I wasn't even aware that Croteam was working on a second Talos Principle, so when I saw the "available now" notification in steam I was pleasantly surprised and went ahead and bought the game at full price (something I do very rarely.) The first game is one of the few puzzle games (or games in general) I consider to be a "must play", and while I think this game is a worthy successor, it leaves a few things wanting.

I'll start with the good. The new areas are absolutely beautiful. While none are direct copies of areas from the first game, they all feel as if they belong with those areas. And if you've every played the Myst series, I think you might find they've taken a slight inspiration from there.
The new mechanics are all interesting and (generally) well explained by the "tutorial" puzzles. They've also removed or replaced most of the less fun mechanics from the first game, which I'd generally consider a good thing.
I'm inclined to say the writing is top-notch, but given that a good chunk of it is excerpted from historical writers, philosophers, and theologians, I can't put all of that on Croteam. Nonetheless, even excepting what they borrowed from elsewhere, the writing is quite good.

For the "bad": While the new areas are absolutely beautiful, they are massive and somewhat confusing to navigate. The first game generally had tightly put-together levels that were very straight-forward to navigate and explore. The levels here are very indulgent and even with the signposts and compass, I often found myself having to backtrack or go around an unexpected obstacle to get to the puzzle I was trying to solve. And if you don't have the game installed on an SSD, you might be confronted with a _very_ low poly version of the level until the game has an opportunity to load it fully into memory (which in my experience usually didn't take very long) but did become irritating as I went back through all the areas at the end of the game to finish up any stuff I'd missed and complete the "Golden Puzzles" (which only unlock after you've completed every other puzzle in the game, annoyingly requiring that you go back through each of the 12 areas to solve one puzzle each.)
And for the puzzles, the first game (especially with the expansion) had a wade gamut of difficulties. Ranging from very straightforward to puzzles requiring several successive steps, careful timing, and positioning. At best, this game only really uses one of steps, timing, or positioning in any one puzzle, severely lowering the difficulty and complexity at the top end. This is especially disappointing as you reach the portion of the game where it stops introducing new mechanics, but doesn't combine more than two of them in any one puzzle. And (without spoiling) while the final puzzle is actually a series of 10 interconnected puzzles that could have been an interesting combination of all the mechanics you'd learned throughout the game, the main difficulty comes from the fact that there are several areas where you can fall off the map, which forces a (partial) reset, requiring you to re-solve any of the puzzles you'd already solved.
And while the writing is overall quite good, the story presentation I generally found to be a bit lackluster. Maybe I'm being a bit harsh on this point, but I felt like there were way too many dialogue trees used to deliver stories for a puzzle game.

Overall, where I'd say the first game is a low 9/ or a high 8/10, this one's probably a high 7/ or maybe a low 8/10. I think $30 is reasonable for what I got out of it, and I'm looking forward to the expansion I have to assume is coming soon™, but I wish they could've delayed this game a few more weeks/months to work on the later/harder puzzles and smooth out the last few rough edges.

I wasn't even aware that Croteam was working on a second Talos Principle, so when I saw the "available now" notification in steam I was pleasantly surprised and went ahead and bought the game at full price (something I do very rarely.) The first game is one of the few puzzle games (or games in general) I consider to be a "must play", and while I think this game is a worthy successor, it leaves a few things wanting. I'll start with the good. The new areas are absolutely beautiful. While none are direct copies of areas from the first game, they all feel as if they belong with those areas. And if you've every played the Myst series, I think you might find they've taken a slight inspiration from there. The new mechanics are all interesting and (generally) well explained by the "tutorial" puzzles. They've also removed or replaced most of the less fun mechanics from the first game, which I'd generally consider a good thing. I'm inclined to say the writing is top-notch, but given that a good chunk of it is excerpted from historical writers, philosophers, and theologians, I can't put all of that on Croteam. Nonetheless, even excepting what they borrowed from elsewhere, the writing is quite good. For the "bad": While the new areas are absolutely beautiful, they are massive and somewhat confusing to navigate. The first game generally had tightly put-together levels that were very straight-forward to navigate and explore. The levels here are very indulgent and even with the signposts and compass, I often found myself having to backtrack or go around an unexpected obstacle to get to the puzzle I was trying to solve. And if you don't have the game installed on an SSD, you might be confronted with a _very_ low poly version of the level until the game has an opportunity to load it fully into memory (which in my experience usually didn't take very long) but did become irritating as I went back through all the areas at the end of the game to finish up any stuff I'd missed and complete the "Golden Puzzles" (which only unlock after you've completed every other puzzle in the game, annoyingly requiring that you go back through each of the 12 areas to solve one puzzle each.) And for the puzzles, the first game (especially with the expansion) had a wade gamut of difficulties. Ranging from very straightforward to puzzles requiring several successive steps, careful timing, and positioning. At best, this game only really uses one of steps, timing, or positioning in any one puzzle, severely lowering the difficulty and complexity at the top end. This is especially disappointing as you reach the portion of the game where it stops introducing new mechanics, but doesn't combine more than two of them in any one puzzle. And (without spoiling) while the final puzzle is actually a series of 10 interconnected puzzles that could have been an interesting combination of all the mechanics you'd learned throughout the game, the main difficulty comes from the fact that there are several areas where you can fall off the map, which forces a (partial) reset, requiring you to re-solve any of the puzzles you'd already solved. And while the writing is overall quite good, the story presentation I generally found to be a bit lackluster. Maybe I'm being a bit harsh on this point, but I felt like there were way too many dialogue trees used to deliver stories for a puzzle game. Overall, where I'd say the first game is a low 9/ or a high 8/10, this one's probably a high 7/ or maybe a low 8/10. I think $30 is reasonable for what I got out of it, and I'm looking forward to the expansion I have to assume is coming soon™, but I wish they could've delayed this game a few more weeks/months to work on the later/harder puzzles and smooth out the last few rough edges.