The experience of playing Slime Rancher 2 is divided into two parts. First, the player must catch slimes, feed them, and collect their waste products for sale. The second half is devoted to exploring the colorful world of the game, which is much more extensive than it seems at first.
A New Life on a New Island
The main character of the first game is back in business! A girl named Beatrix has become an experienced slime rancher, and is able to squeeze the maximum capital out of any slimy ball. Having achieved success, she became bored, and therefore the young adventurer abandoned the ranch at the first opportunity to create a ranch in another place. I didn't play the first part, and therefore got an experience as new as it is for the main character.
The primary goal is to find slimes – small, funny creatures that inhabit all corners of the island. Slimes vary in type and shape, and are adapted to various natural conditions. You can find standard pink or yellow creatures, or rarer cat slimes, egg slimes, and even an explosive species.
Basically, slimes feed on vegetables, fruits, and meat. After eating, they excrete processed material, which people use in production and everyday life. If a slime eats the poop of a slime of another species, it will acquire its taste preferences, and learn to produce the corresponding waste.
Excessive eating of feces turns friendly babies into oily monsters, who turn their former relatives into their own kind, and attack the main character in a crowd. This threat can be eliminated with water, or ignored until the problem resolves itself – you have to try hard to lose in a battle with these creatures.
Many slimes are active at certain times of the day, and some depend on weather conditions. Rain makes vegetables and fruits grow faster and destroys monsters, which gives ordinary slimes the opportunity to feed and produce waste faster. A hurricane blows everything in its path, but it is at such moments that special slimes appear that you will not find in good weather.
Life on the Ranch
You can run around the island, collect the waste of wild slimes, and thus earn a living. But it is much more effective to build special pens and launch captured slimes there. All that remains is to feed the prisoners and collect their waste. The process is slowed down by the small number and high cost of teleports — for a long time there is only one available, and even that teleports to the base in one direction.
The main tool of the main character is a special slime pump, which is able to suck up a limited number of slimes, their waste and useful items. The collected goods are shot into the store, where the price of waste changes every day – in most cases it decreases. Everything else can be sent for recycling to improve the slime pump, the maximum supply of health and energy, or create tools such as teleports and remote resource delivery points.
With the money received, you can improve the pens – build additional walls, an automatic feeding and waste collection system. You can allocate a plot for a vegetable garden, which will allow you to grow certain types of vegetables and fruits. If you add egg-like slimes that improve their fertility to the pen with chickens, then the resulting meat will be enough to feed three pens with slimes. Also for money you can expand the territory of the ranch, which will allow you to create additional pens and gardens.
After dozens of hours, the farm will begin to prosper. This will be a vast territory, where it depends only on the player's tastes – what types of slimes will inhabit it. The study of new technologies will allow you to create drones that further automate the process. It's a pity that drones are only capable of performing one task at a time, and they have to be recharged – full automation will not be achieved!
The game is doing its best to make the player fill everything around with furniture and interior items. Trinkets have a separate section in the item creation menu, and they are sold for crazy money in the store — you can only buy toys for slimes from the useful ones.
The heroine is constantly called by acquaintances from the mainland. These scoundrels talk about nothing, and share blueprints for another junk. You have to listen to the reasoning of the grandmother, who wants to have a child with her elderly spouse – they will even succeed, congratulations! I would prefer not to communicate with these people, but there is a small chance that they will share important information and blueprints for items needed for passage – you have to step over yourself.
It's Not Easy for Adventurers Here
To advance through the plot and collect new slimes, you need to explore the territory. Orientation on the ground is inconvenient and slow — you can blame the bad landmarks and the small number of available teleports for this.
Periodically, you will have to remove various obstacles:
- Many paths are blocked by giant slimes, which need to be fed with a huge amount of products;
- Slime statues are activated by waste, and open new passages. If there is no necessary waste at hand, then you will have to remember their location and return later. You can put marks on the map, but they are not very convenient.
Activating giant portals opens up new biomes. They are inhabited by new types of slimes, whose waste will be useful in business and for sale, and new minerals are found. In secluded corners there are spheres where the items needed to improve equipment are located. In most cases, they contain blueprints for another trinket – then all the efforts to search turn out to be useless!
The main places for advancing through the plot are the ruins, where the secrets of the island are stored. It will take a long time before you can activate the mechanisms inside the ruins and advance through the plot. The development of the base and the use of resources for exploring wild lands resembles the game Forest. The difference is that in Slime Rancher 2 the heroine does not need food, water and sleep, and instead of crazy cannibals you are attacked by cute slimes – it's even better!
Diagnosis
Slime Rancher 2 is the embodiment of comfort and tranquility. In the game, you can spend hours taking care of slimes, making a profit from them, and watching your ranch slowly develop. And in your free time, you can simply admire the views – beautiful graphics and music contribute to the soothing atmosphere.
But when it comes to advancing through the plot, peace leaves the room. You will have to climb all the hidden corners and communicate with non-player characters in order to get the necessary resources. You will have to come to terms with the fact that there may not be something needed in the spheres, but another trinket. And to solve puzzles, you will have to strain your brain, which has completely relaxed in everyday life.
Pro:
- It's exciting to develop a ranch and take care of slimes
- Beautiful views
- Relaxing atmosphere
Contra:
- I don't want to communicate with non-player characters
- Useless store
- It is inconvenient to navigate the terrain
- Too much junk to ennoble the environment
