Planet Coaster 2 Review: Compulsive Building, Frustrating Flaws

Planet Coaster 2 Review: Compulsive Building, Frustrating Flaws

Planet Coaster 2 offers incredibly flexible creation tools, but its fun is hampered by a cumbersome UI, uninspired management gameplay, and noticeable content gaps that feel like DLC placeholders. The game’s presentation is stunning, bringing creative whims to life with impressive visuals and sound. However, the core gameplay remains similar to RollerCoaster Tycoon, focusing on park management, hiring staff, and building rides.

Improved Building Tools

This sequel refines its predecessor, particularly benefiting YouTube content creators. A new lighting engine allows for realistic dark rides, while optimization prevents the slideshow-like performance issues of the original. Track ride construction is smoother, and additions like object scaling and scenery brushes significantly improve the building experience. Pools and flumes have also been added, fulfilling community requests.

Management Shortcomings

Planet Coaster 2’s management aspects, however, are superficial. Features like restaurants and hotels have been removed. While it includes options like water filtration and power distribution, their implementation is underwhelming. This contrasts with Frontier’s Planet Zoo, which effectively balances management and design. Even new features like water parks feel lacking in integration.

UI Frustrations and Content Gaps

The UI is often frustrating, making navigation and accessing key information difficult. The Workshop lacks essential filters, adding to the inconvenience. Feedback is often poor and contradictory. While the ride selection is good, the thematic options are bland, and pre-built decorations are scarce, leaving much to be desired and feeling like content creators are being relied on to fill the gaps.

Accessibility

Accessibility options include subtitles, colour blindness settings, interface scaling, dialogue isolation, audio mono mode, and sensitivity sliders.