Grounded 2
Obsidian Entertainment · RPG, Survival, Action
Overview
Shrunk again, but the world is much larger. In this open-world, single-player or co-op survival adventure, craft weapons and armor, build your base, and traverse the playground on your buggy. But something else is out there—and it hasn’t forgotten you.
THE GAMEQ VERDICT9,997 reviews analyzed
What players are actually saying
1. Summary
Reviewers treat Grounded 2 as an early access game and describe it as more Grounded, done bigger. The first game is the comparison they reach for most, and the sequel usually comes out ahead: a larger park, more creatures and gear, the Omni-tool replacing a bag full of separate tools, and above all the buggies, rideable ants, spiders and ladybugs that carry loot, fight beside you and make the large map quick to cross. Playing with friends, partners and kids is the other big draw. Building, the story and the regular updates get steady praise too, and several reviewers say Obsidian listens to its players.
The problems are mostly technical. Frame rate, stutter and crashes come up in 31% of the longer reviews and in half of the longer negative ones, often from players who say they enjoy the game itself. Multiplayer has its own list: dropped sessions, failed joins, crossplay and Xbox sign-in loops, and lost progress for whoever isn't hosting. Players disagree on whether early access already has enough content, and on whether the dense, aggressive bug population and tough bosses are a fair challenge or just annoying.
2. What keeps coming up
What players praise
A bigger, better Grounded 1High
39% of the longer reviews bring up the first game, and when they pick a side the sequel usually wins: explicit "better than" or "bigger than the first" phrasing appears in 3% of longer reviews, and far fewer call it worse. The upgrades they list include a larger park, new creatures and returning ones with new attacks, more weapons and armor, class-like archetypes, dodging and perfect blocks, and an "Omni-tool instead of eating up inventory and hot bar spots with multiple tools." One fan described it as a chance to experience the first game for the first time again.
Others find it too close to the original. Some call it "Grounded 1.5" or point to reused assets and a story that leans on the first game, and some returning players miss features from Grounded 1, such as ziplines before they came back, the old UI and inventory, and New Game+. A few advise newcomers to play the first game first for the story, while others say it stands on its own.
Playing with friends and familyHigh
18% of longer reviews mention playing with friends, a partner, kids or siblings. Couples call it their shared game, parents play it with their children, and groups describe chaotic boss fights and base raids. Shared worlds get specific praise: "The best part is the shared worlds so that you and your friends can play asynchronously on the same save file." Several players say it is fine solo but at its best with a group, and some find solo bosses much harder.
Co-op is also where connection problems, desync and buggy losses show up (see the multiplayer item below), and one reviewer disliked that shared progression "auto unlocks your discoveries even if someone else does it," spoiling the story for friends who play less.
A huge, good-looking park to exploreHigh
The world, map and exploration come up in 24% of longer reviews, and visuals in 11%. Reviewers describe the sense of scale, with soda cans as landmarks and ant hills as labyrinths, the hidden nooks, and the horror of meeting a wolf spider or a mantis dropping from above. Several say there is always another secret to find. Arachnophobia settings get thanks from players who would otherwise skip it.
A few find parts of the map tedious to cross or hard to read, building spots bumpier than in Grounded 1, and nights so dark that "when it is dark you cant see anything at all unlike grounded 1."
Buggies: the bug mountsHigh
11% of longer reviews talk about buggies, more than any other new feature. Fans love them for speed, storage, gathering and combat help, and they name their ants and spiders. One wrote: "I think it is the best implementation of mounts I have seen in any game ever." Another noted that "once you unlock your first mount you can pretty much do whatever you want," and launch-era players said "the mount are freaking awesome, almost worth losing the zip lines."
Complaints about them are mostly about behavior. Some reviews describe mounts vanishing, wandering off, getting stuck or ignoring orders ("tell it to stay put and then next time you're in a fight, he's standing right behind you IN YOUR WAYYYY!!!"), and players report being thrown off ledges when dismounting. A smaller group dislikes how central the buggies are, saying progression, travel and bosses force you to use them, or that the early red ant makes the game too easy.
Base building and quality of lifeMedium
Building comes up in 14% of longer reviews. Builders like having more pieces than the first game, building on more surfaces, and crafting straight from nearby storage ("I love the quick stash up nearby storage and crafting from storage!"). Players describe sky bases, treehouses and zipline hubs, and late nights on "just one more thing."
The complaints are about snapping and placement ("Even the smallest mound of earth says you can't build here"), walls and floors that don't fit together, a wish for more decoration, and raids that ignore your defenses ("the raid just spawns inside your base").
Story and loreMedium
13% of longer reviews mention the story. Fans like that it continues from the first game, that the mystery of the masked stranger and the company keeps them guessing, and that lore drops reward exploration. Detractors call it thin, rushed or "some scientist did something stupid" again, and early reviewers note the main story ended quickly before later updates extended it.
Regular updates and developers who listenMedium
Updates and patches come up in 19% of longer reviews. Reviewers name the content drops they lived through (Hairy and Scary, Toxic Tangle, Beat the Heat, Into the Abyss) and credit Obsidian with listening to feedback and fixing problems, and some flipped their review to positive after a patch. Critics say updates come too slowly, add more of the same enemies, or break things that worked, and some players report patches resetting their settings or bringing back crashes.
Where players are split
How much game there is in early accessMedium
21% of longer reviews talk about early access, and they disagree on what it means for a buyer. Some say there is already a lot to do, others that it runs thin. Fans report dozens of hours and still finding new places. Players from the first months after launch describe a short story and materials that had no use until later updates; one wrote, "I beat the story in an afternoon." Complaints about thin content are less common in reviews written from December 2025 on than in earlier ones.
4% of longer reviews tell readers to wait for the full release or a sale, including some that still recommend the game. Some players are happy to pay to follow development, and others don't want to pay to test an unfinished game.
Difficulty, combat and bossesMedium
Combat and difficulty each come up in about 8% of longer reviews. Fans of the combat like learning attack patterns, parrying, building around archetypes and mutations, and bosses such as Axl. A player who likes Dark Souls wrote, "It has some soulslike vibes to the combat in the sense of timing and managing resources (stamina)." Others find it punishing even on lower settings, say solo bosses are tuned for groups, and single out flying enemies that are hard to hit, the toe biter fights and some late-game bosses as unfair. Boss talk is far more common among players with long playtimes, while players who quit early rarely get that far.
A related complaint is the sheer number of hostile bugs, covered under frustrations below. Players who want a calmer game point to custom settings and lower difficulty as the fix, and several asked for more control over aggression and raids.
The Omni-toolLow
The single multi-tool that replaces axes, shovels and hammers comes up in 3% of longer reviews and splits players. Fans like the saved inventory space. Others find holding E to gather slow and finicky, miss tools that doubled as weapons, or would prefer a tool wheel.
Into the Abyss and the underwater areasLow
The pond and underwater content gets mixed reactions (3% of longer reviews). Some players loved the update and the new building, and others hated the dark water, the harpoon and the diving suit ("The diving suit just sinks you to the bottom so you can't swim anywhere"), or found the toe biter fights badly telegraphed.
The teens' voices and dialogueLow
A small group finds the characters' quips repetitive or grating and turned dialogue off, while others enjoy the teens' banter, especially in multiplayer.
What frustrates players
Poor optimization, stutter and crashesHigh
Performance is the main complaint. Frame rate, stutter and optimization come up in 20% of longer reviews and crashes in 11%, and together with lag they appear in 31% of longer reviews and half of the longer negative ones. Players with high-end cards report frame drops, players with mid-range PCs report needing heavy upscaling, and some Steam Deck owners say it barely runs. Specific complaints include traversal stutter, drops in big fights and near large bases, and a long "preparing shaders" step: "Game uses way too many shaders and requires multi minute shader compilation on every launch." Crash reports name boss fights, autosaves during combat and the Unreal Engine error screen.
Some players report big improvements after specific patches, and others say a later patch made things worse again. Crash mentions are lower in reviews written from June 2026 (6% of longer reviews) than in those written before December 2025 (14%), while performance complaints stay near a fifth of longer reviews in every period.
Multiplayer drops, crossplay and account frictionMedium
5% of longer reviews describe broken co-op, and they make up 12% of longer negative reviews. Reported problems include disconnects every few minutes, "game no longer exists" join errors, infinite loading screens, desync and rubber-banding for clients, and crossplay loops: "tells me that my friend's save has crossplay on, so i need to enable crossplay," then the reverse. Launch-week reviewers objected to needing an Xbox or Microsoft account for multiplayer, and some later edited to say that requirement was dropped. Non-hosts get a worse game: "if you're not hosting a game, expect for your experience to be not so great when it comes to bosses and traversing on buggies," and one shared-world player complained that "your buggies are unassigned if you leave the game, or get disconnected in anyway." Players who stopped within two hours raise connection problems more often than others.
Glitches that cost progressMedium
5% of longer reviews describe losing items or progress: backpacks falling through the world after death, items vanishing from inventories, wiped characters in shared worlds, falling out of the map, and corrupted saves. Other recurring glitches include the vanishing and stuck buggies above, floating water drops, getting stuck in third person, and enemies clipping through walls.
Swarms of hostile bugs that chase you across the mapLow
A smaller group says the park is overcrowded with aggressive creatures that won't let go: "Getting chased by Orb Weaver Jr's and Spiderlings across the ENTIRE MAP is not fun." They describe fights that pull in more and more enemies, higher-tier bugs near starting areas, and no chance to gather or explore in peace. One player wrote, "I can't even venture more than a few steps outside of my base now without getting jumped by 5+ hostiles." These complaints are somewhat more common in reviews written from June 2026 than in those written before December 2025, and at least one reviewer dates the problem to the Into the Abyss update.
Menus, inventory and keybindsLow
Some returning players find the UI a step back from Grounded 1: holding E to deposit, sort buttons hidden inside chests, menus that need Escape, a missing mutation preset wheel, and an inventory one reviewer called "absurdly bad." Players who use non-standard layouts report that buggy commands stay hardcoded to E, H and F even after rebinding.
3. The player conversation
The tone is warm and patient. Most reviews are short endorsements ("peak", "better than the first", can't "wait for 1.0", endless "bugs" puns), and the longer ones usually love the game and complain at the same time, often ending with a promise to change the review once a fix lands. Reviewers who bring up early access use it both ways: some excuse rough edges for that reason, while others say the game should not still run this badly over a year in. Comparisons with Grounded 1 run through the whole conversation, and the sequel usually comes out ahead.
Who raises what differs by playtime. Players who stopped within two hours write mostly about performance and failed or dropped multiplayer sessions, and hardly mention buggies. Players who stayed long enough to see most of the park talk about buggies, losing items, bosses and balance, and players with 50 or more hours bring up bosses and difficulty more than short-playtime players do. By the date reviews were written, crash complaints fell after 2025 and complaints about thin content faded as updates arrived, while complaints about enemy density rose slightly in later reviews.
4. What the developers could do
- Make performance and stability the top priority. Frame rate, stutter and crashes appear in 31% of longer reviews and half of the longer negative ones, often from players who otherwise love the game.
- Fix multiplayer joins, disconnects and crossplay. Dropped sessions, "game no longer exists" errors, crossplay toggle loops and client desync make up 12% of longer negative reviews, some from groups who bought the game to play together.
- Stop progress loss from backpacks, items and buggies. Backpacks falling through the world, vanishing items, wiped shared-world characters and disappearing mounts are the glitches players say make them quit.
- Give non-hosts the same buggy and boss experience as the host. Clients describe buggies being unassigned on disconnect and worse boss fights and mount handling, and one says support called the buggy reset intended.
- Tune enemy density and chase range, and offer more control over it. Players describe being chased across the map and swarmed near their bases, and some ask for a mob-density or aggression setting.
- Make buggies follow orders. "Stay" commands that reset, whistles that don't bring the mount, and dismounts that throw players off ledges come up from mount fans.
- Bring back the convenience of Grounded 1's menus and allow full rebinding. Returning players want one-press deposits, visible sort buttons, a mutation preset wheel, and rebindable buggy keys.
- Rebalance bosses and flying enemies for solo players. Solo reviewers say some bosses seem tuned for groups and flying enemies are hard to hit without a bow.
