It definitely worked at 2 players but this version is more cutthroat and tactical with the need to adapt to chance a little more since the availability of gems is going to depend on how they fall out of the bag. Also those pearls are s subtle but very important touch because they cannot be discounted by your tableau cards so you need to be interacting with the board all the way through, you cannot just rely on your engine once you've got enough cards to ignore the need for gem collecting.
Splendor was already great at 2 players
It definitely worked at 2 players but this version is more cutthroat and tactical with the need to adapt to chance a little more since the availability of gems is going to depend on how they fall out of the bag. Also those pearls are s subtle but very important touch because they cannot be discounted by your tableau cards so you need to be interacting with the board all the way through, you cannot just rely on your engine once you've got enough cards to ignore the need for gem collecting.