It cannot be easy to envision what a sequel might bring when we already have a theme park simulator that is on par with Planet Coaster. Additionally, Planet Coaster 2 feels a lot like the original most of the time. Given how much I like the original, that is not always bad. It is exciting and invigorating to add water rides, and the way the options are presented makes even more visual customization both spectacular and intimidating. However, this simulation still focuses more on park decoration than park administration.
When it comes to the almost absurd quantity of visual customization possibilities available, the most recent Frontier titles (Planet Coaster and Planet Zoo) have truly shined. You can design almost anything you can think of using hundreds of modular components that can be recolored, scaled, rotated, and overlapped. Here, the terrain editor is more capable than before, and the tools for etching my visions into the landscape are quite user-friendly. However, it does feel something like being plunged into the deep end. The sheer volume of options causes me to become paralyzed by my choices and run the risk of becoming overwhelmed by the need to make every single decoration flawless.
It is not as fun for me as creating rides or managing a park, but the pre-made decorations do not nearly make up for it, so I feel like I can skip that phase and still obtain the theme I want. It is monotonous to descend an unadorned ride, and the pre-decorated ones lack sufficient diversity. I found myself wishing for something in between obsessing over every railing and putting up with unthemed or pre-themed attractions. However, once the real detail masters have more time to experiment, I am confident that the community will take care of me thanks to Steam Workshop integration, which is always a nice feature.
When I am creating rides, I truly enjoy having that fine control, and the coaster editor is now more robust and user-friendly than before. The excellent user interface makes creating banks, corkscrews, spirals, loops, and bends of all sizes simple and easy. This time around, the feature that lets you finish a track with a single click when you are almost done is also incredibly effective. It saved me the trouble of trying to find the ideal angle to deliver everyone safely to the station.
For practically anything I can imagine, sandbox mode offers a stunning canvas.
Even though I love creating my dream park, the original Planet Coaster was not a difficult or engaging management tycoon game, and that has regrettably not changed. I found it almost stupidly easy to make endless money with a limited number of flat rides and a large admission price, even after tinkering with the difficulty settings, which come in a variety of forms. In addition to charging more for a pool pass on water rides, you may also make extra money by selling what are essentially Disney Fast Passes. Theoretically, there are more intricate systems for visitor preferences and even for things like sunburn in sunny climes. Why would I care, though, when I am generating so much money that I can essentially disregard it all? Even though power management is new, why am I creating generators in a game set in a theme park? Which theme park provides electricity on its own?
Although there are some great new quality-of-life features, such as the ability to choose from three different preset pay levels rather than entering the figures yourself, staff management is still mostly hands-off. This time, the bothersome problem is that the ride maintenance system appears to be failing right now unless I was completely missing some essential element. I was continuously receiving emails about rides that were in poor shape or breaking down, regardless of how many mechanics I hired—at one point, I had one mechanic per ride, plus a few more to cover breaks. After they broke down, my crew took care of the problem quickly. The remainder of the time, though, I do not know what they were doing. Should I manually send them out each time a ride falls below a predetermined repair threshold? Because it appears that they ignore that until it is too late.
The in-game tutorials are not very helpful, and I had trouble understanding the scheduling page. Actually, they skim over a lot of the fundamentals and appear to assume you already know how to play Planet Coaster. Fortunately, I still think the sandbox mode is the best feature because it offers a stunning canvas that allows me to create practically anything I can imagine. The pleasure of creating entire attractions from scratch, putting things out with ease and complete freedom, and experiencing my bespoke coasters in spectacular first-person is not diminished by the lackluster administration layer. Not only are all of the reasons I enjoyed the original Planet Coaster still present but they have all been enhanced in some way. You can review the original Planet Coaster for a refresher, but if I seem a little negative about this sequel, it is only because I do not feel the need to reiterate all the wonderful aspects of this series.
I did not feel like I was playing the same game over and over again, but with customizable pools, flumes, splash rides, and even water coasters, I could design completely different types of parks. Instead of tinkering with polygons and a shaky rounding tool, I would like the pool editor to just allow me to paint a shape. However, it was only a question of time till I had the shapes I wanted.
Additionally, there is a career mode that offers a few progressively difficult situations and tasks to complete. I still believe it lacks certain crucial stages to onboard someone who could be unfamiliar with the series, even though it does a passable job of presenting some new ideas, such as those water rides. The conversation is also absolutely dreadful. Instead of these annoying short skits that would not make it in most contemporary children’s cartoons, I think I would rather listen to cats dance on stainless steel sheeting.
Verdict
In every way that its predecessor excelled, Planet Coaster 2 excels even more. With its enormous selection of rides, scenery, terrain tools, and occasionally frightfully extensive customization choices, it is a detailer’s paradise. However, it still fails to make the financial aspects of managing a park, or even personnel management, interesting or challenging, therefore it is also awful at pretty much everything the previous one was bad at. But even if you have spent hundreds of hours riding the original Planet Coaster, the inclusion of water attractions is motivation enough to get involved. Overall, it is the best sim of its kind that you can get.
