Golden Acorn review — We can build a tree

Plantera was one of my favorite idle games. At least, for the brief amount of time it lasted. Planting trees, crops, and having the place run wild with animals was plenty of fun but there was no endgame to speak of. Plantera 2: Golden Acorn attempts to rectify this with some solid additions. But the experience still won’t even come close to being able to keep you as busy as any similar games.

If you played the first game, you’ve mostly played this one. You’re dropped on a patch of land and start out by planting a few things. Crops and trees have fruit and vegetables you can click, which will give you coins you can use to expand your space and buy more things. There are more crops, animals, and decorations in Plantera 2: Golden Acorn and it’s really something to scroll past and see the enormous amount of sprites that are active simultaneously. The progression here is exactly the same as the original. You keep growing and making more money until you’ve expanded as far as you can, planted as many crops as you can, and introduced as many animals as possible.

But, much like similar idle games, Plantera 2: Golden Acorn takes things one step further. The largest new addition is that there’s now an oak tree available in the center of your farm. It drops golden acorns and you can spend these acorns to make the tree larger and have more upgrades become available. The tree gets ridiculously massive, to the point where you can’t even come close to seeing the whole thing at once. It has a whole suite of upgrades but the real kicker is that a new option opens up once you’ve progressed far enough along. The tree gets an opening and you can go inside and spend acorns on new upgrades.

This is called God Mode and it allows you to crank various aspects of the game up to make it last even longer. You can purchase the ability to automatically pick up everything you mouse over instead of having to click, plus you can drastically speed up every aspect of your production cycle. This means you’ll be making money faster than ever, but even that has its limits. When you’ve purchased enough of something with money, you’ll eventually only be able to upgrade it with acorns. This is where the ability to convert coins directly to acorns comes into play.

Plantera 2: Golden Acorn does make for a very satisfying idle game with the added hands-on feel that the game provides. But it still doesn’t take long at all to max out your space and upgrade the oak tree to max. The game will easily last you several hours longer than its predecessor, but it still can’t compare to most other idle games in terms of longevity. Of course, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. People with addictive personalities can end up getting stuck in an endless loop of ascensions in a lot of these games, but it would be nice if this one had something similar.

Simply put, Plantera 2: Golden Acorn is the same, cute idle game as before with some enjoyable additions. It won’t keep you busy for all that long, but between the low price and the satisfaction of seeing piles of fruit turn into coins it’s still worthwhile for anyone that wants to veg out and watch over their farm.

Screenshot by PC Invasion