Planet Coaster - Community Driven Review

[Turbo]

Hey Guys,

I'd love to get a review written by the community. Basically Staff would be recording it and all of the topics covered would be the key things mentioned in this topic. Please post your findings and we will credit you at the end of the video.

EDIT: Please provide anything POSITIVE and NEGATIVE

Allright here are my early thoughts after 20 hours:
POSITIVE
+A lot of freedom
+A lot of coaster types
+Fun campaign
+Challenge mode is a nice bonus
+Amazing graphics
+You can go into a lot of detail with scenery and management (like staff work rosters and the prices of all individual items in shops)
+The workshop support is crazy
+Background music is calming and inspiring
+Frontier is dedicated to keep updating the game (hopefully)
NEGATIVE
-Optimisation is still not perfect
-Game crashes when there are too many peeps in your park (A lot of people have this problem, not just me)
-Management can get tedious, we need an option to set prices and salaries to be the same for all shops and staff
-Coaster POV's are still janky when banking
-Path system is nice, but I still encounter problems and glitches after mastering how it works

I'll update when I get more thoughts

Overall I'm really enjoying the game... It's not perfect, but it's an awesome start, and I have faith in Frontier and high hopes on future development.

The good things:

- The building system is just awesome... Your creativity is the limit of what you can do.
- Coasters and flats are very detailed and look really awesome
- The terrain editor is the best I've seen.
- It runs very well on my computer
- The atmosphere... Going into first person cam and exploring the park you just created feels real, with all the peeps, music and all that stuff.
- Frontier seems to care about the community
- Path system is very easy to use and quite powerful.

The bad things:

- Flat variety is not enough. Would like to have more scenery pieces too.
- Coaster friction is wayyy off... Wish they'll let you modify it in the future ala NL2.
- The way the track banks is also off...
- No parking lots, backstage and all that stuff that would make everything a loy more realistic.
- Clearance envelope for coasters and flats... I want to place the scenery everywhere.
- Guest will come to your park regardless of what you do. My park has 7 rides and there are like 2500 peeps on the park. If it is so easy in real life I might have to buy a ride and wait for peeps to make me rich.

I haven't tried the challenge or career modes as I'm not really interested in that stuff. But I have to say this game is a dream for creators!

Dapalm wrote:

- Clearance envelope for coasters and flats... I want to place the scenery everywhere.

Oh, could you explain how bad that is in the gameplay? Images are welcome.

[mkingy]

To add onto what others have posted:

Good Things:
-Seems to be a lot of backend work with regards to peep behaviour (groups and associated dynamics)

Bad Things:
-These don't seem to translate into the actual game very well - and while there seems to be a lot of management depth it just isn't implemented in a challenging way.

The crux is that this doesn't feel like a true sequal to RCT because it doesn't really have the tycoon feel to it and/or it isn't hard enough. It defintely feels more of a theme park design game than a theme park management game.

The game is too easy if you know something about throughput and coaster layout, coasters make a crazy amount of money if you run 3 trains on a short circuit.
The general public can't beat Monolith because they run out of money but for others its just a walk in the park.

[Paradox]

Hopefully they add a bit of optimization in the near future. From what I've heard it's hard to get a stable FPS in the game since it crashes often.

Just got a computer for Planet Coaster and I am pretty disappointed with the management aspect. RCT2 still seems to be more fun when I think about it. I have faith in them correcting it and making it great again! Agree with everyone in the thread.. I guess at this point im more excited to be able to install NL2 now!

PROS:
The buildings, and what you can create.
The amount of people that go into your park

CONS
People don't seem to queue in lines longer than 9 minutes, even with a100% queue scenery rating.
There's a lot of flat rides missing, and many that are themed so specifically so you cannot use them in your park unless they match the theme.
Not enough water ride options, not enough dark ride options.
The prefab elements are much too large to use in some coasters.
Eurofighters cannot go vertical or use a launch system?? Every coaster should be able to use what is available, what is the point of limiting it?
Staff buildings and backstage areas. Parkitect still has the best idea with how their management is working. Break rooms could also help ease the issue of finding the staff members that still need training by putting it all in one place.

[mkingy]

Nice ideas Austin - I've not used the prefab elements in an actual layout but you can scale them - does that not provide enough flexibility?

No it doesn't.... some elements you can't shrink down much at all, so the train will literally valley unless it's doing like 70.

The coaster builder is too hard for people who don't know much about coasters, and it doesn't give enough freedom for people who know a lot about it IMO

Yeah, it really is quite annoying, and I don't get why it has so many arbitrary restrictions - like how you can't pitch, yaw, or roll more than 90 degrees in a single segment.

^^^^^