After we have already got a theme park simulator nearly as good as Planet Coaster, it may be tough to think about what a sequel may add. And Planet Coaster 2, more often than not, does really feel fairly much like the primary one. That is not essentially a foul factor since I actually appreciated the unique. Including water rides is thrilling and refreshing, and even deeper visible customization is downright spectacular, whereas equally daunting in how the choices are offered. However that is nonetheless rather more of a park adorning sim than a park administration one.
The place the latest Frontier video games (Planet Coaster and Planet Zoo) have actually excelled is within the almost ridiculous quantity of visible customization choices out there. A whole lot of modular items that may be recolored, resized, rotated, and overlapped will let you create absolutely anything you possibly can think about. The terrain editor is extra highly effective than ever right here, and the instruments for carving my desires into the panorama are fairly intuitive. It does really feel a bit like being thrown into the deep finish, although. I get resolution paralysis from the sheer quantity of selection, and danger getting slowed down in making every little ornament excellent.
I do not discover that stage of fiddliness to be as pleasant as designing rides or operating a park, however the pre-made decor would not fairly fill the hole to the place I really feel like I can skip that step and nonetheless get the theming I would like. Plopping down an unadorned journey feels boring, and the pre-embellished ones do not have fairly sufficient selection. What I actually discovered myself eager for was one thing in-between the extremes of fussing over each handrail and accepting unthemed or pre-themed points of interest. However because of Steam Workshop integration – at all times an amazing addition – I am certain the group may have me lined after the true element masters have extra time to tinker.
The place I do actually like that tremendous management is after I’m constructing rides, and the coaster editor is extra highly effective and simpler to make use of than ever. Creating banks, corkscrews, spirals, loops, and bends of all sizes feels intuitive and virtually easy because of the good UI. The choice to routinely end a observe with one click on once you’re getting near the tip works rather well this time round, too, and allowed me to skip the effort of fishing for the suitable angle to carry everybody safely into the station.
Regardless of how a lot I benefit from the act of constructing my best park, the unique Planet Coaster was neither difficult nor attention-grabbing as a administration tycoon recreation, and that has sadly not modified. Even after messing with the problem settings, of which there are a number of, I discovered it virtually mindlessly easy to generate infinite cash with a small variety of flat rides and a excessive entry payment. Now you can promote what are mainly Disney’s Quick Passes as one other earnings stream, along with charging additional for a pool move on water rides. There are deeper techniques for visitor preferences and even issues like sunburn in sunny climates, which is all neat in principle. However after I’m making a lot cash that I can mainly ignore all of it, why would I care? Energy administration can be new, however why am I constructing mills in a theme park recreation? What theme park provides its personal electrical energy?
Workers administration remains to be largely arms-off, with some good new high quality-of-life options like having the ability to choose from three totally different preset pay ranges as a substitute of typing within the numbers your self. The annoying factor this time is that, except I used to be totally lacking some core function, the journey upkeep system appears to be damaged at present. Irrespective of what number of mechanics I employed – at one level I had one per journey, plus a pair additional to cowl breaks – I used to be continually getting notifications about rides being in poor situation or breaking down. As soon as they had damaged down, my employees was fairly fast to handle the difficulty. However I am unsure what they had been doing the remainder of the time. Am I imagined to manually dispatch them each time a journey drops beneath a sure restore stage? As a result of they do not appear to concentrate to that till it is too late.
I could not actually get my head across the scheduling display, and the in-recreation tutorials aren’t a lot assist. In truth, they appear to start out from some extent of assuming you already know play Planet Coaster, skipping over lots of the fundamentals.
Fortunately, the sandbox mode remains to be the star of the present for me, presenting a stupendous canvas on which to comprehend virtually something I can dream up. The underwhelming administration layer would not detract from the enjoyment of laying out every little thing with ease and complete freedom, constructing entire points of interest from scratch, and attending to journey my customized coasters in wonderful first-individual. All the causes I already beloved the primary Planet Coaster aren’t solely alive and effectively right here, they’ve all been improved in a roundabout way. So if I sound a bit down on this sequel, it is solely as a result of I do not really feel the necessity to return over each single factor that was already nice about this sequence, however you possibly can take a look at my overview of the primary Planet Coaster for a refresher.
Customizable swimming pools, flumes, splash rides, and even water coasters open up the chance to create completely new sorts of parks, which saved me from feeling like I used to be enjoying the identical recreation once more however somewhat bit prettier. I do want the pool editor would merely let me paint a form fairly than twiddling with polygons and a considerably iffy rounding device. However getting the shapes I wished was actually only a matter of time.
There’s additionally a profession mode that includes a handful of more and more complicated eventualities and challenges to grasp. It does an okay job of introducing some new ideas, like these water rides, however I nonetheless assume it is lacking some main steps to onboard somebody who may be new to the sequence. Additionally the dialogue is simply… ugh. I believe I might fairly hearken to cats dancing on chrome steel sheeting than these painful little skits that would not move muster in most trendy childrens’ cartoons.
What I did like about these eventualities, much like these within the first recreation, was that they showcase the sorts of issues you are able to do with the instruments out there to you, serving as a supply of inspiration for my very own parks. I used to be by no means going to stay with them as soon as I would earned sufficient stars to maneuver on (it is simply not as enjoyable to complete one thing another person already began than it’s to construct from the bottom up), however I positively stole lots of cool concepts.
Efficiency can be very respectable. Even at 4K, I used to be getting 60+ fps on my RTX 4070 Tremendous more often than not, although a bit beneath that within the absolute most elaborate parks. I used to be capable of do actually foolish stuff like recreating the Erdtree from Elden Ring utilizing what should have been tons of and tons of of golden pyrotechnics, and the extent-of-element swapping refused to let my shenanigans, nonetheless ridiculous, banish my park to slideshow territory.