Act 1 wipes the floor with Act 2 as far as i'm concerned. whatever advantage Act 2 has in breadth of content Act 1 makes up for in sheer depth. all 3 of the first act's principle locations are developed right down to the most minute detail; I know some players thought the item combining feature was pure fluff and they didn't miss it at all in the second act, but to me that MADE the second game. I'm hearing all the praise for the worldbuilding in Act 2, but personally I was never really able to feel like Act 2 was about any kind of world at all outside of the small slice of society I was forced to interact with on that train. getting the opportunity to keep combining items and keep learning stupid new details about every little thing in Xefros and Dammek's (and even Joey and Jude's!) houses really made those locales feel lived in. having these opportunities snatched away from me in Act 2, meanwhile, never felt like a decision that had been made for the sake of the art; it was always just another window into the hollowed-out guts of the lovingly sculpted but tragically underresourced world around me.

certainly doesn't help that I was just never all that compelled by the friendsim cast. paper-pushing teals was such an impossibly dull choice for a caste to focus on, and forcing them into proximity with the jadebloods really seemed to blanche all the interesting bits out of what i thought was easily one of the most intriguing bits of all Homestuck worldbuilding.