I really want to allow myself to be excited for this game, but god damn Frontier has been burning me so bad with their releases lately. Planco2 released a full 1.0 that was clearly early access, then tons of very expensive dlc already. I just KNOW that they're going to nickle and dime us here with dinos. I loved JWE1 but 2 really soured it for me. Wake me up when this is on a super steep sale I guess.
$200 for all of the DLC, and that's on top of my "deluxe" edition that I already paid for? Excuse me?
It's starting to feel like the base game is really just a vehicle to sell you DLC. Like The Sims. Sure, you could just play the base game. But it would suck because there's so little content compared to everything you coouuullldd have if you just coughed up all this money. This feels one step away from mobile gacha shit and it fuckin sucks.
At least JWE3 seems to be reviewing well.
I've never actually played these types of games before (management sims???) yet would love to get into it. This seems like a great place to start off, reading into some of these reviews...
I ... don't know if I would argue that JWE2, maybe 3, or Planet Zoo are as much
management simulators in the way that... other games might be.
I would argue these games really strongly rely on the given player's creativity. Unless you're only going to be playing the story missions, a lot of what you're going to be doing is designing and building your own parks from scratch. The management stuff is pretty light weight- the real meat and potatoes gameplay is going to come from designing and decorating. Hand making buildings from parts, placing decor and flora- it's very reminiscent of playing with legos as a kid.
You're really crafting a world here - zoo animals or rollercoasters or dinosaurs in this case is really just the
theme.
As someone who often lacks vision for the sort of grand designs that many players post online - my enjoyment is stunted in those areas. My enjoyment mostly comes from min/maxing my park stats - but I don't think that has a lot of depth. Games like Planet Coaster, where you can min/max a given ride, or challenge yourself to build in a given way and have REAL gameplay effects, that's another story entirely.
These zoo games, planet zoo, jurassic world evolution - you can only make the most XTREME DINO ENCLOSURE, ya know? Even you go full Mr. Beast and put ten thousand t rexes in an enclosure to try to bring people in - they'll all just kill each other and break out and cause a ton of mess. So you make your dino enclosure with a handful of dinos that work, and then okay done. Make sure they have food, water, and they are in a biome that suits their needs. That's the extent of that "management" gameplay for the most part. Now the only real gameplay element here is embellishing and beautifying that space to make it more attractive to you as a player.
I still think these games are a lot of fun, but if you're looking for deep management mechanics... this ain't it.
If you're curious, I'd say take a crack at
Planet Zoo for cheap, because the gameplay is going to be very, very, very similar.
