Planet Coaster 2 - Rollercoaster of Love
I design a decent amount of maps for TTRPGs, like D&D or Pathfinder. There’s a few schools of thought when it comes to how these are designed; there’s the people with a lot of skill that draw them from scratch, the people who use easier tools like Dungeondraft to make something, and the people who use CAD-like software. None of these are wrong, but I fall into the CAD group. You need a wild breadth of knowledge to finagle the sheer lack of QoL features, but the final product makes geographic sense. Why am I talking about this? Because Planet Coaster 2 is a lot like using CAD software, for better or worse.
Planet Coaster 2 is, at a blush, a nice easy game where you can manage a theme park. Building rides, placing paths, making sure staff are catered to and can work properly, guests needs being met etc. These all exist, and at first glance you’d think this was a management game. In terms of management though, it’s okay. Generally speaking, as long as you’re meeting needs and turning a profit, the management aspect can be largely ignored.
At its core though, this is a game akin to CAD software. It’s incredibly deep and complex, and it’s not easy to get across. Thankfully, there’s a core of dedicated content creators who churn out guides, workshop items and play-along series to help you get through the horrifying minefield that is building. This is a playground that rewards the time you put into it; the vast gulf between a normally built park and a really well building custom park is massive.
Has it improved upon the original game? Absolutely. The building tools have improved, water parks can be created, and I’m sure there’s a slew of improvements under the hood. I would love to espouse that the original game could have been updated, but Frontier kept it alive for 8 years with a mix of free patches and paid DLC. That’s a good long time to support a game.
Things look amazing in the game. It’ll decimate your video card if you turn the settings up, but it looks gorgeous for it. There are so many point of flourish and accoutrement in the game that listing everything that looks great would be a waste of your time. Check out some of the screenshots and you’ll see just how amazing it looks. This is no surprise though, Planet Zoo also looks amazing. I think it’ll probably take some time to get some of the hiccups out of the engine, but Frontier has a good history of fixing bugs and bringing engine improvements, so I foresee the same happening here.
If I were to have any issues with the game, I’d say it was in regards to the UI. I wager it’s due to a same-date console launch, but the UI feels much more cumbersome in comparison to the previous games. Adding some things like benches to the world takes a lot more clicks than it previously did, which can add up to some serious extra time when you’re making a big park. I’m sure they’ll listen to feedback and make adjustments, it just feels very cumbersome to use in its current state.
Similarly, Frontier have implemented their own workshop for creations. Previous games have used Steam Workshop, and to make things accessible for console players they’ve brought in their own system. For me, I found this very bad to use. It’s slow, downloads are limited, and there’s no discussion on pieces that creators have made, just a ‘like’ system. I understand why its there, but it feels bad to use. Big miss from me, as a PC player.
Another big change is the new Franchise mode, which allows multiple players to work on a park together. On paper this sounds amazing, but in reality, it’s a bit of a misnomer. In truth, it’s a shared save that can’t be used at the same time. It’s still a cool feature, but does put a dampener on my plans to hang out with my friends and make a park together while we’re chatting. Maybe one day. Maybe.
Ultimately though, Planet Coaster 2 does amazing at a lot of things, and will likely get better over the upcoming years. Frontier has shown they care about the community and their games, and they’ve poured a lot of love into this title. I think this is their best game yet, and should just get better. That relationship doesn’t come for free though, as there’s likely to be a bevvy of DLC coming. If it supports the development of the game though, and the upgrades still come for free, then it’s fine by me. My wife tends to play the hell out of these games anyway and is more than happy to buy the DLC to keep her addiction strong.
Planet Coaster 2 was reviewed on PC with code kindly supplied by the publisher.
