I have been playing Grounded non-stop for the past month or so and wanted to try out Grounded 2. Here are my initial reactions. Dropping notes here since I'm sure many are already known. Happy to write up full bug reports for anything below with screenshots.
PROS:
LOVE the Omni tool. Thank you!
Love being able to hold X to harvest.
Excited to see the new possibilities with a park map.
Having different menus for crafting different things (workbook, hand crafting, omnitool thingy, etc) took some getting used to but I think it's more intuitive this way and will be better in the long run.
CONS
White (default) trail marker label is yellow. I thought I was going crazy so I switched to yellow and it looks the same. Had my GF verify I wasn't seeing things.
Grounded had the most unique UI I've ever seen. It took a long time to get used to it. And now I have to relearn everything it feels like.
Hate having to hold x to drop things. Also holding x doesn't work with only one. So you have to go back and forth between holding and pressing X depending on how many you have.
Able to get the Omni tool popup without being able to swing it. Usually when it is interrupted, you have to walk away and come back to get it to work again.
Hitbox too sensitive, swinging clover often get stuck mid swing. Often when trying to pickup things you have to be pixel perfect with the cursor. Which is annoying on console
Mutation quest doesn't start counting until you leave the lab. Specifically the kills with a spear was still 0 after killing the first mite in the tutorial.
Same as the dropping stacks. Can't super build with one item left. My default is to just hold it down to super build but if only one item is still needed, it's not an option.
Dandelion drop rate is way too low. I thought it was too high at first in Grounded, but soon realized you really need that many with how much platforming there is in a game not designed for platforming. (Not a complaint just an observation)
New items: I was hoping Grounded 2 would solve this problem, not exasperate it. When you have new items in the crafting menu (!) you have to scroll down to find them. But the only way to scroll is by going through them all so you highlight them before you see the (!). In the first game you could get around this by scrolling to the bottom of the viewable list, moving the cursor over to the ingredients and then back to the list and it would push the list down another 3-4 items. This way you could see an item before you highlight it. You can't even do that now.