izigame.me

My initial impressions with the game, having played the original Frostpunk for 130+ hours, has not been great. The game itself is... fine. Not great. But it's not some buggy mess, it just struggles to be fun. There is some part of me that wonders if we're going to see a mobile release follow shortly, because a lot of the structure of the gameplay could be akin to a mobile game. But outside of the setting, the vast majority of core mechanics have changed. It seems as if the team wanted to fix how late game Frostpunk 1 required quite a bit of building micro-management at times, but they've responded by throwing the entire gameplay style of the original out the window. Not only is there upsettingly little control over the actual resource harvesting itself, but furthermore there really isn't the opportunity to do much truly of value town customization wise. There is essentially zero opportunity to create your wasteland town as there was in the original game, all you truly do is pick which tiles are used for a very generic production pattern. Everything is tile locked, and it feels more like some sort of modded version of Civ V than it does the original Frostpunk game. If this wasn't being published by the original studio, I'd have sworn the Frostpunk IP had been sold off to another developer, because there is really nothing in common with the original gameplay loop. To make the changes easier to grasp, here's a list of what I've noted so far:

- Time flows has been changed, with there no longer being a day/night cycle. Weeks fly by rather meaninglessly, rather than spending the day optimizing your town for what resources you need next.
- Resources are stockpiled now. To what end, outside of occasional gameplay objectives, is pretty valueless. All it does is prevent debuffs from things like starving, or lack of goods, or lack of housing - and those debuffs generally aren't noticeable. Starving as a whole is pretty meaningless, as is your citizens dying, as they'll generally repopulate at a faster rate than whatever they're dying at. It's a minor inconvenience.
- Research is entirely unclear as to what needs to be focused, as research generally doesn't unlock buildings, but rather bonuses. Personally, I think that lacks the punch of being able to then place the newly researched building afterwards, so it feels lackluster.
- Heat is just this abstract thing that you have to make by getting fuel, but there's really no need to research to upgrade the generator in this gameplay loop. You just feed it more oil/coal, and you get more heat. No need for heat zones anymore. It feels pretty unrewarding generally, and while there's some small bonuses for planning your town to optimize heat, the bonuses are lackluster and almost not worth pursuing.
- Breaking through the frostpack to build more buildings is pretty much just a bloat function to slow down the gameplay. It costs you resources, and I believe it's there to make you have to plan your settlement. But it fails at that, because you break through the frostpack in whatever section you choose pretty quickly. So it essentially just ends up being a credit drain, which isn't a fun or challenging dynamic, it just means you frequently find yourself unable to do anything as you wait for resources to build up.
- The colony system, while somewhat novel, really just makes this game a resource balancing game between settlements. It does not seem to be intended to be a resource balancing game, so it's a pretty poor resource balancing game.
- When you create a colony, it takes workforce equally from all your buildings. While it's nice that it doesn't do it randomly, thus ruining your economy, it does mean now every building you have is understaffed, and you will have to manually fix that for each and every one.
- Frostland exploration feels like a checklist. There has yet to be any big decisions, or excitement from finding steam cores, or excitement from finding anything. Outposts you establish can give you a trickle of resources, but not a meaningful amount that does any more than replace one building in your city, and you already have to make one building to get the frost scouts to establish the outposts. I'm not excited when my frost scouts are going somewhere new. It's just another task that apparently has to be done.
- Crime ends up being a factor, but it's just another debuff, rather than something where you're worried about your precious citizens being killed in the night. (Although again, night doesn't exist anymore) You might get a heartbreaking message about a missing child, but that child will be replaced within the next day by ordinary population growth.
- The "roads" are just flavor on the screen, and appear to generate almost randomly. Zero regard is made for "would you actually make a road this way", and I want to compare it to slime mold paths, but slime mold paths actually try to be efficient.
- You can't even zoom in far enough to truly enjoy the hustle and bustle of your city you're making. Gone are the days of seeing church processions in the night, your citizens are just gold streaks on a path.
- Automatons, in all ways but flavor text and non-interactive objects on your road, appear to have been completely removed from the game.
- Temperature changes happen. They're generally meaningless outside of suddenly you require more coal/oil. They're also far less frequent, so they tend to sneak up on you, at which point you are met with a generally uncompelling alert telling you things got colder. You tend to forget that occurred within about 15 seconds, because you really don't have to do anything.

At time of writing, I've gone through the prologue and part of chapter 1. There has yet to be any compelling story, just "you're running out of coal, establish an outpost to get oil!" There's still plenty of content to follow, and I won't be refunding the game. Thus I'm hopeful I'll change this review down the line. But so far, I've been horrendously disappointed considering I was hoping this would be the original game, with expanded content and mechanics. Instead, this has been a kneecapped homage to the original. The changes that have been made to the original gameplay loop have been at best, different, and more frequently just downright worse. I want to give the game a chance to get fun, but so far it just hasn't been.

One positive has been the town council meetings. It's a cool dynamic to add so far, and having the need to sway votes with other political votes has been interesting to have to factor into the gameplay. But even this aspect requires some criticism, as interactions with factions generally has felt like interacting with monoliths of different names. Each faction is really only being distinguished by what they may ask for, or how much they have to offer voting support wise.

I could see how some people could find the game to be a 6/10. Maybe even a 7/10 if you like mobile games. But the insane amount of 9/10 reviews Frostpunk 2 is touting in it's advertising is just baffling to me. The vast majority of Metacritic reviews all seem to have one thing in common - very few of them mention any actual gameplay, and rather focus on the setting itself. Which would be fine if this was a visual novel, but it's a game being sold at AAA prices. On top of that, the setting is notably far less compelling than the first iteration of the franchise. Somehow, the studio that made This War of Mine, one of the most emotionally compelling games I have ever played in my life, has managed to make the emotional attachment you have to your citizens colder than the frostland itself.

In conclusion, if you're looking at buying this because you loved the original, I do not think you'll enjoy how the gameplay loop has changed. If you're looking at buying this because you loved the setting, you may be able to trick yourself into enjoying it.