Much like its predecessor, Planet Coaster 2 is a theme park creative management game which lets you design and run your own amusement park and offers new features compared to its predecessor.
The biggest and most obvious change to the sequel is the addition of water parks. You can now add swimming pools, lazy rivers, and a variety of water slides which all integrate seamlessly into your usual theme park staples of flat rides, shops, and, of course, rollercoasters.
Speaking of rollercoasters, the game has added a bunch of new track elements including switching tracks, tilting tracks, and vertical drop tracks, allowing you to design custom rides with unparalleled creativity.
As was the case with Planet Coaster: Console Edition, this sequel has charming graphics and a great accompanying soundtrack. The guest animations are particularly good, as it's fun to watch them wander around the park and gawp at your creations. There is a lengthy campaign with fully voiced character narrators, although you may find some of these over-the-top personalities grating.
The path building system, which was particularly frustrating in the previous game, has been overhauled and its now much easier to build large open plazas thanks to bunch of new tools. The controls, however, still take some getting used to, especially for perfectionist builders, and it can be confusing navigating through many tabs of options.
While you can customise assets and scenery by mixing and matching elements, this can get fiddly, so you may prefer to use the predesigned blueprints to quickly build up your park. Persevere, though, and it's possible to share your designs with other players on the Frontier Workshop. There are new scenery themes including mythology and Vikings, but many options from the previous game are disappointingly absent. This is particularly frustrating as staples such as fantasy and sci-fi may wind up locked behind a pay wall in the future.
One improvement over the previous game is you can now attach scenery to flat rides and even coaster trains so that they can fit into any themed area of your park allowing you to reuse the same flat rides in different themed areas. There's also a new scenery brush to help quickly fill empty areas with trees and rocks.
In conclusion, Planet Coaster 2 is a worthy sequel to the original and it seems Frontier has really listened to fan feedback and delivered what fans have been longing for. If you liked the original then you'll love this follow-up, but genre newcomers could find the sheer spectrum of options here a touch overwhelming.
Comments 13
Thanks for the review, James. I loved the first Planet Coaster so I'm hoping to get a few hours with this once the Xmas craziness is over!
I'm excited for this one. Love me a theme park simulator and this is best around at the moment. Glad to see the campaign is back. Surprisingly engaging the last one was.
I've always wanted to try the first game but never quite gotten around to it, I actually have it in my games library as it was given away as a free monthly ps plus essential game a while back.
I used to love the old Theme park games back in the day
Let's be honest, simulator games like this are really made for a keyboard and a mouse, playing them on anything but makes the game overly complicated
@Yusuo probably, but a lot of people have consoles and not PCs that can handle games. Cities Skyline was really good on console and get a great deal of things right
Any news about new shops and or carnival type games?
@BamBamBaklava89 I've been following the game and ive not seen them once mention anything about those parts.
The focus has been sheerly on the waterpark and sticking objects on rides.
I really need to get one of these games. I have loved the genre since Theme Park in the old Bullfrog days.
Roller Coaster Tycoon will always have a special place in my heart, though.
@Yusuo It has keyboard and mouse support https://www.planetcoaster.com/help-centre
Very much looking forward to this one, I’ve sunk hundreds of hours into the first game! You were also able to use with mouse and keyboard on console too so expect this to come across to this game.
Pre-ordered and waiting! Cant wait to sink all my winter / xmas spare hours into it
@Yusuo Feel the same way about RTS games or isometric RPGs where you can have over a dozen spells, etc (BG3, DoS series). How anyone plays those with a controller is beyond me. I guess if you've never played games any other way...
Pleasantly surprised to find this is £40 on the store. Bargain! The first Coaster and Zoo are excellent sims so expecting the same greatness from this one.
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