Slime Rancher 2 felt like an immediate step backwards and the more I played the more this occurred to me.
I've been struggling to understand why, but I found myself very frequently lost and oftentimes bored when traversing the maps in this game compared to the original despite them being horizontally bigger. I think the map geometry in the first game was more interesting despite thematically being a bit more more generic.
In Slime Rancher 1 in most of the areas there were a fairly wide variety of slimes available, mostly dominated by a few dominant common ones and then rarely some others, which felt like a completely reasonable ratio. Within a large amount of Slime Rancher 2's regions I found that there was significantly less variety which also led to me having a lot less variety of slimes for the first hour of gameplay whereas in the original I definitely had way more slimes and was keeping them in cooler environments.
I found it especially bizarre that I kept getting the feeling that it'd be too risky to go too far into any unexplored territory because I'd get lost and struggle to find my way back in time to feed my slimes and they'd break out. This left me feeling forced into a gameplay loop where I was keeping up with the food for all of my slimes as much as I could and only then going out to travel, for very brief periods of time. I found parallels to the issues I encountered playing Stardew Valley with the game's energy system and day cycles, where I'd be almost done with something and then having to stressfully run back to make sure nothing bad happens.
During a number of sessions playing this game I found myself so much more bored of the grind than I was with the first game too, I think the layout of the ranch and maybe just the way some numbers are tweaked compared to the original game is why I'm finding difficulty there.
Overall I can't recommend this sequel in its current early access state unless these issues are addressed personally. I'd suggest picking up the first game if anything I've mentioned turned you off of this one and you're still interested.
I've been struggling to understand why, but I found myself very frequently lost and oftentimes bored when traversing the maps in this game compared to the original despite them being horizontally bigger. I think the map geometry in the first game was more interesting despite thematically being a bit more more generic.
In Slime Rancher 1 in most of the areas there were a fairly wide variety of slimes available, mostly dominated by a few dominant common ones and then rarely some others, which felt like a completely reasonable ratio. Within a large amount of Slime Rancher 2's regions I found that there was significantly less variety which also led to me having a lot less variety of slimes for the first hour of gameplay whereas in the original I definitely had way more slimes and was keeping them in cooler environments.
I found it especially bizarre that I kept getting the feeling that it'd be too risky to go too far into any unexplored territory because I'd get lost and struggle to find my way back in time to feed my slimes and they'd break out. This left me feeling forced into a gameplay loop where I was keeping up with the food for all of my slimes as much as I could and only then going out to travel, for very brief periods of time. I found parallels to the issues I encountered playing Stardew Valley with the game's energy system and day cycles, where I'd be almost done with something and then having to stressfully run back to make sure nothing bad happens.
During a number of sessions playing this game I found myself so much more bored of the grind than I was with the first game too, I think the layout of the ranch and maybe just the way some numbers are tweaked compared to the original game is why I'm finding difficulty there.
Overall I can't recommend this sequel in its current early access state unless these issues are addressed personally. I'd suggest picking up the first game if anything I've mentioned turned you off of this one and you're still interested.