Worth playing if you enjoyed the original, but I really do not understand the change in direction they took with regards to slime science. In [i]Slime Rancher[/i] slime science is more of an add-on--a way to optimize your ranching, with ranching itself being the main focus and the main vehicle by which the user progresses through the game. [i]Slime Rancher 2[/i] is the opposite; slime science gadgets are now essential to advancing the story, which is not only mechanically but thematically centered around slime science moreso than ranching.
Farming slimes is necessary insofar as you need certain plorts and money to make the gadgets that are necessary to progress, but ranching often feels less like the central draw of the game and more like a side grind you need to do to optimize your progress towards the game's actual goal (building more gadgets). Moreover, because resources have to be gathered manually for a large portion of the game, I often spend more time running around vaccing up jellystone or lava dust than doing anything slime-related, and I'm often forced to sacrifice inventory space that I would rather use for ranching tasks like gathering slimes or plorts, because I [i]need[/i] the resources and refinery links are expensive. This is a bizarre direction to take for a game that is literally titled "Slime Rancher".
I also think locking upgrade components behind treasure pods for both essential and convenience slime science upgrades was a mistake. The collectibles in the first game were nonessential, offering some nice decoration items, extra resources, and sometimes useful utility blueprints, encouraging players to look for them without feeling like they're missing out on too much if they don't find them all, and providing a reasonable challenge for achievement hunters. Turning that into an essential game mechanic feels like such a cheap, artificial way to add friction to the game progression. Maybe it's supposed to encourage the player to explore more, but many of the pod locations are so tricky that I think it fails to facilitate exploration in an organic way, instead encouraging very systematic scouring of the terrain. I also wish they had differentiated the pod sound effect more from the emissions made by radiant ore and jellystone, because that has been a frequent point of confusion and frustration for me.
[i]Slime Rancher 2[/i] also introduces a bunch of graphical "upgrades" that gave me a bunch of performance issues. My rig is not very new, so there's only so much I can reasonably complain about on that front--but, to be fair, I also think a lot of the graphical changes are ugly. I'm so incredibly sick of how many games keep desperately chasing that uncanny, shiny, Unreal Engine (TM) look, with tons of bloom and motion blur and making sure you can see the movement of each individual blade of grass. And it feels terribly out of place in this game. I can think of few games which needed chromatic aberration and dramatic motion blur less than [i]Slime Rancher 2[/i]. I just can't understand it. I turned most of the extra shiny visual stuff off within 5 minutes of starting the game, and I found the visuals much better for it, but even then I still experienced a lot of stuttering and frame drops, particularly in the Grey Labyrinth.
The core of the game is still similar enough to the original that I enjoyed it. I largely like the new slime types; the environments are very pretty; the soundtrack is amazing; and I enjoy the weather mechanics. I'm not finished with the main story yet, but I'm sort of ambivalent to it so far (but I do think adding [spoiler]dialogue bits for Beatrix in her conversations with Gigi[/spoiler] was entirely unnecessary). Overall I'm having fun. But some of the design decisions for this installment make for disappointing changes to an otherwise solid foundation.
