Contrary to popular belief, Ubisoft is actually really good at building convincing virtual worlds that are genuinely engaging to venture through. The main problem with a lot of their games, however, is that they’re designed around extraneous sets of obligations that the player has to fulfil rather than rewarding the exploration of their worlds in any meaningful way. In short, they tend to be a set of icons on a map rather than a map with content in it, and as such, playing through a lot of these games ultimately devolves into czeching items off a list. Somehow, Ubisoft Reflections managed to take Grow Home— a short, sweet, and linear game game about climbing up to the sky— and turn it into a bloated shadow of its former self that demonstrates this fundamental design problem better than almost any other game I’ve played. Grow Up isn’t a game with nearly enough substance to foster its open world. Part of what makes Grow Home so enjoyable is that it was short enough to make its minimalistic design feel worthwhile. There weren’t any items you had to go outta your way to collect, you were climbing up to the sky and discovering creatures and locations along the way that were interesting enough to pick up and examine. Grow Up takes this same philosophy and expands it into an open world where you have to collect everything across several mostly uninteresting biomes. B.U.D’s childlike, cluttered movement isn’t ideal for exploring an entire world, yet it is put front and centre in this game just like in Grow Home, but for a much longer and wider duration. Since this game shares DNA with its predecessor, it still has a sense of infectious charm for the first several hours, but its charm wears thin once the game stops being centred around exploration and starts being focused on collecting pieces around the bland world. That’s the primary problem with Grow Up, it’s built on a backbone of exploration, but its game loop is centred around clumsily walking across a world to fulfil an extraneous set of obligations. It is a Ubisoft open world without the strengths of Ubisoft’s world design. Grow Up is just the padding of an open world game, and if I wanted to experience that, I could just go to a grocery store I’ve never been to with someone else’s shopping list.

More of the same but much bigger and... better? Question mark because the game tends to set you up with oulandishly overpowered gear very early on, between abilities and plants that shoot you a mile up in the air, which make the climb to greater heights much more trivial than in the original if you only use the map correctly and keep your eyes (and ears) open for crystals at the start of the game. It focuses much more on using these overly helpful tools and much less on growing the Starplants, which were the core of the previous game and are here relegated to semi-optional features.

The vast majority of the other plants and some of the skills are downright useless as well: why use any plant other than the one that shoots you the most up in the air? Why use the parachute when you can tap your booster near the ground and achieve the same result? Why roll up into a ball when there is no area that even remotely requires it?

At that point you'll find yourself beating the game in an afternoon and then all that's left is completing optional challenges for cosmetics and achievements, in case you're into that. I'm not.

Still the same phenomenal game as before, but not as challenging, which detracts from the package.

One of those sequels that thinks bigger = better. Grow Home didn't need the average ubisoft style open world formula. The first game was a journey from point A to B with open ended exploration on the way. This is the typical Find 1/25 of the exact same mission type on your map to cross it off your list type gameplay. It's ok but not as engaging, tightly designed, or unique as the first one. It's like ubisoft shocked themselves when they put out a decent game for once so they tried to make a mid version of it to compensate.

Overall a good sequel that I would put on par with the original. It has it's own strengths but unfortunately I feel like it kind of misses what made the original so fun. Climbing is literally non-existent anymore as the game gives you absolutely OP power ups insanely early and once you get the glider the game is effectively over as every form of challenge in the game can be cheesed by it. The starplants aren't even a big deal in this game and take like 5 minutes to grow. Overall though it still has the charm the original had but it does miss the mark in some places.

100% of trophies earned. I enjoyed Grow Home, so this has been a game that I've been meaning to get to for a while and it's a nicely-done extension to the first game's premise, with a larger world to explore and a few new mechanics. Sadly, the game's somewhat glitchy and, while this in a way could be seen as part of its charm, overall I'd have preferred a but more polish. I don't regret my time with the game, though, as its climbing mechanic is a satisfying one (even post-Breath of the Wild), augmented with the world exploration and collectibles which always have some appeal to the completionist mentality that I have.

A pretty strong followup to the wonderful game Grow Home despite initially seeming as if it might have lost some of what made the original so magical. When I started the game and was greeted to this open world where the player was tasked with exploring a great deal of it, I immediately became concerned, as part of the reason the original game worked so well despite its simple gameplay loop was because of its brevity. Fortunately, it turns out that the game doesn't actually have its scope increased nearly as much as it seemed like it did, but instead it simply emphasises lateral movement above vertical this time around. While this leads to a different dynamic that stops the player from having to spend the vast majority of their time climbing, it's made up for by providing the player with a wide range of tools that allow them to cover massive distances remarkably quickly.

Very early on, the player is essentially given all the tools they need, and they all feel extremely powerful to the point of kinda trivialising a lot of the game, which works well for the comfy, serene experience that the game feels as if it's aiming for. The world is open and expansive, but there's never any real threats to be seen, you just get to explore this pretty sandbox for a few hours as you slowly collect the ship parts you need to beat the game. It's a game that's almost entirely lacking in challenge unless you aim for some of the optional content, but I don't see that as a bad thing when the game is clearly going for that more chilled out atmosphere, which would have been disrupted if it attempted to more overtly cater towards those looking for something a bit trickier.

While this game is a tad longer than Grow Home, I still got through all the main content in about 4 hours and found myself loving it every step of the way. I still think I prefer that game for the appeal of growing a plant to mountainous heights and exploring a series of mysterious floating islands, rather than this one being a bit more traditional in its presentation, but in any case, both of the games are extremely worth playing if you're looking for a comfy little game that makes you love the idea of exploring for exploration's sake. The fact that Ubisoft was able to make a duo of games that felt so strongly like charming indie games is incredible to me and I wish that they'd approach some more games of theirs with this sort of design philosophy in mind rather than solely aiming for their big AAA experiences.

(Escrito em 2016)

Grow Up é a continuação que Grow Home tanto pedia, já que o original era um joguinho tão pequeno e sem pretensões. Grow Up possui basicamente a mesma idéia de Grow Home, só que desta vez com mais horizontalidade e coisas para se fazer (a Ubisoft ama uma checklist e um minimapa). Para quem gostou de Grow Home pelos seus controles inovadores, Grow Up será um prato cheio que oferece um enorme playground e mecânicas novas a serem testadas; para quem gostou de Grow Home pela sua simplicidade, o jogo parecerá um engordamento desnecessário de uma experiência que já se mantinha muito bem. Eu, que amei Grow Home pelas duas razões, não sei o que pensar de Grow Up nesse quesito. Mesmo assim, me diverti bastante durante o tempo que joguei.