I’d like to start off on a positive note and say im really enjoying myself and the new weapons are really exciting in the early game! I found the claws really fun to use and having more options at each tier allows you to play around and discover what you enjoy using. I’m only a few hours deep at this point.

In terms of constructive criticism, I have felt that the early game has been quite rushed and much less exploratory than Grounded 1.

In grounded 1, the quests mostly ask you to visit various places and you just unlock cool stuff along the way through analysing materials. I felt like I wasn’t pressured to get upgrades or play in a particular style. In grounded 2, I have felt that the early quests don’t leave much room for independent exploration and are very directive. (Find THIS, craft THIS, retrieve THIS) rather than “visit point of interest” and stumble across an item to analyse / take to a person of interest.

For example, going from grounded 1 to 2 means that we get mounts now, and that’s a huge change. Imagine spending 100 hours on foot, only to realise you can unlock an egg hatchery now! Maybe you think that’s how you get pets now. But wait, you crafted it and it mentions saddles?? A MOUNT!

Instead of a game-changing revelation which introduces this whole new system in the game on your own terms and through your own discovery, you just get a quest to build it. There’s no discovery, there’s no anticipation, there’s no buildup. I really think that landing this as something special is important and needs some more polishing.

I think this comes from people who are having a hard time with the game or are impatient being more vocal than people who are having an easy time and/or enjoying the challenges they find. The people struggling get more clues/direction/guidance due to raising their concerns, (there is nothing wrong with that either if it helps the player enjoy the game), but other players are let down by the lack of adventure/surprise/challenge.

I have a couple posts where I asked for a mode where we aren’t given the exact location to go to for things on the map or by waypoint icons. I get that some players want the flashing icons and star waypoints and they don’t wanna spend their time hunting through the map, but I like stumbling upon things as I explore and it’s kind of impossible to stumble upon any of the big stuff in this game as there’s icons flashing on the map.

My favorite part of playing Grounded 2 so far is when I made my way over to the greenhouse and garden area before I had any quests to do over there and I just freely explored. I feel like that section of the map is far more interesting than anything else currently in the game and it was definitely more rewarding exploring. I found more things to interact with than in the earlier section of the map and since there wasn’t a quest I didn’t know what my goal was which gave me back a sense of curiosity/wonder I had been missing. Unfortunately, you’re not gonna be able to get a lot of the resources over there until you have upgraded your tools. It’s a bit like building a path into the upper yard in Ground 1 before you can break pinecones, cut roots, smash sour candy or have unlocked certain doors. Still fun to explore, but you can’t reap all the rewards.