Crashlands 2 Review

What an awesome survival crafting game without a hunger or thirst meter and with so much story! I’m enjoying the game so much! It has achievements to play on specific difficulties that can be missed.

Approximate amount of time to 100%: Around 60 hours if you play on the “challenge difficulty” from the start
Estimated achievement difficulty: 4/10
Minimum number of playthroughs needed: 1, if you start and stay on the challenge difficulty
Is there a good guide available: Not yet
Multiplayer achievements: No
Missable achievements: Yes, the ones for playing on specific difficulties, but if you start and stay on challenge difficulty, you’ll unlock them both
Grinding Achievements: Yes, the Void damaged (1 million) is quite a lot. However, I can see that while playing through the story, I did use the Void damage wrong, and it can be much quicker when you have the right trinkets
DLC-Only achievements: No
Speedrun achievements: No
Time-gated achievements: No
RNG-achievements: No
Does difficulty affect achievements: Yes
Unobtainable/glitched achievements: No

In Crashlands 2, you return to the planet you played on in the first game (this is what I have learned from the story; I haven’t played the first game in this series). You hope to visit some old friends after you quit your job, but you find out that the company you worked for may have been doing horrible things on this planet. You crash on the planet, and you destroy somebody else’s house, so you first have to rebuild that, and this will be your base as well.

What I mostly love about Crashlands 2 is the story and the many quests you can do. There is so much to this story, and it is huge! When I thought I would be close to the ending… I learned that I was close to finishing Act 1 of 3. What is also awesome are the many Quality of Life features. From an easy way to recast your fishing hook to no limit to the number of items you can carry, as well as that you can’t really lose them. You drop them when you die, but you can pick them up again; even if you died multiple times, you can still return to those spots and pick them up again with a simple button press. I also really love that it has no hunger or thirst mechanics; it allows you to focus on the story and explore this huge world. You will stumble on many surprises, as you can find new gadgets and blueprints in strange spots.

One of the best quality-of-life features of Crashlands 2 is that in the crafting menu, you can see where a specific resource comes from. With how many resources there are, it is so nice not to have to remember everything, or worse, have to Google it all the time because it has been a while since you hunted for that specific item.

While playing the game, I mostly used the same setup for gear and trinkets, but for the achievements, you have to switch this up. Looking back, I can see that there are so many different builds available, so choose the one you like the most and maybe switch it from time to time when you get some new items. There are also nine pets available in the game; after you unlock them, you can take one with you that will help you in fights. And an important note about the pets: YES, you can pet them!!

One of the few downsides for me is that there is an achievement to complete the game in challenge mode. I went for all the achievements, so I kept playing on the hardest difficulty, but I would have enjoyed Crashlands 2 a tiny bit more if I could play on the normal difficulty. However, the challenge difficulty is still very doable, and there are no real penalties to dying; it just takes time to go back to the spot you were, but gladly, the map is filled with warp spots to make that easier and to just move quickly to the area you want to be in.

I love how Crashlands 2 has achievements for so many different aspects of the game, from the main storyline to the sidequests to all the different armor sets and their stats. There are enough Juice Gems in the game to fully upgrade your InfiniSuit (aka a skill tree) and level up all the pets. Finding all the Gems can be challenging. Check the map to see if you see a small part of something within the fog and which nooks and crannies you have been missing. This and the achievement for doing loads and loads of Void damage would probably your last achievements.

I give Crashlands 2 4,5 out of 5 stars.

This review for Crashlands 2 was written on 10 April 2025, based on the current Steam version of the game which has 39 achievements at the time of writing this review. This information can be outdated, for example, when the developer adds or removes achievements or releases (new) DLC.