From building giant roller coasters to making sure that trash can is placed just so, the levels of detail and creative freedom in theme park management games is addictively high. The childlike fun of seeing thousands of guests screaming on a loop-the-loop (and the horror of seeing them leave in a rage after you forgot to build them more toilet blocks…) is unmatched. Planet Coaster 2 looks to enhance the excellent action from the original and go one better with the addition of water parks, and it enjoyed high review scores from the press prior to launch. However, with Steam users, it’s much less cut and dry.
Despite the new management game only having been out for less than 24 hours at the time of writing, hundreds of user reviews have already poured in. The community, however, seems pretty split on what to make of Planet Coaster 2, and I’m seeing a surprisingly high amount of negative reviews. At the time of writing, Planet Coaster 2 sits on a ‘mixed’ Steam review rating with just 55% of them being positive.
After combing through the negative reviews, there is actually quite a spread of reasons as to why people feel unhappy with the game. However, the ones that crop up the most revolve around a UI that has been built with controller and consoles in mind and requires more clicks for PC users to navigate certain menus, visual blurriness, some preset themes from the first game being absent, and poor guest physics on some of the new water park attractions.
However, as mentioned, there are some really glowing reviews as well – there is a lot of love for the visual uplift compared to close rivals, the new creation tools are going over very well and seem to offer a lot more freedom and precision, and the workshop which is used for sharing and downloading other players’ creations and mods is getting a lot of praise too. Given that a lot of the pain points players are feeling right now are fixable, it’ll be interesting to see how Planet Coaster 2’s review score evolves in the coming weeks and months – my prediction is that it will only improve as a lot more long-term reviews come in to drown out the more immediate, reactionary ones.
Despite the polarized reviews, Planet Coaster 2 has got off to a strong start player count-wise. On Steam, it has come within a whisker of matching the launch peak of its predecessor – Planet Coaster 2 has achieved a peak concurrent player count of 20,048 on debut day, whereas the first Planet Coaster hit 21,971. However, with the PC player base split between Steam and Epic this time around, and it launching simultaneously on Xbox and PlayStation as well, it’s certainly doing better than what the Steam stats show.
Planet Coaster 2 is out right now. If you want to learn more about the game and pick it up for yourself, head to its Steam page here or its Epic Games Store page here.
For some similar experiences, pay a visit to our lists of the best strategy games and the best building games.
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