Planet Coaster 2 Review – All Down Hill

When you think back to Frontier Developments and the management titles it’s released thus far – going from zoo management to dinosaur parks and Formula 1 – it’s incredible how it all started from one franchise: Planet Coaster. A spiritual successor to the Rollercoaster Tycoon series (with the third game developed by Frontier), Planet Coaster emerged as a worthwhile alternative after Atari essentially ruined the former. Rough edges aside, it was a game where players could live out their theme park construction fantasies, bolstered by a strong community with extensive creations.

Regardless of other titles, it’s somewhat intriguing that it took this long for Planet Coaster 2 to happen. Between the improved visuals, the new Career Mode with its various scenarios, fresh systems like water park attractions and flumes, and more, it seems to build on everything that made the original great. Unfortunately, between the annoying bugs, questionable user interface, lackluster themes and more, it’s hard to recommend in its current state.

"Outside of the writing, Career Mode (and Sandbox Mode, by extension) also suffers from another significant flaw with Planet Coaster 2’s design: The UI."

Planet Coaster 2 starts you off with the rudimentary modes – Career, Sandbox, and Franchise (playable online with other players). Career has you scouring different locations around the globe and partaking in various scenarios. It starts simply enough, outlining the basics of park management and the new water attractions before delving into more specific missions, like restoring four busted coasters. Of course, you can also hang around in some scenarios and complete additional objectives, which helps you get a grip on other systems, like purchasing land and building flat rides, paths and more from scratch.

The problem is the writing. I know – no one is playing a theme park management title for the characters or the dialogue. Yet Planet Coaster 2 insists on pushing them onto you while ensuring they’re as irritating as possible. I’m sure someone thought an interaction between the Newton brothers regarding a distressed guest in a swimming pool where Eugene lost his wits while his brother had to comfort him would have been hilarious. However, even if you like these characters, the bit goes on too long, interrupting the pacing.

The constant stream of jokes and sarcasm also begins to wear after a point, but the worst part is if you’re a new player, there’s no way to skip to the next dialogue. You can only skip the entire interaction, leading to some awkwardness when you suddenly have to build a power distributor and connect it to the power grid while wondering why there’s a heat map suddenly brought up. At least the voice actors try their best to inject some enthusiasm into the proceedings, saddled as they are with this “material.”

Outside of the writing, Career Mode (and Sandbox Mode, by extension) also suffers from another significant flaw with Planet Coaster 2’s design: The UI. I’ve already seen impressions from PC players bemoaning how unintuitive and “made for consoles” it is, but there’s good news – it’s equally frustrating on PS5. Moving around the park with the camera, zooming in and out while rotating, isn’t too bad. Anything slightly deeper than that is where problems begin to emerge.

"Don’t even get me started on the flumes themselves. Meticulously balancing the lateral and vertical Gs with the right amount of excitement, ensuring the fear and nausea are at a minimum, is irritating when guests mysteriously stop riding on them."

When selecting a building, you must navigate to “Edit Building” to make changes. This is fine on its own but becomes all the more tedious when dealing with flumes. Several additional menus must be navigated for aspects like testing (with three separate buttons for closing, testing and opening a ride), selecting different components, assigning staff, and whatnot. All those clicks for one aspect of one part of the theme park get tiring.

It’s not much better when generally navigating menus. To select facilities, you must navigate to different tabs using R1 and L1, go through several different icons for the desired one, scroll through those options, and then plop it down. And don’t forget that there are also custom creations and pool extras to deal with as well, tucked away in their own menu. I can only imagine how much more annoying this will get when throwing in community creations from the workshop. The sheer amount of navigation and selection wears you down at best. At worst, it feels downright unenjoyable and demotivating.

As for the whole water attraction aspect, there is much to improve on. Pools don’t really offer much on their own, and some elements, like ladders, feel outright useless since guests will just get up and out on their own. Good luck building a pool according to your desired path as well. You can put down points and attempt to curve them around, go with differently shaped stamps that end up looking awkward, and whatnot, but they just don’t feel intuitive enough.

Don’t even get me started on the flumes themselves. Meticulously balancing the lateral and vertical Gs with the right amount of excitement, ensuring the fear and nausea are at a minimum, is irritating when guests mysteriously stop riding on them. Frontier is at least looking into the physics, seemingly implementing scenarios where guests can fall off of slides, but there’s no ETA. There are several features yet to be implemented, from billboards and custom music to having several guests on a flume at a time and changing the weather in Sandbox Mode.

Here’s hoping for some adjustments to pathing as well. Placing a staff building and mechanic workshop side by side, and getting the option to create a merged path, only for it to not work multiple times in a row is frustrating. I also found the results somewhat perplexing – after receiving reports of guests being thirsty and navigating to the drink stand, I found no problems. This is on top of other bugs like character models clipping, shaky buildings when attempting to snap them near a specific path, etc.

"As it stands, this feels like a less refined version of the original – prettier but ultimately lacking intuitiveness, ingenuity or the right amount of polish to really make it shine."

It’s all the more disappointing because between all these design choices, missing features, and bugs, there is a genuinely enjoyable experience in Planet Coaster 2. Even if its difficulty doesn’t try to push or stress you out, setting up the ideal park with scenery pieces, building complex rollercoasters and testing them – watching the rides careen off horribly before getting them right, and just observing your staff can be fun.

And despite running at only 30 frames per second on PS5, the visuals are better than ever, be it the textures and intricacies of different coasters, the guests and their animations, or the environments. I also quite like the soundtrack with its relaxing tones, and the sound effects are on point. There’s a satisfying twang when plopping down a diving board or hearing a staff manager exclaim in surprise when lifting and placing them onto specific places.

Planet Coaster 2 has some interesting ideas and with further refinement, I could see it becoming something special. However, as it stands, this feels like a less refined version of the original – prettier but ultimately lacking intuitiveness, ingenuity or the right amount of polish to really make it shine. With time and updates, I can see Frontier turning this into a much more involving experience, but right now, it’s nowhere near as addictive or magical as its predecessor when it first burst onto the scene.

This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 5.