.

The lore does not interest me at all either.

And then there's the star puzzles. The first one I solved was phenomenal! I had to look for some missing detail, I had to use my phone to scan a QR-code that wasn't auto translated, and it was incredibly satisfying. I was itching to get more of those puzzles! And then came the other star puzzles... The worst part by far. It was either a hunt for an obscure location through an entire map, or the same old "you have to bring a light from one room to another room" over and over again. My opinion quickly changed.

Very enjoyable. Reminiscent of Portal, with plenty of hidden gems waiting to be discovered. Still unsure if I have grasped the full extent of the story. Highly recommend if you like philosophical science fiction.

An enjoyable experience moment to moment, but the journey was more satisfying than the destination. The banter reminded me alot of Umineko, and I enjoyed the basic puzzle solving and environments at first, but the puzzles became more and more a test of reflexes than actual understanding of the mechanics of the game. I get that a theme is "thinking outside of the box", but I found myself toeing the line of said box than getting much fresh air. The jank needed to acquire stars didn't go nearly far enough to justify the time spent on acquiring them. I'd accidentally launch myself off 200 yards off the map to solve problems that only required a minimum of outside-of-the-box thinking. This game is first-person in camera perspective only. I'd recommend it for the general puzzle solving, but some sections are broken in a way that prevents you from completing a star puzzle, and with the promotional app defunct, your best bet at getting every ending for the main game is to google what cannot be acquired from just playing the game. If you have an iPhone, the QR Code that gives you a hint for the Zone A Level 3 star puzzle will be seen as broken by an iPhone camera app. Using an android camera or a QR Code app on an iPhone apparently solves this issue. As much as I wanted to see the full game through, once I started the DLC, I had a hard time not reaching for my phone as soon as the game loaded up. I'm sorry, but personally I'm gonna have to go with a no on this one.

Mainly fun, but some puzzles are impossible to do unless you are thinking exactly like the devs did. I find myself getting motion sick after a while of playtime, even with very high FPS. I can appreciate trying to add story to a puzzle game, but it definitely was not needed, I lost interest in the story quickly.

Might not be as strong as Portal or The Witness among first-person puzzle games, The Talos Principle carved it's own special place. It has good quality puzzles, contemplative tone, which is enhanced by complementary music and visuals, as well as lore and thought provoking philosophy, touching on subjects of identity and intelligence.

Lasers and Philosophy
70 / 100

Very good puzzle game. Easy to pick up and put down as you like. Highly recommend.

An underrated fantastic provocative game. One of the most, if not the most profound game ever. Like a crash course in philosophy about the nature of consciousness. Even going as far as evaluating what it means to play. This game has truly rewired the way I think now. I also invite you in learning The Talos Principle

Incredible game! Gorgeous worlds and ingenious puzzles. I got about 37 hours of brain-tingling pleasure from it.

It's a game, alright.

The Gehenna DLC is also quite playable, even though some of its puzzles can be a bit of a slog to resolve.

Muy motivador, puzzles bastante complejos y entrincados juegos mentales, los escenarios son verdaderamente motivadores y muy relantes, un nivel de realismo que esta bastante conseguido, excelente sincronia entre tecnologia antigua y tecnologia moderna, el personaje es ejemplificante y muy actual en el orden actual, ya que es un robot azul que analogamente plasma la velocidad de la materia, es muy singular.

Very interesting topic and some challenging puzzles! If you enjoy philosophy and games like Portal, most probably you'll like this one too

When a friend of mine recommended me this game I just thought that it was a regular 3D puzzle game but man this game is much much deeper than that. As a puzzle game, this game is very good but the story is what makes this game a masterpiece imo, 10/10. The story may seem boring at first but trust me it gets so much better in the later parts.
Even if you don't care about the story there are other things to like about this game:
First of all it has a LOT of content and the Road to Gehenna DLC's cost is also justified for the amount of content it provides (and of course the story too).
Second: the game has a LOT of easter eggs to find, if you are into that.
Third: the soundtrack of this game is just excellent.
Fourth: the graphics are also really good.
Fifth: there are multiple endings one can unlock based on their choices/actions.

A love letter for those who enjoy puzzle games and reading, this game has some of the most interesting and thoughtful lore texts I've seen in a game. I'm a huge journal/codex/entry reader. I came for the puzzles and stayed for the rich lore I was not expecting to see.

Atmospheric puzzle game with very well made puzzles. Easily beats every other puzzle game I've ever played in terms of puzzle design except for Baba Is You, and is on par with the Myst series for story/atmosphere.

What a great puzzle game!!!
Amazing soundtrack that will stick in your head while solving puzzles throughout the different and beautiful scenery.
Great graphics, great addition of philosophy inquiries that will make you think and reflect outside of the puzzles themselves.
Fun and diverse variety of mechanics that only get harder and harder as the game progresses, eventually you will have to find a couple on your own, or at random on the harder puzzles!
Do not stop playing Talos principle on its first ending, and prove your worth and TRY to beat all the the puzzles in this game, including the ones in the DLC, every single part of this game feels truly rewarding.
Search, memorize, and do some critical thinking to become a messenger, and trascend beyond the reality that you have been given!

Amazing game!

I don't know what I expected, but this surpassed my expectations by a lot. It's so fun? So interesting? There's lore? The puzzles are just the right amount of challenging? I really like it. I should play it again sometime.

What I did: completed the game and the DLC, only thing I didn't do was gathering the stars.

I'm going to start the review writing the conclusion of it: The Talos Principle feels like a true classic of the puzzle genre.
After playing Lorelei and the Laser Eyes and The Witness (clearly two games which took inspiration from Talos), the puzzle game itch in me was still strong so I decided to finally pick up a game I was actually planning to play since release, which to my surprise was 10 (!) years ago. I'm talking subjectively here but I think the most important aspects in a puzzle game are probably the puzzles quality (having a solid and fun puzzle concept), the puzzle variety (to keep things fresh as much as possible) and finally a mysterious setting that keeps you going. After all, when the difficulty level rises up lategame it's not rare finding yourself stuck for more than 1 hour on a single puzzle and having that extra incentive to see what's next really helps. If you enjoy doing the puzzles regardless you're the type of player who can like things like the aforementioned The Witness (which has a mysterious setting, yeah, but does not give the players much info to get invested in it) but I'm not one of them and I'm glad The Talos Principle gave me a enigmatic setting to dive myself in. You'll explore a couple of fairly big maps and, as long as you're interested in reading terminals with philosophical texts, ancient logs and... QR codes scattered outside, there's plenty of things to read and think about. The story itself is very peculiar and I think it does a good job for the most part, including the ending.
I think the game clears the puzzle quality and variety matters as well. The puzzles utilize a couple of different tools, which will play a part together with the environment, and are set in somewhat big open rooms. Position and timing will be key in most of them so if you fear puzzle games because there may be math or a need for external knowledge you can rest assured there will be none here. The difficulty felt especially balanced to me (though the puzzles using the "double" feature really damaged my brain multiple times), it goes up nicely as you proceed forward and doesn't really get impossible or too cryptic at any point. The puzzles are also mostly "short", meaning that can be completed within 1-2 minutes at most, you don't have to do lots of complicated maneuvers for like 5 or 10 minutes. Being a somewhat old game there are some QoL problems. To mention the biggest issue, you'll likely get stuck (like literally, not for the solution) in a puzzle sometime and to get out your only option is to reset the room entirely (they're addressing this in the soon to be released remake). Another issue is the hint system, because the hints aren't really helpful at all. Speaking about difficulty again, I didn't bother with them because i'm too stupid but trying to get the stars seems like a big challenge and will appeal to those players who find the regular puzzles a tad too easy. If you want more content the dlc is as good as the base game, just be careful because all the puzzles you find there are hard.

from puzzles easy enough to insult your intellect, to puzzles hard enough, you feel embarassed to feel that dumb. great game. can't wait to play the sequel to feel like an idiot, like a genius, like an idiot and like a genius again, in the same rythm you took to read this.

really good puzzles.
brings up thought provoking philosophical questions.
multi layered story.
smooth enough movement.
has multiple endings.

it's over a decade old but really holds up well.

It can be said that this game draws inspiration from Portal although at the same time it provides a unique feeling with its aesthetics and its philosophical themes which can be traced in the story. I had a good time and there is no doubt some puzzles constituted a grave challenge and needed a lot of thinking. Nevertheless i strongly believe it should be shorter and more compact with less areas and puzzles, though it would still be enjoyable. Apart from its long duration which make it somehow tiresome, i have no complains.

It's a fun game to play with your family, especially young kids.

Wow. Just wow. This is one of the best games I have ever played, don’t even read the rest of this review, just do yourself a huge favor and buy it. Every single thing about this game is fantastic, the art style is consistent and nice to look at (even if it isn’t bleeding edge today, play the sequel for that) the gameplay is very refined first person puzzle solving, with great unique mechanics that don’t get old even though the game took me roughly thirty hours to beat, (for a game like this, that’s a massive runtime) they constantly find ways to spice up the puzzles and I never ran into a puzzle that didn’t innovate upon the game’s mechanics in some way. The story is phenomenal, the way you get information slowly drip fed to you over the course of the game is super well done and I genuinely cared to get all the secret stars to get the true ending (which is well worth it, it is awesome). It also plays perfectly on the Steam Deck, just set the graphics options to auto. Overall this is now one of my favorite games of all time, and I recommend it to anyone who is even slightly interested in puzzle games, and who can appreciate games as art. 10/10.

I would say I am a fan of puzzle games. Series like the Room, House of Da Vinci and Gordian Rooms are my cup of tea. I also very much like the Myst series, although I generally find them to have less focus on puzzles and more on the environment and story whereas I prefer more puzzle. The Talos Principle (and it's sequel) focuses very heavily on puzzles, the environment and the story. On top of this, the game is huge. I would have spent at least 30 hours to complete the game and I frequently looked at guides to solve a good number of the harder puzzles.

For a 2014 game, the graphics still hold up. I can see there is a remastered edition coming soon (Talos Principle: Reawakened) which I would recommend holding out for if the improved graphics are worth the extra money to you. The story is fine, but there is so much content to read on the terminals that I became fatigued and just clicked through it. It doesn't affect the gameplay, but the interaction with the terminals is important for several of the achievements.

I must admit that I became fatigued with the puzzles. At the start I was super engaged with the game and each puzzle was a joy and I couldn't stop thinking about the game when I wasn't playing the game. After about 2/3 of the main game I felt I was going through the motions. I probably should have taken a break and come back at this point, but my desire to complete a game got the better of me and I persisted. Generally the puzzles get harder until you reach a milestone and open a new section. The new section will introduce a new puzzle mechanic and the puzzles get fresh again, up to a point. I think many people found the playback puzzle mechanic frustrating, and I was certainly one of them. I won't go into specifics, but they were sometimes tedious and easy to stuff up which made them very time consuming, especially when they required some trial and error to nut out the solution. I was overjoyed when I found a keypress that allowed me to really speed up the playback which also served as a super sprint and made traversing the maps so much faster.

The game has multiple endings and you can finish the game without doing every puzzle the game has on offer. If you've had enough of the puzzles, you can walkaway right there and you would have got excellent value from the game. However, there are a bunch of bonus puzzles that you need to solve in order to fully complete the game, reach all of the endings and unlock all of the achievements. These were the hardest puzzles in the game. From memory, there were 9 of these "Star" puzzles. I solved the first 2, but followed solutions on YouTube for the rest as I just was no longer interested in slogging this game out. Come to think of it, collecting the stars throughout the game is also a challenge and I'm sure I looked up how to find many of them on YouTube. The game could easily take 40 hours if you didn't use any guides.

So, do I like the game or not? I absolutely loved it at the start, but was glad to finish it and walk away at the end. It's a big game best played in doses. You might find the puzzles samey, but they are truly satisfying to solve. So yes, I do recommend this game. It is excellent value for money that could potentially give you many hours of play. If you do not like puzzle games then this is definitely not for you.

NOTE: One final thing to mention is that some of the achievements are missable and to get them all in one playthrough, I highly advise following an achievement guide and referring to that guide very often. Even knowing this, I made a mistake with some of my responses to the dialogue which meant I missed the opportunity for one of the achievements. When I realised this I restarted the game and had to go through about 2/3 of the main puzzle line to correct the mistake.

good story, good puzzles, minimal frustration. definitely worth

Challenging puzzles. Some of the star puzzles were a little too obtuse. The philosophy got a bit tiresome after a while.

Great puzzle game where you gotta think your way through it. It's not as fast paced as something like Portal, but that makes this game more relaxed. So take your time, and combine those beams, to open the gates. And feel the pride and accomplishment, when you finally beat it!

Thought provoking, challenging, sadistic at times - this was a really great game. I dare you to complete it without peeking at solutions on youtube)

It's a game that's fun to play when you're looking for something casual and relaxing, yet engaging at the same time. It leaves you with a story that is vague enough to get you to want to finish the game. I'd definitely recommend!

As someone who struggled at baba is you (i didnt even beat that game), this game was an amazing breath of fresh air. The puzzles all have multiple solutions and are much more about spatial awareness. I consider myself pretty bad at puzzles but this game managed to be entertaining the entire way through. I'm not ashamed of admitting that I did spent an hour or two on some of the puzzles but it never felt irritating. Getting a lot of the optional stats was also a lot of fun.

The story/lore was absolutely amazing to read and the voice acting was on point as well. Really made you think even though I didn't understand all of it.
Overall just an amazing game and that's coming from someone who isn't used to puzzle games
The dlc is just as good as the main game.

Gonna buy the second game as soon as it goes on a big sale (money's tight)