Decent, but currently a downgrade to Powerwash Sim 1
- Having played a lot of the first game just recently, I could tell the water physics and sound design of the washing feeling slightly off and less satisfying. I don't know why there was a need to try to fix what wasn't broken
- The areas you finish do the ding very easily, reminding me of PWS1 in its early access days. I can understand wanting to balance it for fairness, but personally I liked the challenge of the first game being a little more demanding
- The menu and UI changed and to me feel confusing to navigate. I miss being able to simply press E for an equip pop-up that let's you change both the cosmetics and powerwashers easily, but now have to go through the much larger Esc menu
- If there's a way to change the place the text-messages you receive pop up, I haven't found it. Moving it to the left side from the right makes it easier for me to miss them, and I actually liked following the silly stories of the faceless characters while you play. Now I end up ignoring them cause I also haven't found the message log that was in the first game, which lets you read them again
- All the new features added like decorating the home office are pretty useless for what the game is meant to be, and rather lackluster too. If you like decorating a space in games, that shouldn't be the reason you buy this one
- It's appreciated that free levels are still being planned and released alongside paid DLC, but seems like we are getting less of them than in the previous game while the prices of DLC are rising, despite not offering more than what they used to. I bought several packs for the first game simply because I love it so much, but can't see myself doing it here
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Overall it's an alright game, but as someone who put 150+ hours into PWS1 I was a bit disappointed that what was good about the first game wasn't understood, and the sequel was made worse by trying to improve what didn't need it. Maybe this flavor of powerwashing is someone else's favourite, but I wouldn't recommend it to fans of the first game or even new players that much when a better version already exists
In my opinion the first game is the clear winner, with a better experience and more content for the price. But there is a potential here that can be worked on, and maybe PWS2 can catch up to the quality of its predecessor over time
