Finally, after waiting three years, Slime Rancher 2 is out of early access. After completing Slime Rancher and adding it to my favourite video games list, I was excited about the announcement of a sequel in 2022. I never buy early access games, so I kept a close eye on when it was going to get a full release. I've been nervous about picking the game up out of a fear of disappointment. Watching someone play it in an unfinished state during the early access release made me scared for its development. Slime Rancher means a lot to me, mostly due to the context around me playing the first game. Here's hoping it lives up to the original.

The Slime Rancher series is a tycoon & exploration game that was there at the genesis of the “comfy” genre. You explore the world to get more slimes to ranch, which make you money to upgrade your abilities and your base. Upgrades to your jetpack and movement speed return, making exploring the world as fun as ever. Attempting to find the secrets and getting places you weren't intended to remain one of my favourite parts of the series.

That said, Slime Rancher 2 doesn't feel like a sequel in the traditional sense. Yeah, you've got a new world, a few new slimes, and old slimes with new mechanics. However, there isn't much new going on in the game. It feels like a “remix” of the first game. Everything feels the same, but some things are changed slightly. For example, you used to get crafting materials with stationary drills; now they're out in the world to pick up while you're exploring. Another example, a few slimes you would get normally are now tied to a new weather mechanic. It's fine, I don't hate it. I just wish this felt like Slime Rancher 2 and not Slime Rancher Again.

Unfortunately, that's where the positive things end for Slime Rancher 2. In September 2025, when the game came out of early access, they added the final major content update. The final section of the Grey Labyrinth was added, closing out the story of the game. I have so many things I want to say about the Grey Labyrinth, so I'm just going to jump into it.

The Grey Labyrinth is too big. The entire map is too big, but adding the Grey Labyrinth on top of the already excessively large map is painful. You spend too much time running back and forth between random locations to achieve something as simple as opening a door. Every time I would make progress through the labyrinth, I would run into more locked doors that needed a plort from a slime that was nowhere near the door. It took me 27 hours to beat the game, and it felt like all I was doing was backtracking through a massive map two times the size of the first game with the same amount of content. Additionally, it's a labyrinth, meaning, it's confusing to navigate. Even as I got towards the end of my playthrough, I still didn't understand how to effectively get to specific locations. There's also vertical levels of every section, making the map useless to use for navigation. Being forced to use the jetpack to get to locations I need to get to frequently isn't fun. The stop and start gameplay of having to traverse with the jetpack is mind-numbing. The jetpack is supposed to help you explore, find treasure, access hard to reach locations. It's not and was never meant to be your only means of getting to normal areas.

In the Grey Labyrinth, there's two unique plorts that can't be ranched; the Shadow plort and the Prisma plort. They're both poorly designed, much like the Grey Labyrinth itself. Shadow plorts require you to shoot things at Shadow Slimes, forcing them to drop some plorts. You use these to open doors, sell for money, deposit for upgrades, and unlock secrets of the area, often requiring between 10 and 50. The problem is that the Shadow Slimes are designed to jump straight off the nearest edge. The plorts and the items you shoot at the slimes also go flying all over the place. More time-wasting, a theme of this area. Prisma plorts are obtained by waiting for an unstable anomaly to happen, making all the slimes unstable. Once you feed them, they'll drop unstable plorts, which you then run to stabilization gates located around the map. Unstable areas happen at random, in random locations. They also may not happen around a gate, and you can't hold them in your inventory for too long, or they'll go flying out. Double time-wasting. You use these for all the same reasons as shadow plorts. The time-wasting, sitting around, and running around in circles is NOT FUN.

I saw a review that summed up Slime Rancher 2 perfectly. The game doesn't respect your time. The map is too big, there's too much running around, there's too much waiting around, and there's barely any of what made Slime Rancher fun. Something else I didn't touch on is the story. It feels so forced, and I just couldn't care less by the end of the game. Slime Rancher's story had a build up that didn't really hit until the end of the game. They try to do the same here, but it's a significantly worse version of the first game that I found myself trying to rush through it. There's nothing here that's an improvement. This is by far the worst sequel to a video game I've played to date.

So, is it worth completing?

All achievements were obtained on the hardest possible difficulty. (1.5x damage, tarr slimes enabled)

Most of the achievements follow the progression of the game, but if you were looking at the list while playing, you'll have gotten most of the extras. The post game consists of you farming money to complete the Slimepedia, which is an achievement. This happened to be the most enjoyable part of the game for me, ranch upkeep. However, to complete the Slimepedia, you need to get all the toys for slimes. You buy these from the shop, but only once per day. There's no duplicate protection, of course. Luckily, you can fast-forward time to cycle the shop.

Usually, I have an “achievements that stand out” section, but there isn't any. They're all standard achievements, and none of them require you to do anything special or interesting. Should you complete Slime Rancher 2? That's a question of, should you play Slime Rancher 2 at all.

Slime Rancher 2 could have been so much more. They added ways to decorate the massive ranch they gave you. There are more gadgets to play around with. But by the end of the game, I couldn't bring myself to want to play with any of those things. I feel like I had wasted so much time doing nothing that I wasn't able to justify playing more.

The Sanctuary Update (1.2)

No new achievements were added.

My favourite thing to hear when a game gets an update is "very rare" in association with the new mechanic. The Slime Rancher developers are once again showing that they essentially do not respect your time in this world at all. I don't understand why there needs to be MMO-style rare spawns that seemingly serve no purpose. This update is decoration focused, so it wasn't for me to begin with, but it makes completing the game again a little difficult.

This update added a new area called The Sanctuary, a new variation of every slime type called Radiant Slimes, and a new currency. To unlock this new area, you need to find broken down robots within the Grey Labyrinth. Upon doing so, you're given coordinates to a boat that'll take you to the new area that has new corrals for the new slimes. Adding decorations to this new area allows you to generate the new currency, called Sprinkles, which you can use to buy more decorations.

I want to start off by saying I don't hate this update, I'm simply once again disappointed by its execution. To start, you're given no direction once you spawn into an old save. No phone call, no tooltip, nothing. I had to look up a guide on how to get anything started. As I mentioned before, you find one of three broken down robots in the Grey Labyrinth, which gives you coordinates to a boat. The problem with that is, IT DIDN'T GIVE ME COORDINATES TO ANYTHING. There was NOTHING on the map at all. It wasn't until I ran back to my base did something pop up on the screen, but still nothing on the map.

Once you arrive at The Sanctuary, it instructs you to go find Radiant Slimes. This is where the "very rare" part comes in. The trailer on YouTube made it seem like they'd spawn frequently anywhere on the map. No, no they don't. I ran around the map for two hours and didn't find a single one. Back into the guides I go, finding out that there's a few guaranteed one-time spawns. Okay, sure, why not. I go gather a couple of them and bring them back to The Sanctuary. There's no point in feeding them because all they give you is regular plorts. There isn't even any real point to putting them in corals, since they won't be eating anything and turning into Tarr Slimes.

Finally, once you get everything up and running, you can start earning Sprinkles and collect the new decorations. Unfortunately, once again, NO EXPLANATION IS GIVEN AS TO HOW TO EARN SPRINKLES. I swear to god, I'm not a moron. I've played video games my whole life. I've played puzzles games my entire life. I know how to figure out complex problems. I understand how to do things without being explicitly told what to do. But this entire update is complete bullshit. The update ONLY works if you're doing a new playthrough, and even that won't save you from figuring out how to get Sprinkles.

I just want you to stop and think about this for a second. A new update comes out for a game you like. You load up your old save because it's a small patch which doesn't warrant a fresh playthrough. Nothing gives you any kind of hint where the new content starts, so you just start running around expecting something. Two hours pass, you're forced to look up a guide. How is that fun? Why did I need to find a random robot in a random area to activate some boat by my base? JUST HAVE THE ROBOT IN SOME OBVIOUS SPOT, OR HAVE THE BOAT ACTIVATED BY DEFAULT.

Again, think about one more thing for me. Even if they made it so you could get to the island without finding a random robot, why are the Radiant Slimes - which are required for progression of this new area - "very rare"? Why did you make them "very rare"? Why did you make guaranteed spawns in random areas you have to figure out? You have two options. Get extremely lucky and get a "very rare" spawn, or get extremely lucky and stumble into one of these guaranteed spot. Why?

I think the worst part about all of this, is that you don't even need a single Radiant Slime outside the first couple to get the plot moving along. You earn Sprinkles by putting decorations down in The Sanctuary. It doesn't even have to look good, you can just spam them down and you'll start farming them. I didn't read any reviews of the update until I had finished all the new content, and, to my surprise, most reviewers agree with me on every point I've brought up. No one understands where to go. Everyone is complaining about how "very rare" Radiant Slimes are. They took a page out of Pokémon's book and essentially released "shiny" Slimes. More time-wasting for no reward.

I promise I'm not trying to be Angry Video Game Nerd, but in written form. I love video games, and I really do love the first Slime Rancher game. It's not lost on me that my negative reviews end up being longer than my positive reviews. It's just that... this game makes so many mistakes, and I have so much to say about that. Okay, something positive, two quality of life updates! They increased the size of the silo to 200 and added the ability to grow more food at in one plot. Admittedly, I did enjoy filling out the Slimepedia with the new additions, but only slightly.

Overall, this update exists to supplement the main theme of the game that came before it. Waste as much of your time as humanly possible.

Published 16 March 2026 @ 11:06:57 PM UTCUpdated 18 April 2026 @ 7:28:04 PM UTC

End of Game Information

Total Time Played: 43 hours, 10 minutes