Slime Rancher is a fun life sim with an interesting world and fun mechanics. It's a game that scratches that farm management itch I have, and it was a great game to for me to play and unwind. While the game has all the ingredients to be a great game, it fumbles a bit on the execution.
The material grind that starts in the later half of the game, where you build drills, pumps, and aviaries in order to get building material for teleporters and other gadgets, is not fun. It is an RNG based loot system with mandatory wait times and no active participation from the player. I think that the idea of having a secondary resource grind in the later parts of the game is good, because it gives something new to do for players who are well established in their ranch. The execution however could have been done much better. In my perfect version in my head, materials would have to be gathered by some sort of active player action in specific areas of the game and this system could still keep some of that RNG that currently exists. I know certain material in the game already demands you place a pump or a drill in a specific part of the ranch, but it ends up feeling like you are just running through the environments in order to access your drills/pumps instead of meaningfully interacting with the area.
Later rewards in Slime Rancher also often end up not being interesting or fun enough to warrant the grind to get them. Color palettes are cool and all, but more steady upgrades to the vacuum pack, stamina, jetpack, etc would be much more incentivizing. Instead of 5 different colors of teleporter, give me some new interesting items to play around with.
Another aspect that could be improved upon is that this game would have greatly benefitted from giving the player a bit more options in terms of automation. I believe the intention is not to make it possible for the farm to run itself, but I think having a little more automation could have helped give importance and priority to the secondary material grind I had mentioned earlier.
Lastly, the world of Slime Rancher is really fun and cool to explore, but I wish there were more ways to interact with the environment. Most areas you end up running through feel more like a safari rather than wilderness for the rancher to tame. One thing that the later half of the game nails is the introduction of the Glass Desert. Its a dynamic environment where fire balls and fire slimes will occasionally rain down from the sky and this impacts how a player interacts with this environment without making exploration not fun. The glass desert also introduces some puzzles that if completed help you manipulate the surrounding environment. It's genuinely great and I just wish that more of the environments in this game had the same amount of interactivity that this one did.
Overall I enjoyed my time with Slime Rancher. The first half of the game is exceptional, and while it fumbles a bit in the later half, if you are a life sim fan I would have no trouble recommending this game to you.
The material grind that starts in the later half of the game, where you build drills, pumps, and aviaries in order to get building material for teleporters and other gadgets, is not fun. It is an RNG based loot system with mandatory wait times and no active participation from the player. I think that the idea of having a secondary resource grind in the later parts of the game is good, because it gives something new to do for players who are well established in their ranch. The execution however could have been done much better. In my perfect version in my head, materials would have to be gathered by some sort of active player action in specific areas of the game and this system could still keep some of that RNG that currently exists. I know certain material in the game already demands you place a pump or a drill in a specific part of the ranch, but it ends up feeling like you are just running through the environments in order to access your drills/pumps instead of meaningfully interacting with the area.
Later rewards in Slime Rancher also often end up not being interesting or fun enough to warrant the grind to get them. Color palettes are cool and all, but more steady upgrades to the vacuum pack, stamina, jetpack, etc would be much more incentivizing. Instead of 5 different colors of teleporter, give me some new interesting items to play around with.
Another aspect that could be improved upon is that this game would have greatly benefitted from giving the player a bit more options in terms of automation. I believe the intention is not to make it possible for the farm to run itself, but I think having a little more automation could have helped give importance and priority to the secondary material grind I had mentioned earlier.
Lastly, the world of Slime Rancher is really fun and cool to explore, but I wish there were more ways to interact with the environment. Most areas you end up running through feel more like a safari rather than wilderness for the rancher to tame. One thing that the later half of the game nails is the introduction of the Glass Desert. Its a dynamic environment where fire balls and fire slimes will occasionally rain down from the sky and this impacts how a player interacts with this environment without making exploration not fun. The glass desert also introduces some puzzles that if completed help you manipulate the surrounding environment. It's genuinely great and I just wish that more of the environments in this game had the same amount of interactivity that this one did.
Overall I enjoyed my time with Slime Rancher. The first half of the game is exceptional, and while it fumbles a bit in the later half, if you are a life sim fan I would have no trouble recommending this game to you.