Planet Coaster 2 Review

 Planet Coaster 2, the long-awaited sequel to the spiritual successor of RollerCoaster Tycoon, is here. Developed by Frontier Developments, its previous entry has wowed both fans and newcomers alike with its near-endless potential for creativity and customisation, allowing you to create the dream theme park you want. Now it’s looking to expand its prospects with new rides, improved customisation, and more diverse guests that may or may not become bowling pins eventually. So, as someone whose only rollercoaster ride was spent with their head down (I think my mum still has that photo), let’s dive into a world of endless possibility… and possibly rip a couple of people off with overpriced food.

So, let’s start off with the main part of the game: making your own theme park.  The game allows you to create the park of your dreams, balanced out by needing to keep the place profitable. You need to ensure everything in your park is running smoothly and safely while also providing everything someone needs to make it an amazing day, every day. It’ll be tricky to do in the Career Mode, which has some pretty acting and dialogue that will endear you to the characters while also teaching you the basics, but I doubt many will pay mind to it when Sandbox Mode is easily available. Still, the Career Mode is good, and I recommend going through it if you’re not too confident about making your own creations or getting into the management side of things.

But enough about that, I wanna make my own deathtrap. While there are a bunch of pre-made coasters that you can plop down at any time, you’re encouraged throughout the game to create your own (or download player-made creations from the Frontier Workshop). Customisation and freedom have been the name of the game since the first Planet Coaster, and it’s no different here where it has been expanded upon with new tools to ensure you aren’t restricted in your endeavours. Making coasters is fairly easy, you’re just limited by your own imagination and the preferences of your guests, needing to balance how much Excitement, Fear, Nausea, and the G-Forces they will feel throughout the ride. New features include the ability to drop and switch tracks, event sequences to add a little more flair to your rides, and even scale, combine, and attach props to the rides themselves for a little more decoration. You can, of course, transform and decorate the terrain however you want to make sure everything is the way you want it, especially from the eyes of a guest as you can easily select one of them and see through their eyes in first-person. It would’ve been nice to actually control what they do, but it’s fine.

Introduced in this entry is weather, which can affect your guests in several ways. Sunny days will cause sunburn if you don’t provide enough shade and rain might be beautiful but you might want to make sure there are enough umbrellas and cover to keep your guests from getting too wet. Although, speaking of getting wet, one of the key selling points advertised for the game is the addition of water rides and pools to help cool off your guests in warmer weather. Make sure you have lifeguards on standby, as they’ll keep guests calm and save them when they forget how water works, and enough water pumps and filters to keep the water clean.

However, all of this can’t happen without staff to keep everything in working order and entertainers to keep your guests happy. The bigger the park, the more staff you’ll need and that can get really complicated, but there’s a solution! You can create and assign staff to zones so that they’ll only cover certain areas of your park. That means that janitors won’t walk all the way across the park to clean a spill and your entertainers won’t wander off away from your attractions. Effective use of scheduling and zones can really help your park become better and save costs. Oh, and make sure you give your employees enough breaks. They aren’t robots that can work 24/7, and pushing them too far will make them quit. Treat your staff well and they’ll keep the park running without your input (though, that applies to every job IRL).

As someone relatively new to making theme parks, I found everything a little too busy for my liking. While I did go through a few campaign levels, it felt a little lacking in teaching me how to take advantage of all its tools and systems. That being said, it is very powerful once you do learn it. You have full control over every single aspect of your park, even down to creating your own custom buildings just the way you like them. It doesn’t just have to be the set themes and decorations the game provides, you can go all out and make some wild stuff. I just would’ve liked a better tutorial to really teach me the ins and outs and the Help menu didn’t exactly help all that much. This definitely isn’t for newcomers to the genre and requires quite a bit of work to really unleash your imagination.

And hey, this doesn’t just have to be a solo endeavour. Why not create a park with your friends in Franchise Mode, where you’ll compete with other players to make it to the top of the worldwide leaderboard. You can also share your parks online with no restriction on which platform they may be on. That’s right, there’s crossplay. However, it’s one-at-a-time, so you can’t build the park simultaneously.

Now onto a few problems I had with the game. I had a few hiccups with performance when I was in first-person view, but overall it did run at a consistent framerate. However, trying to do specific positioning when making your own scenery can be a little frustrating as objects move with your cursor, regardless if it’s in a menu or not. Playing with a controller isn’t too bad, with a radial menu to allow easy access to various options quickly and intuitively. However, the best experience is with a keyboard and mouse, as it is much easier to get things the way you want them.

Planet Coaster 2 is one of the pinnacles of the theme park simulator genre and while it doesn’t have a smooth learning curve for newcomers, it’s safe to say that those who have already mastered its systems will enjoy it immensely, with the ability to create anything you want the way you like it. And hey, even if you don’t get everything, you can just fire up the Sandbox Mode and create to your heart’s desires. If you liked the last game, you’ll definitely enjoy what you see here.

Planet Coaster 2 is coming out on the 6th of November and releasing on PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S. What are you waiting for? Make it fun.