Five years ago, I reviewed the first Lawn Mowing Simulator and really enjoyed it. Well Skyhook Games are back with the sequel, Lawn Mowing Simulator 2. So yeah, I had to get this one on my review list. But is it a cut above its predecessor?

“Head to the USA and grow your own business with a realistic and relaxing lawn mowing experience! Featuring brand new grass tech, the addition of leaf-blowing plus reworked systems based on player feedback to the original – including licensed equipment from Kubota, STIGA and SCAGⓇ!”

When I reviewed the first game, I openly admitted that my plan was to write a tongue-in-cheek review mocking the influx of modern “job simulator” games, drenched in sarcasm. Instead, I ended up loving the game far more than anticipated, ultimately penning an honest review about how surprisingly good and playable it was. To the point that I still play it today. Honesty is something I pride myself on, and honestly? Lawn Mowing Simulator 2 is a disappointment.

To its credit, the sequel does get a few things right by addressing community feedback from the original. You now get fairer completion thresholds. The required cut percentage for lawns has been fine-tuned so finishing a job no longer feels like an excruciating search for stray blades of grass. Anything past the threshold is now treated as bonus income, an exact quality-of-life fix I argued for in my original review. You can now move while utilising ProVision mode, making those pesky un-mowed grass patches easier to find. Additionally, management is no longer confined strictly to static menus; you now operate out of a fully explorable 3D HQ, giving your business a more physical and tactile presence.

There’s expanded yard work. New tasks like strimming weeds, raking, and leaf blowing give you more to do on-site, alongside reworked grass physics and visual overhauls. See this comparison video as an example…

While these features are welcome, Lawn Mowing Simulator 2 takes several major steps backward by gutting the systems that made the first game so compelling. First, running the business has been massively diluted. While the first game was hardly a deep manager sim, it still had layers. You could hire and train employees, upgrade equipment with attachments, you had to balance your money and even (maybe) rely on a bank loan to stay afloat. It wasn’t as deep or engaging as other sim titles, but you genuinely felt like an entrepreneur building a lawn care empire from the ground up.

This sequel has dumped most of that. You still hire employees, but there’s no training anymore. No equipment upgrades or attachments. No worries about or having to balance money. There’s no sense of actually running running the business. You don’t take on entry-level workers and invest in their development, or meticulously upgrade your fleet. You just do a few more jobs until you can afford a better employees and better mowers.

The game never feels like you are progressing, in any sense of the word. Even time feels static. Progression is reduced to a brain-dead loop: mow a lawn, buy a better mower, unlock a new region, repeat. The business never feels like it is growing, you’re just unlocking new lawns. Even time feels static. The original lacked passing seasons, but a sequel should evolve. Introducing dynamic season, requiring seasonal lawn care techniques, tailored equipment, and varying job types, would have added incredible depth and layers. Instead, Lawn Mowing Simulator 2 feels perpetually stuck in the first week of October.

Things like having experience points and skill trees for your employees and you. There a massively missed opportunity here to make running the business feel like you are running a business, and add a sense of progression.

The actual lawn mowing is a mixed bag too. Some elements have been improved, but others not so much. What I adored about the original was its emphasis on precision and discipline. If you ran over a client’s flowerbed, you were penalised. If you turned too aggressively while accelerating and tore up the turf, you paid for it. This forced you to treat every lawn with respect and professionalism, to actually mow the lawns with some degree of care and pride. Now? Nothing matters. You can bulldoze through flowerbeds or butcher turf without penalty. Cutting the grass in the first game took skill. You can just do whatever you want now, no skill required. You can damage your equipment, but it’s hardly a major punishment because all you do it pay to fix it, and money is way too easy to come by, to the point where it may as well not even be part of the mechanics.

The game lets you toggle various SDS (Simulation Depth Settings). Even with everything enabled, with everything “simulated deeply”, the lawn mowing still isn’t as deep and rewarding as the original.

Some of the new tasks are equally baffling. Strimming weeds is satisfying enough, but the leaf-blower mechanics are broken in concept. Your goal is to clear leaves off paved pathways, but the game allows you to blow those leaves directly onto the freshly manicured lawn you just cut. Incredibly, the game registers this as “100% clean,” completely disregarding the total mess left on the grass that you just spent time cutting. It makes no sense.

I also came across several physics problems. My mower getting caught on scenery that it wasn’t even touching, my mower almost tipping over just because it lightly rubbed up against a fence. I had the audio completely cut out several times. It’s also awkward setting the equipment for your employees to take on jobs too, because the game doesn’t tell you what equipment had already been assigned to another job or even you. It becomes a guessing game of who already has what. A simple icon next to the equipment that lets you know it’s already been assigned would clear up the confusion.

Overall, Lawn Mowing Simulator 2 feels like a devolution. It’s far more shallow and lacking over the first game. I never felt that I was running a business, just selecting jobs from a map. I love Lawn Mowing Simulator and still play it now, five year later. This sequel though, it’s just too thin and I got bored after around twenty hours because it’s just not as rewarding, and it feels more like a grind. I think that the devs have made it too accessible and removed a lot what made the original such a great game. They haven’t improved the gameplay, they’ve simplified it. I still got that chilled vibe from mowing a lawn as the first game had, but I got none of the pride and passion that came with it.

Out now for PC, PlayStation, and Xbox, and priced around £22. I’m sure that some (or all) of the technical issues can be fixed, but the core gameplay is several steps backwards compared to the first game, and I don’t think you can fix that with a patch.