Honestly it's just not for me and I wanted to offer a take that is an alternative to the amount of praise this game gets. I ended up not finishing it because I just wasn't having fun.
I didn't care for any of Talos Principle. The whole game felt pointlessly obfuscated. The story was somewhat intriguing but I hated how it was delivered in bits and pieces for no discernible reason. The core concepts could easily be expressed in a short story or some other work of fiction that doesn't gate itself behind chores.
Speaking of, the chores. The entire game consists of puzzle after puzzle after puzzle. The structure of the game is just "do puzzles so you can gain access to more puzzles". The puzzles are either trivially easy or frustrating in their structure, and none of them seem to naturally build upon each other. Most of the puzzles took 30 seconds to solve, but a select few had me struggling for half an hour or more. I never once felt like the process of solving one of these puzzles was actually rewarding - they felt a little more like when your substitute teacher in elementary school gives you busywork. I get that this is supposed to be diegetic storytelling and that they have a purpose within the context of Talos Principle's story but if I wanted to torture myself I would just... well, you get the point.
After a while I just looked up the story and while it's not strictly bad, I think the presentation is pretentious and the premise is just fine, not amazing.
It's a shame too, because I found the initial presentation to be pretty intriguing. The pseudo-religious themes had me hooked from the beginning, and it's a shame that Talos Principle isn't really a game that felt rewarding to actually play. I'm not saying it's actually bad, but the games I like make me feel challenged, and the Talos Principle just felt sometimes frustrating, mostly boring. Maybe you'll like it more than I did.

Honestly it's just not for me and I wanted to offer a take that is an alternative to the amount of praise this game gets. I ended up not finishing it because I just wasn't having fun. I didn't care for any of Talos Principle. The whole game felt pointlessly obfuscated. The story was somewhat intriguing but I hated how it was delivered in bits and pieces for no discernible reason. The core concepts could easily be expressed in a short story or some other work of fiction that doesn't gate itself behind chores. Speaking of, the chores. The entire game consists of puzzle after puzzle after puzzle. The structure of the game is just "do puzzles so you can gain access to more puzzles". The puzzles are either trivially easy or frustrating in their structure, and none of them seem to naturally build upon each other. Most of the puzzles took 30 seconds to solve, but a select few had me struggling for half an hour or more. I never once felt like the process of solving one of these puzzles was actually rewarding - they felt a little more like when your substitute teacher in elementary school gives you busywork. I get that this is supposed to be diegetic storytelling and that they have a purpose within the context of Talos Principle's story but if I wanted to torture myself I would just... well, you get the point. After a while I just looked up the story and while it's not strictly bad, I think the presentation is pretentious and the premise is just fine, not amazing. It's a shame too, because I found the initial presentation to be pretty intriguing. The pseudo-religious themes had me hooked from the beginning, and it's a shame that Talos Principle isn't really a game that felt rewarding to actually play. I'm not saying it's actually bad, but the games I like make me feel challenged, and the Talos Principle just felt sometimes frustrating, mostly boring. Maybe you'll like it more than I did.