Planet Coaster 2 review: A paradise for creatives, a disappointment for strategists

The good news: Frontier does a lot better with its theme park simulation than in its predecessor. The bad news: Of all things, the biggest problem remains.

Update from November 6, 2024: Today, Planet Coaster 2 opens its doors. As promised, we have continued to test the game in the past few days and have been in contact with the developers about some major bugs.

In fact, a new patch appeared via Steam at the beginning of the release week, which fixed the worst AI issues. However, there are still unsightly path blockades here and there due to the guests, which we at least chalk up as negative in terms of atmosphere. Unfortunately, as expected, nothing more has been done about the weak economy part.

Welcome to my everyday life in Planet Coaster 2! As the manager of the theme park GlobalESportNews World, I have experienced pretty much everything in around 50 hours of gameplay. Let’s just say that, on its second attempt, this mix of creative construction kit and economic simulation will either have you on the edge of your seat or putting you to sleep, depending on what you expect from the game. Come with me, I’ll get a ticket for you and show you everything in detail!

Manager Rule 1: After entering the park, head straight for the food court!

We start our test tour right at the entrance gate of GlobalESportNews World. People still have enough money in their pockets and I’m taking advantage of that. Nine dollars for a hot dog is okay, isn’t it? What are those reproachful looks for?!

The basic gameplay of Planet Coaster 2 is quickly explained. As a manager, you build an amusement park with everything that goes with it: roller coasters, Ferris wheels, freefall towers, food, drinks and much more.

Two tools in Planet Coaster 2 help newcomers in particular not to be overwhelmed by the countless features, as was still the case in part one:

• Better tutorials: In a story career, you are taught the tools of the park manager’s trade step by step. You’ll meet some quirky characters who will help you along the way. All in all, a very nice way to get started in the Planet Coaster adventure, even if it’s not really challenging.

• Reworked menus: Many displays are still in the same place as in the predecessor, but have been streamlined or restructured so that the UI no longer immediately discourages players, especially at the beginning of the game.

Despite this convenience, I have to warn you: the manager’s life in Planet Coaster 2 can still overwhelm newcomers with all the possibilities. Fortunately, even after the tutorials, you always have a database at your side where you can look up anything.

Manager Rule No. 2: Be good to your staff, unless they want more money

As park managers, you don’t just swing the construction hammer, but you are also responsible for personnel, cleanliness, research and the technical maintenance of the facilities. And that takes it out of you, I’m telling you… which reminds me that I still have to reject Gertrude’s pay rise after the tour. I can tighten the few screws on the roller coaster by myself, pah!

Yes, you read that right: If you’re not nice to your employees, they’ll quit and stop working with immediate effect. Then Martin’s Milk Bar will stop selling beer, the paths will be littered with half-digested currywurst and my children’s favorite Ferris wheel, the Nice Natalie, will come to a standstill. Not a pretty scenario!

To prevent such annoying problems from arising in the first place, you need to build break rooms and training centers. Plus, work schedules and zones can be worked out down to the smallest detail, then it will work with the technology.

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Speaking of technology: Planet Coaster 2 runs pleasantly smoothly in terms of performance. On both my high-end computer and an old gaming notebook, the frame rate remained stable even in full parks, and what’s more, the game looks very nice even with reduced details.

Deductions in technology, however, are made for the unsightly clipping errors in the park visitors. Especially in narrow places, when the passers-by are crowded together, they literally merge into one another before suddenly repelling each other like plus and minus poles.

Manager Rule 3: Only a beautiful park is a successful park

So, we’ll leave the entrance area now, because you now know what your job as a park manager is. I’m not blind and I see your impatient expressions. It’s written all over your faces: I just want to build roller coasters, get to the point already!

Planet Coaster 2 is the pinnacle of creative theme park design. You can customize every little detail of your park to your heart’s content: walls, floors, signs, decorations, colors, music, effects, plants and much more. New compared to its predecessor, you can now even attach objects to rollercoaster cars.

No matter how crazy your ideas are, you can implement them in the game. And your hard work pays off twice over, because it not only delights your tinkerer’s heart, but also has a positive effect on the park rating given by visitors. This attracts even more people, creating a wonderfully motivating cycle that also flushes tons of money into the coffers, yay!

Thanks to the powerful editors, you can recreate real attractions exactly as well as devise your own creations and share them with other players worldwide thanks to the online connection.

If you’ve already played the first part extensively, you can also look forward to many gameplay changes in the sequel:

• Reworked pathway construction: There is hardly anything more nerve-wracking than building a beautiful pathway in Planet Coaster 1. In the sequel, the process is much more convenient and, above all, less prone to error thanks to a new tool. This makes it possible to create magnificent squares and winding paths in no time at all. However, the whole thing is still a bit fiddly.

• Scenery Brushes:Gone are the days when you had to place each rock and each tree individually, only to realize in the end that the vegetation still doesn’t look organic. Thanks to a variety of scenery brushes, rocks, bushes, trees and other objects can now be placed in the park automatically using an algorithm. This saves an enormous amount of work!

• First-person camera: You can now stroll through the park from the perspective of your visitors and proudly admire your work – what could be better?

• Scalable Objects: Not satisfied with the size of the boards, stones and flamingo bushes? Simply make them bigger or smaller using the slider!

• Event Sequences: From now on, special effects can be timed to the second to give visitors an unforgettable time on an attraction. The last time this was possible on this scale was in Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 20 years ago.

• New Themes: Many buildings shine in one of four new themes, namely mythology, resort, underwater world and Vikings. Especially new managers can be inspired by the blueprints for their first own creations.

• Water and electricity management: As in Planet Zoo, you now have to make sure that a stable power grid supplies the park with energy. If you build the new pools, you also have to pay attention to water hygiene.

Manager Rule No. 4: When building the roller coaster, have the anger pillow ready

However, it is also true that you as a park designer will often cry. Not because of empty coffers, let’s not even think about something that bad! But the controls of Planet Coaster 2 are still a harbinger of hell in some places.

In particular, manually building a roller coaster still borders on a modern method of torture. The idea sounds great in theory: you can carry out the entire construction process using only the mouse, determining the angle and height of the next piece of track, installing special sections and more.

In practice, however, the game either doesn’t recognize many mouse commands correctly or reacts hypersensitively to the smallest movements, so that instead of a left-hand incline of 22.5 degrees, the track is suddenly built steeply downwards. In short: it’s enough to make you tear your hair out! Building a large roller coaster can easily take two to three hours.

It’s not surprising that things get even worse with the controller – which, by the way, applies to the whole game. You can also play Planet Coaster 2 with the gamepad, but it’s not really comfortable.

Many menu levels are difficult to access and selecting objects in the game world with the default sensitivity is extremely difficult. It’s better to use a mouse and keyboard! Then building the roller coaster is still a chore, but at least you won’t tear your hair out in anger.

Manager Rule No. 5: You need a lot of time for the fun and excitement

Your new job as a park manager in Planet Coaster 2 also shines with plenty of variety when it comes to the various game scenarios:

• Career: The aforementioned story campaign is not only recommended for beginners. Thanks to the many quirky characters and the varied mission objectives, the career is also an entertaining pleasure for those in the know.

• Sandbox: If you want to let off steam with almost no limits, you can use a variety of options to create your personal dream scenario. Endless money? No problem. Tropics, Mediterranean or European forests? The choice is yours. This mode is the centerpiece of Planet Coaster 2.

• Franchise: Together with other park managers worldwide, you can work on the park of your dreams in multiplayer mode. It’s only a matter of time before pictures and videos of the craziest community projects appear on the internet!

Manager Rule 6: A water filter on the tank prevents quarrels and smells

Look, do you see the big pool over there with the gilded diving boards? That’s mine! But next to it, the smaller one there – that’s our bathing paradise in GlobalESportNews World. One of the biggest innovations in Planet Coaster 2 is the construction of your own water parks, complete with huge slides.

For the bathing fun, you first have to dig deep into your pockets, because the fun in the water is not cheap. The pool area itself is just the tip of the expensive iceberg. Water filters keep the cool water clean, even if Grandpa Albrecht’s bubble bursts or little Lilli’s swimming diaper splits.

And the paying public also want to be entertained in the water. So diving boards, slides, sun loungers and other frills are essential for a successful water park.

Oh yes, and lifeguards are of course also a must. I’ve lost count of how many overambitious Michael Phelps wannabes my boys and girls have fished out of the pool.

It’s just a shame that the AI lifeguards in the review version of Planet Coaster 2 still have serious problems getting into the water at all. At the edge of the pool, they endlessly run into an invisible wall while someone is drowning right in front of them. I would like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to my permanent guest Gustav. Gustel, I will miss you (and your wallet)!

Manager Rule 7: If it rains on the roof, the park will quickly fall into disrepair

What I definitely won’t miss is the rain! That damned downpour that really messed up my daily balance last Tuesday!

Rain is one of the new weather effects in Planet Coaster 2 and has a playful effect on what’s happening in your park. When the heavens open above the heads of your visitors, they no longer feel like riding roller coasters or swimming in pools.

So you have to be prepared and also offer enough covered attractions, otherwise one thing in particular will go down the drain, namely your income. But a real manager can still turn this plight into profit: How about an umbrella for ten dollars? Bargain!

You shouldn’t take even strong sunshine lightly. If your bathers can’t buy (of course overpriced) sunscreen, they’ll get a nasty sunburn – that will take revenge on your park rating and scare away visitors.

Manager Rule 8: It’s easier to work as a team – but you have to swallow a bitter pill

Shortly before release, we were finally able to try out the new multiplayer mode, which is called Franchise in the game. It works quite simply, but also comes with some restrictions.

When you open a new Franchise Park, you have the option of selecting a variety of tags. These are short keywords to immediately convey to other builders and potential park partners what your park is about. For example, that the focus is on ride design, beginners are welcome and English is the primary language spoken.

After answering these fundamental questions, you can select the location of your franchise park on a globe. After that, you can accept or reject incoming requests from users or invite them manually using a code.

Now comes the big restriction: You cannot build with each other at the same time Instead, you make changes in the park and then upload them. The server then processes the changes, checks for any overlaps with other players and implements everything accordingly.

This will disappoint many of you, but it is probably a technical concession to the complex in-game editors. The focus in multiplayer is clearly on building together and less on playing together. Creative building is great, but the depth of content is limited – does this sound familiar? That’s right, the core problem of Planet Coaster 2 is also reflected in multiplayer.

So here, too, you have to know exactly what you’re getting into in advance. Running around the park together and other interactions are not possible. But you can make specific arrangements and create atmospheric theme parks based on them.

X is building the new Viking roller coaster over there. Y could build a family area here at the entrance. And Z can take care of modernizing the water park. You could discuss things like this with each other and then you’ll be on the right track for a fun cooperation (incidentally, between PC and console)!

Manager Rule 9: Don’t think too much, just do it, and you’ll have something to laugh about.

So far, it sounds like Planet Coaster 2 is going to skyrocket similar to the Silver Star at Europa-Park and reach the top of our rating system. It’s just a shame that this creative high is followed by a strategic crash landing. Like its predecessor, Planet Coaster 2 also disappoints when it comes to the management aspect.

In theory, a lot of things still sound exciting: Yes, you can work out work schedules for your staff. Yes, you can set the prices for each attraction individually. Yes, you can set the colors of your attractions, run advertising campaigns and make sure that the fun-hungry guests don’t see the ugly power generators. It’s just stupid when in practice all the adjustments can’t hide the fact that they’re just holding a facade together.

Whether the hot dogs cost 9 or 3 or 12 dollars makes little difference. Whether Sause-Steffi gets a red or blue paint job is of no interest to the visitors (mostly it’s broken anyway, grmpf!). Expensive advertising campaigns are hardly noticeable; people flock to the park in droves even without expensive marketing.

Planet Coaster 2 may overwhelm you with countless switches, controllers and options, but almost all of them have no noticeable effect and are quickly forgotten. Why should I satisfy the needs of such illustrious guests as Bodo Bubbel, Frieda Raffzahn and Michael Graf when new visitors are constantly flocking in anyway?

Even the construction of a water park – after all, the big new feature of the second part – doesn’t present any major challenges. Even in the XXL pool, a ladder and a few diving boards are enough to keep the guests entertained. Nothing feels like a real challenge.

The new power management is also annoying. On the one hand, laying generators, distributors and cables is extremely fiddly, and on the other hand, the machines break more often than my two-year-old daughter’s Duplo tower. Although this feature can be optionally deactivated in the game options, this is not a satisfactory solution.

At the moment, we therefore have to delete the simulation from the word amusement park simulation or at least write it in lower case. If you don’t insist on managing every little detail and being challenged by the game, you’ll have a blast. Of course, this is not a long-term solution for all of you strategists, which is why we won’t mince our words:

• Are you looking for a challenging, strategic amusement park manager? Then you should refrain from buying it at the moment. Especially if you already own the predecessor.

• Do you want to let off creative steam and build the rollercoaster paradise of your dreams? Then go for it and apply the final rule:

Editor’s conclusion

I have two hearts beating in my chest for Planet Coaster 2. One heart radiates pure love. Love for the creative possibilities that the game opens up for me. In real life, I’m an absolute amusement park freak, and now I can finally create my own amusement paradise in the comfort of my own home during the cold winter months – amazing!

The other heart, on the other hand, is blazing with anger. Anger at the wasted potential in the economic part. In the past, with Rollercoaster Tycoon or Theme Park World (the older ones remember), I had to adjust prices, plan advertising campaigns and keep an eye on the budget almost every minute. In Planet Coaster 2, I can do all of that too, but it has little effect on either visitor numbers or finances.

So before you buy, you need to have a very clear idea of what you expect from Planet Coaster 2. Is your creative mind overflowing with ideas? Then jump into endless play, disable the money limit, and I guarantee you many fun-filled weeks with the game!

On the other hand, are you more interested in the economics of a thriving amusement park and all the associated challenges? Then it’s better to wait and see if Frontier improves with patches and DLCs, and play the more demanding – and cheaper – Parkitect!