Available on: PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S
Played on: PlayStation 5
The original Slime Rancher defied conventional first-person gameplay by arming players with a vacuum-gun in a world of cute and (mostly) harmless slime creatures. The long-awaited sequel naturally goes bigger: a larger world, more slimes, a bigger ranch, more upgrades, and lots of decorating.
But, bigger isn’t necessarily better.
Read on for our review of Slime Rancher 2!
Home is Where the Slimes Are
Slime Rancher 2 is set in the new region of Rainbow Islands on the Far, Far Range. Our mostly-silent protagonist Beatrix returns, taking over an old Conservatory that’s perfect for ranching.
The islands are home to many of the same slimes from the first game: Pink, Tabby, Rock, Boom, etc, alongside a handful of new ones such as Flutter, Batty, and Angler. Slimes are the same adorable rascals we know and love from the first game, eating their preferred foods and, er, excreting their valuable plorts.
Plorts can be sold at the slime market, or deposited in the refinery for upgrades.
By using her trusty Vacpack, Beatrix can scoop up any slimes, food, resources, and plorts, and put them where they need to go in the ranch.
The Conservatory is a humongous area with only a few buildable plots for slime corrals, gardens, and chicken coops. By spending a few thousand Newbucks I can unlock additional areas that provide free chickens, fruit trees, or dark caves for more temperamental slimes. Though by the time I had the cash to purchase the last few areas — I didn’t really need them.
I went into Slime Rancher 2 a veteran of the first game. I knew that combining two different slimes to make largo slimes was the best way to go, and figured out early to breed slimes with easy-to-grow preferred foods.
The one new trick I picked up in the sequel: the new Yolky Slime makes chicken-raising hilariously easy, for the slimes that prefer meat. Soon I was swimming in plorts, though I still enjoyed playing the market, holding onto certain plorts until demand and prices rose, to get the most bang for my Newbuck.
In the Conservatory I still build corrals, upgrade them, and maybe later build ridiculously expensive drones for automation (maybe not!). If anything, the ranching feels like a bit of a downgrade due to the size of the Conservatory. Everything is so annoyingly spaced apart. It takes forever to run around checking feeders, gathering plorts, checking the market, and depositing resources in the Refinery.
I also missed the simple quest system from the first game. Periodically, allies would phone in and ask for random items, turning over rewards upon completion. That’s completely nixed this time around. Instead, friends phone in and simply give me stuff, mostly decorative blueprints that require precious materials to build.
The Conservatory
Decorating received a big boost this time around, but it wasn’t something I was super into, due to the material cost. In the early and mid-game, much of my income is either put back into my ranch, or spent on pricey upgrades, getting much-needed stamina increases, storage expansions, and the critical jetpack upgrade. I had little time or patience for spending plorts and rarer science resources on flags, statues, and benches — though late-game toys and rides certainly look nice.
But the Rainbow Islands are equally enormous, and demand thorough investigation that takes me far, far from my ranch.
There and Back Again
The Rainbow Islands are dived into several large zones separated by teleporters. The zone teleporters are unlocked by completely feeding the various gigantic Gordo slimes with the right food, a nice challenge that continues from the first game.
Each area features tons of hidden nooks, unlockable doors (via certain slime plorts), and new places to discover. Science materials can be harvested from limited nodes in each area, and dozens of treasure chests contain new blueprints and upgrade materials, rewarding players for meticulous exploration (while aggravating due to limited inventory space and resource rarity).
The weather is an awesome new feature that affects slime spawn rates and other events. Tornadoes can pick up slimes, while excess pollen brings in rare Tangle Slimes. My favorite is Slimefall, which you can probably guess, though sadly it was quite rare.
Pink and Angler Slimes
The first area, the Rainbow Fields, is mostly linear, but then the world cleverly splits, letting players unlock the next two areas at their own pace. Once again I appreciated the verticality of the Far, Far Range. It’s even more pronounced here, with some truly impressive vistas and winding tunnels.
It’s easy spending several in-game days away from the ranch (thankfully, slimes never starve). Beatrix’s limited inventory space serves as a reminder to return to the ranch to deposit the goods. Unfortunately, the return trips are where my main problem lies.
As much as I enjoy exploring a large, densely packed open world filled with slimes and resources and treasures, it’s almost always a complete pain to return home, then resume exploring. So much of my game time was spent backtracking across the same areas again and again and again. Shortcuts and Teleportation devices are few and far between (and all must be unlocked). If I hadn’t discovered that the mobile refinery device can be placed, used to deposit resources, and picked back up, I might have lost my patience a lot sooner than I did.
Where I did lose my patience was in the endgame area, the Grey Labyrinth.
The Grey Labyrinth is another enormous, sprawling region with some neat new aesthetics and gameplay that I won’t quite spoil here. But it’s super annoying to get to (until a certain teleporter is unlocked), and the grind to unlocking the content there is nothing short of ridiculous compared to the rest of the game. Exploration became more of a slog than a joy. All my time was spent there, instead of building up my ranch and caring for slimes, and I realized this game was going in a direction I just wasn’t appreciating anymore.
The Rating
Slime Rancher 2 is rated E10+ by the ESRB with Fantasy Violence. The series combines first-person gameplay with a cute and colorful world, and emphasis on exploration and creature collecting. Some slimes can inadvertently damage players (Crystal Slime spikes, Boom Slime explosions). Slimes can also transform into dangerous Tarr if they eat too many different plorts. Tarr are fast, aggressive, and a little scary. However, Tarr (and feral slimes) can be completely disabled when starting a new game.
The Takeaway
Bigger is usually better in a sequel, but Slime Rancher 2 is just a bit too big. The world and exploration side got a huge, sprawling boost, while the ranch side feels like barely an afterthought, with little changes or improvement. I still enjoyed my first dozen or so hours exploring the new world, meeting new slimes, and setting up my functioning ranch, but without some fundamental improvements or changes, this series may have run its course.
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