My first hour or so with Frostpunk 2 wasn’t great. In fact, I stepped away from it for a while thinking that it wasn’t for me. But when I did get back to it and committed to spending at least a few hours in the harsh winter wasteland, it grew on me and now the only thing I can say is: “I want more.”
Abbreviated Review: https://youtu.be/TfKST1AlCq0

Despite the familiar aesthetics, setting, and even the UI to some degree, Frostpunk 2 is a pretty significant departure from the original game. Where the first game puts you in the role of guiding the first survivors of a frozen apocalypse to the tenuous safety of a town built around a giant coal furnace, the second launches you into a situation where you’re essentially taking over from the best-case scenario of your previous efforts. You return to a city that has filled the crater you sought refuge within and spilled out into a much broader region where you will continue to expand.

Now, however, instead of building individual structures and pathing road grids with heating conduits, you’re laying out hexagonal blocks of districts that construct a collection of numerous buildings in that region. This process quickly expands the already significant footprint of your city, which generates a larger population and more pressing demands from all of the many resources you’ll need to keep it running smoothly. The focus of this sequel is less about fighting the fundamental forces of nature (though they’re still prominent), and instead gives a much larger role to maintaining the flow of a variety of resources and maintaining the positive disposition of the people.

People, in general, are the most important and most fickle resource you’ll have to deal with. Instead of just accepting and reacting to whatever laws you pass, everything must go through a congress that only meets occasionally over time. And within that congress, there are usually several factions represented that each have their own preferences, ideals, and demands. This means that what you might think is the best course of action for the city can be overruled by the majority that can easily check your power without kicking you out – though that may still be the outcome if you’re running things poorly.

With all of the new mechanics and challenges presented in this shift from the first Frostpunk, I was not always successful. I actually failed in the prologue because I had confused two resources and put myself in an unwinnable situation. With most resources once again being finite, it’s easy to get yourself in a scenario where a single one is hindering all of your other efforts, and that happened to me here. Yet, that wasn’t the only time I failed.

Even trying to track the demands of housing, workers, food, coal, oil, prefabs, materials, goods, and the dynamic of overall city temperament, you’ll also need to balance the specific mood and demands of the factions within your population. Even smaller groups can cause chaos if they get angry enough to riot – which will start shutting down districts and causing cascading effects that make it easy for people to justify tossing you out into the snowdrifts. All of this still occurs in the frozen wasteland of the environment, which means that it also tends to erect new hurdles in your path as you shuffle onward toward your various goals. Things like whiteouts and random temperature drops can throw wrenches into the wrench-filled machine that you’re forcefully willing forward through the onslaught.

While Frostpunk 2 takes a bit of a left turn from the original game and focuses on an experience that feels more managerial than survival focused, it adopted some of this design from another game in this genre. Ixion took a lot of cues from Frostpunk and created a game that had a great concept, but ultimately disappointed me in its execution. One of those aspects that I felt didn’t work well was the chapter design, and Frostpunk 2 had adopted that. Instead of being a single scenario that could take 6 or 7 hours, it’s a five-chapter journey that could easily take twice as long to complete. However, unlike Ixion, it seems perfectly viable to go back to a save before a failure and make enough changes to survive and continue. Or at least I was able to the one time I was ousted during the campaign.

Yet only a month after release, the developers rolled out an update addressing tons of quality-of-life issues and requests like being able to cancel frostbreaking, adding edge schooling, and adding options to enhance visibility and performance. Stuff that didn’t necessarily bother me when playing through the campaign, but things that are great to see. And things that should ultimately make the game more appealing to the broader audience that enjoyed the original game.

In the end, when I reached the fun little montage explaining the outcome of the choices you made for your city, I only wanted more of the game. However, there aren’t any additional scenarios available right now. The only structured gameplay option you can do right now is replay the main campaign – which is much more viable now considering the (somewhat) branching paths afforded by event choices, random factions, and an expansive research tree. I tried the unlimited mode option that is also availabe, but without the motivation of distinct events and the lack of map diversity, I wasn’t compelled to keep going with it. Yet, this does make me excited to see what the DLC scenarios deliver, and I’ll be happy to return to try them out.

While I enjoyed my time with Frostpunk 2, the price makes it a little more difficult to recommend. If you get sucked into the unlimited mode or enjoy replaying the main campaign, it might be more reasonable to spend $45 for a 10-12 hour game. But if you’re expecting similar value to the first Frostpunk game with all of its DLC, it isn’t at that level currently. Thankfully, it is on Gamepass, which adds a lot of potential value if you already have that. It’s a no-brainer to try it out if that’s an option.

If you'd like to see more of my reviews, check out my curator page here: Endyo's Indies, Abbreviated Reviews

The game is overly complicated and game play is too zoomed out to have the same feel as the first Frostpunk. I preferred the fist one and would not have bought Frostpunk 2 had i had the chance to try it first.

As a huge fan of FP1, it boggles my mind how many steps back they took with city design, and just the overall game play loop. This game isn't about fighting the elements, or building a self sufficient city where everyone can be hopeful for the future. Instead its a game of annoying and dull politics, no city building aspects at all, just a bunch a pre-built sections mashed together. The creative decisions with this game will always baffle me, and i just don't think this game is fun at all. I wish i could refund, but i played the game a little too long unfiortunately.