When we have already got a theme park simulator nearly as good as Planet Coaster, it may be tough to think about what a sequel would possibly add. And Planet Coaster 2, more often than not, does really feel fairly just like the primary one. That is not essentially a foul factor since I actually preferred the unique. Adding water rides is thrilling and refreshing, and even deeper visible customization is downright spectacular, whereas equally daunting in how the choices are introduced. But that is nonetheless rather more of a park adorning sim than a park administration one.
Where the latest Frontier video games (Planet Coaster and Planet Zoo) have actually excelled is within the practically ridiculous quantity of visible customization choices accessible. Hundreds of modular items that may be recolored, resized, rotated, and overlapped assist you to create absolutely anything you’ll be able to think about. The terrain editor is extra highly effective than ever right here, and the instruments for carving my goals into the panorama are fairly intuitive. It does really feel a bit like being thrown into the deep finish, although. I get choice paralysis from the sheer quantity of alternative, and danger getting slowed down in making every little ornament good.
I do not discover that degree of fiddliness to be as pleasant as designing rides or working 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 trip feels boring, and the pre-decorated ones haven’t got 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. But because of Steam Workshop integration – at all times an important addition – I’m positive the neighborhood may have me coated after the true element masters have extra time to tinker.
Where I do actually like that nice management is when 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 mechanically end a monitor with one click on if you’re getting near the top works very well this time round, too, and allowed me to skip the effort of fishing for the precise angle to carry everybody safely into the station.
Despite how a lot I benefit from the act of constructing my splendid park, the unique Planet Coaster was neither difficult nor fascinating 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. You can now promote what are mainly Disney’s Fast Passes as one other revenue stream, along with charging further for a pool move on water rides. There are deeper programs for visitor preferences and even issues like sunburn in sunny climates, which is all neat in idea. But when I’m making a lot cash that I can mainly ignore all of it, why would I care? Power administration can be new, however why am I constructing turbines in a theme park recreation? What theme park provides its personal electrical energy?
Staff administration remains to be largely hands-off, with some good new quality-of-life options like having the ability to choose from three completely different preset pay ranges as a substitute of typing within the numbers your self. The annoying factor this time is that, until I used to be solely lacking some core function, the trip upkeep system appears to be damaged at present. No matter what number of mechanics I employed – at one level I had one per trip, plus a pair further to cowl breaks – I used to be consistently getting notifications about rides being in poor situation or breaking down. Once they had damaged down, my workers was fairly fast to deal with the problem. But I’m undecided what they had been doing the remainder of the time. Am I purported to manually dispatch them each time a trip drops under a sure restore degree? Because 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-game tutorials usually are not a lot assist. In reality, they appear to start out from a degree of assuming you already know how you can play Planet Coaster, skipping over loads of the fundamentals.
Thankfully, the sandbox mode remains to be the star of the present for me, presenting a ravishing canvas on which to understand virtually something I can dream up. The underwhelming administration layer would not detract from the enjoyment of laying out all the things with ease and whole freedom, constructing complete points of interest from scratch, and attending to trip my customized coasters in superb first-person. All of the explanations I already liked the primary Planet Coaster usually are not solely alive and nicely right here, they’ve all been improved not directly. 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 collection, however you’ll be able to try 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 taking part in the identical recreation once more however a bit bit prettier. I do want the pool editor would merely let me paint a form reasonably than twiddling with polygons and a considerably iffy rounding device. But getting the shapes I needed was actually only a matter of time.
There’s additionally a profession mode that contains 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 is likely to be new to the collection. Also the dialogue is simply… ugh. I believe I might reasonably take heed to cats dancing on stainless-steel sheeting than these painful little skits that would not move muster in most trendy childrens’ cartoons.
What I did like about these eventualities, just like these within the first recreation, was that they showcase the sorts of issues you are able to do with the instruments accessible 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’d 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 undoubtedly stole loads of cool concepts.
Performance can be very respectable. Even at 4K, I used to be getting 60+ fps on my RTX 4070 Super more often than not, although a bit under that within the absolute most elaborate parks. I used to be in a position to 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 level-of-detail swapping refused to let my shenanigans, nevertheless ridiculous, banish my park to slideshow territory.
