I had to put the game down once i got to the "mid-end game" areas with the shadow plort portals. Its not fun to spend hours grinding these materials. You need perhaps a couple hundred to a thousand of them, which is really time consuming and unrewarding. If you miss a deposit place for them, good luck finding it without a wiki.
The most annoying element of the game is material farming. In SR1 it was fine to create the drills to harvest the goods, but having to go out every day to grind honey or jellystone is annoying. The drones can be a nice tool for that, but then youre trading off using a hard to come by drone out in the wild for needing to do more ranch work in their absence, like manually harvesting hundreds of plorts. By the time you have enough drones to afford putting them out in the wild, you have pretty much beaten the game and only need to expand the sanctuary, so whats the point?
The Drones are really annoying at times. they feel like they harvest pretty slow on the range, and dont do enough to make it feel like the ranch is automated. Its annoying to craft them. I end up having to spend so much time grinding honey for just another one. Maybe thats just me though.
I like the 1.2 addition of the sanctuary. It probably is the best part of the game. I like that making a pretty enclosure for slimes is rewarded. The only issue with the space is that the sprinkles are so annoying to farm, and drones are wayyy too slow to harvest them. It is also super annoying to find the shiny slimes, but i know thats by design.
Frankly the story is pretty mid. Pretty much only one new character is in the game, with the cast from the old game staying in touch. The story line just feels a bit nonsensical and handwavy, and ends with a really boring and unrewarding "boss fight." I wish there was more flesh to the story and more people to meet. What happened to the fun mini games like the first game had with the quicksilver slimes?
Overall, I do not like the grindy elements of the game. I wish more could be done to help with automation/reworking some of the drone stuff. The game is beautiful, and the new slimes are cool. That said, at the end of the day it doesnt feel much like a sequel. It can be fun to get lost in the game for a week, but after a while it becomes monotonous and unrewarding.
