The road to Slime Rancher 2 has been a weird one. There was a lot of love for the original game, and a lot of excitement around the sequel. That kind of fizzled when the second game released into early access, and as excited as I was about this game, I couldn’t force myself to drop other games to make time for it, and it seems that a lot of people felt the same way. Now though, the sequel has been properly released and it’s time to collect as many of these silly little cute slimes as we can so we can sell their poo for profit.

Slime Rancher 2, wouldn’t you believe it, is very similar to the first game in terms of the base concept. Go out, collect slimes, feed them, sell their poo, aka plorts. You will have a home base that has space for a variety of different coops and gardens to grow food, breed chickens, and of course corrals keep all the different slimes you could want. This is where the first real significant change comes in that players will feel immediately. Inflation has hit the work of Slime Rancher hard, while plorts are worth pretty much the same as they were in the first game, upgrades all cost about twice as much if not more. While there are more spaces available for slimes, it’s hard to get your footing with the cost of things.

This brings us to the second big update, there are a ton of upgrades available, but to be able to research them you need money and plorts to be inserted into a machine, aka not sold. This means you will have to divy up all the plorts you get to be able to get upgrades to make various parts of the game easier in the long run, but miss out on a ton of money that can get you more upgrades and expand the map. If I had to be honest, this all feels like a way to artificially inflate gametime as if the first game wasn’t already enjoyable enough.

There are already a lot more types of slimes, a lot more map locations, and a lot more space to run a farm, plus customisation for your farm like tables, chairs, plants, and various other things so you can spend your money on this stuff to make it your own. Upon a quick check, to fully upgrade any corral it costs an extra 660 coins each, amounting to A LOT unless you want to run a lot of risk of ending up with Tar Slimes, the outcome of a slime trying to combine with 2 or more other slimes, the evil black void that will ruin your farm and your life if you let it.

Some of the other new improvements are the environmental hazards. The addition of lightning storms and whirlwinds means there are a lot of things to watch out for besides just tar slimes and maybe some of the little slimes that accidentally hurt you, like the rolling rock slime or the new fire slimes. The cyclones also bring cyclone slimes though, which only appear, you guessed it, from a cyclone. The danger is that cyclones will pick up slimes and toss them around, so a pink-tabby slime might get tossed to where a bunch of bunny slimes are and combine with them, causing there to be a ton of tar slimes when you leave your base to explore. I like this part of the game because it actually makes your health mean something, it can be dangerous on this new island, and that’s something the original game lacked.

While the world is pretty, it doesn’t look massively better than the original game. It’s a bigger world, with a bit more variety to the landscape because of that, overall though it’s the same level of quality, which is good for sure. The same kind of feeling goes toward the music, the ambience is a bit better, especially during the various storms, but overall it’s very similar to the original game. Which again, was good so why fix what isn’t broken may have been the thought process.

Overall, Slime Rancher 2 lost a lot of its momentum mostly because of the early access release and feels like it has a bit of a gameplay loop issue because apparently even slimes deal with inflation. It’s a fun game overall, with some fun improvements like the weather system, and if you enjoyed the original you will likely have fun this time around too.

Graphics: 6.5 The graphics don’t feel like a big improvement over the first game. The game is cute for sure and offers a bit more variety, there’s nothing wrong with how it looks, but its just not the improvement you might expect after 9 years.	Gameplay: 5.5 The gameplay loop doesn’t have the same feel the original had. The large increase to costs and all the new places to spend your earnings means you’re more locked to just making money than exploring this time around.
Sound: 7.5 While the music is very similar to the first game, the ambient noises are even better. The weather adds a lot of atmosphere to want to keep your headphones on or TV sound going.	Fun Factor: 6.0 As much as I enjoyed my time with Slime Rancher 2, it’s missing some of the magic the original had. Whether it’s the increase to costs, or the lack of quality of life updates that could have come from the first game.
Final Verdict: 6.0

Slime Rancher 2 is available now on PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X.

Reviewed on Xbox Series X

A copy of Slime Rancher 2 was provided by the publisher.