Buy only on a deep discount. Or just wait for Planet Coaster 3, which will have all the upgrades from their experience working on the Jurassic World series.
I've only played two Frontier games, Planet Zoo 1 and Planet Coaster 2. Coming from PZ 1, this is a slightly better experience. I can see they've made some quality of life upgrades.
The first two tutorial chapters are actually good. Don't need to play the tutorials after chapter 2, you will mostly be doing the same things past that point. There are problems in some spots of the tutorial though.
In one of the early tutorial chapters you will building on a beachfront with pirate ships. It tells you to build a pool on beachfront 2. I was trying to build a pool on any beach I could find and was blocked, the game doesnt tell you that this is a locked piece of land and you must purchase it. It doesnt even tell you where it is to be able to purchase it. I had to search the internet.
In a later tutorial you will build across two mountains with a monorail. The game wants you to complete the monorail across the mountain. Trying to build the monorail and place more tracks you get the error "auto tunnel not available" or some such similar message about tunnels. I dont want to tunnel, I want to build the track across the mountain. I had to search the internet again! It turns out, in one the submenus for the monorail settings, auto tunnel is on by default when building new tracks! This is a tutorial for new players! It should not be on by default. No one playtested this I'm quite sure. After I completed the monorail, and powered it, it still wasnt working. Again, I searched the internet. It turns out, its a bug. You have to save the game and reload to get the quest to complete! Please playtest the tutorial before releasing a game!
In many of the tutorial maps there are sloped paths, hills, mountains. These should not be there when teaching new players. Often I had issues placing paths because the game keeps giving me the error "intersecting terrain." Building on any kind of slope still is painful. Even the slightest height difference will have you messing around with the terrain modify tools for half an hour just to connect two paths. Better off building on a map with flat land to prevents headaches. It is much easier building paths than PZ 1, but that is an extremely low bar.
I like that I dont have to build things from scratch like PZ 1. There are lots of blueprints that let you build premade rides. They are simple to put down and connect paths too. Blueprints are a lifesaver. One problem with shell blueprints, it is hard trying to get custom buildings like shops inside of shells.
Building breakdown happens too fast. You place down a generator, 5 mins later you get a notification that the generator urgently needs repair when it is at 73%. Why are you notifying me? I have plenty of mechanics.
For some reason mechanics ignore repairing generators and rides on their own. I have to manually repair and refurbish things otherwise they go to 0%. Even when a generator or ride goes to 0%, they still wont go over there and start repairs! Why do I have to babysit mechanics? Why are my mechanics wandering around "looking for work" when things are broken down. This is gamebreaking when you have lots of rides. I do not recommend the game just for this problem alone.
It seems like rain and snow last forever. I do like though that I could set daytime as the permanent time.
Once you have 3,000-3,500 + guests, just start a new map. Your fans will run on overdrive, and you may have some lag issues.
