The Talos Principle 2 – Road to Elysium
Global : 5/5 (Perfect)
Road to Elysium is divided into 3 parts, I’ll review and rate their difficulty individually.
Orpheus Ascending
Difficulty : 2.5/5 (A bit Hard)
Orpheus Ascending is focused only on lasers and the interactions between them. Laser priority, creating loops and laser obstruction are the main things you’ll encounter.
You might be familiar with them if you played some Talos 1 mods, but they never got their chance to shine in official puzzles so that’s great.
This part only has puzzles, no stars (but there’s exploration and QR codes to find). Like any world in the base game, it feels like a tutorial but a lot more interesting.
As the mechanics are advanced laser tricks, even though the puzzles are not hard (except the last one and maybe one just before it), you still need to analyze carefully and think.
I was just a little bit disappointed by the Heart of Anubis, it looked extremely promising in the trailer but it ended up being just big, not really challenging.
Isle of the Blessed
Difficulty : 2.5/5 (A bit Hard)
Isle of the Blessed is the sequel to the base game. A giant, gorgeous island divided into 3 areas. I have to insist, the visuals of Talos 2 are incredible and this island is no exception, it’s outstanding.
It’s exactly what you would expect from a basic Talos 2 expansion : easy-medium puzzles with a few meh stars (one of them had an interesting location though). At least the tutorial feeling of the base game is gone, but the puzzles are still not very challenging. Though still extremely fun.
Once you’ve completed all the areas, you gain access to the huge hexahedron in the middle of the island. While it’s not what I expected, it pleasantly surprised me.
You have to find your way in a giant maze and progress step by step. A very nice change in the puzzles that also offers magnificent overviews of the island.
Into the Abyss
Difficulty : 4/5 (Very Hard)
Into the Abyss is pure perfection. No puzzle game can even come close to Talos when it offers such high quality puzzles, it’s ridiculous.
This is what at least the delta and golden door puzzles of the base game should’ve been.
You play as Byron when he was stuck in Athena’s nightmare in the megastructure. The themes and atmosphere are a lot darker, it’s the total opposite of Isle of the Blessed.
And to complement that darker tone, we finally get true hard puzzles.
Harder advanced laser tricks, big puzzles with several steps to figure out, puzzles in which you can lock yourself if you’re not careful… this is so good. There are also puzzles that feature original mechanisms never seen in the base game, it really feels inspired.
I tend to prefer very small but tricky puzzles in other puzzle games, but my favorite thing in Talos is puzzles like The Ring or Triple. They are so satisfying to analyze and figure out, without sacrificing the challenge or being too hard either.
In a perfect world, Into the Abyss would be the standard of difficulty for the future of Talos, but I doubt it will happen unfortunately.
The stars are also missing in this part, but again the stars of Talos 2 are not good so I understand why they didn’t bother.
Conclusion
Road to Elysium is pretty much the perfect expansion for Talos 2. Even though Into the Abyss is hands down the best, every part is very good.
There’s no reason not to buy it if you own Talos 2, extremely highly recommended.
Developer: Croteam
Publisher: Devolver Digital
Platforms: Steam – Windows, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, GeForce Now
Release Date: June 14, 2024