TL;DR: It's more Virtual Cottage. It's perfect at this point. If you want a productivity app that is actually assistive and not at all distracting, buy this. The vibes are immaculate in the cottage.
The original Virtual Cottage wasn't just a nice little novelty for me, it was the first "cozy cottage" productivity app I've ever used, and it was the most effective. None of the other "cozy cottage/room" applications I used were as effective. They had more features, yes, but they were also distracting, often interrupting my focus sessions with notifications, loud customization options that seemed more concerned at making you look at them than to actually allow you to express yourself silently. That sort of thing can work for others, I'm sure, but it didn't work for me. The discreet nature of the original Virtual Cottage is the reason why I racked up 1100+ hours on it. Now, I have Virtual Cottage 2, and goodness, what an upgrade this is. It manages to still be an effective productivity app while adding everything that was lacking from the first Virtual Cottage.
Starting off with the customization, there are so many customization options now; options whose purpose is to simply allow every productive person to express themselves through their cottage. You have various types of rooms, sceneries, and locations to choose from now, you can make 5 room presets, you have so many furniture to choose from with so much space to place them in, and you can customize your character with more options. The customization is not distracting at all— you don't get any annoying notifications to alert you that you've unlocked something, you don't get any pop-up windows interrupting your focus sessions, you don't have loud, bright furniture decorations that don't seem to reflect your preferences.
You can quickly make your room presets once and you'll never have to do it again unless you wanna make more for different moods, unlock alerts are simply silent red icons you can choose to ignore. The furniture are low-fidelity, almost feeling analogue, even, and this is perfect for me. And the customization is wide enough that you can make different cottages to fit different vibes. Out in the park? Make a park preset! Reading in the library? There's a library location! Working remotely (unfortunate) at the beach? The new summer update includes a beach house now. These customization features aren't just fluff, they're there to match whatever vibe you might have going on, which in turn, helps you get in the zone for productivity. I can't think of a better way to improve on this.
Of course, since this is a sequel, what was already in the original would have to be expanded as well, and so there are more productivity features now that manages to remain assistive, and not something you focus on while you're working. You still have the to-do list, and you can still make task groups just like in the original. But now, you can also make task presets, and they're quick to create. This way, you won't have to keep making the same tasks over and over again the next time you close the cottage and reopen it the next day. You still have the music of course, and it's still lo-fi music that is, once again, not distracting at all. We still have the music player, you can still select and deselect music, and some music from the original Virtual Cottage and its DLC were carried over, but there's also more music now that all sound great and comfortably chill. It is a shame that not all music from the original was carried over, I loved the InLoveWithAGhost tracks in particular, but thankfully, you can import your own custom music now! So I can just manually import the original InLoveWithAGhost tracks and more into the Cottage, and while sure, I would have appreciated if they were already here in the first place, this is a nice compromise. There's still the Sounds & Ambience feature, which also has more options to really make this the most cozy Virtual Cottage ever. So all of the original features in the first Virtual Cottage has more options now, and they're all appreciated. But there is still one more thing they added for the productivity features, which is an entirely new feature that wasn't in the original Virtual Cottage before— the Journal. It's simple really, it has a calendar, a tab where you can make notes, a Tasks tracker that automatically logs your tasks in each day, and a Habit tracker! Just like with the rest of the features, the Journal is something you don't have to stay too long in. You can browse through the Calendar to see your records for any day, you can quickly make notes or treat it as your de facto virtual journal, the tasks tracker automatically logs your tasks for you, and you can quickly tick off your habits. It's another assistive feature that allows and supports you to build healthy habits, which is perfect for a productivity app. The cherry on top for the cottage's productivity features is that you can minimize the entire app into a widget where you can still see the timer and music player, so for single monitor-having people, you won't have to fully minimize the app anymore. You can even have the widget display on top of other apps if you always wanna see the widget. The last thing I wanna mention is the multiplayer feature! I haven't tried this out, but knowing how cozy the cottage already feels as it is, I can imagine that having another person with you while you're both working on your own stuff can only add more to the vibe. I know this will be perfect for people who wish to parallel-play.
I've seen other reviews here noting several things they deem a negative. How the rewarding system is unintuitive, how they wish to have more options to decorate rooms, how it doesn't have Spotify integration, and, to an extent I agree with all of these. If I were to take these complaints at face value, it does seem like the app could still be better. But I only agree at face value, except for the lack of music streaming app integration, I wholeheartedly agree with that. The rewarding system is day-based, but it's not meant to evoke the feeling of daily logins like in gacha games or MMOs, it's meant to support you to build a habit of firing up this app daily to get work done, and the rewarding system is there to reward you for it. The decorating feature can have more furniture options, but this isn't a Sims or house decoration game, the decorating is simply a nicely added touch to help you get more cozy in this cottage.
This app is meant to help you get work done for your life, and everything else it has is there in service of that purpose. Any more than that, and it loses the appeal that made the original Virtual Cottage work in the first place, at least to me.
For me, this app is going to be a part of my daily life, just like the original Virtual Cottage, and I'm really grateful for DU&I for their work on this.
