Frostpunk 2 Review

Anyone who loves real-time strategy games or is into city-building knows Frostpunk. It's a brutal game that has given real-time strategy games a survival perspective and made the genre stand firm when struggling because of the lack of quality titles. A few years after the release of the original, Frostpunk 2 was announced. The fans were delighted to know that 11 Bit Studios would push the game's brutality even further, and they did.

Frostpunk 2 is finally here, and the devs haven't disappointed. Surely, the devs have changed some of the mechanics of Frostpunk 2 from its original, but the core concept remains. You survive the cold when resources are scarce. Even Frostpunk veterans will be turned off by Frostpunk 2's difficulty, but once you get the hang of it, you won't be able to leave the game.

Like the original, once again, you take the role of the savior in Frostpunk 2. The world has moved on after the last disaster, and the man who held New London together has aged and is counting his last days. As the new leader, you have a mammoth task since the population has grown along with the expectations for a safer life. While people adapt more to the cold, their necessities remain the same.

As soon as you enter the game, you know the difference just by looking at the number of people living in that small area. But there's a catch. After the last storm, everything around you is covered in thick snow, and survival is even harder. While people vote you as their new Stuart, you know it won't be an easy shoe to fill.

Similar to the original, Frostpunk 2 is still a brutal game, and it even expands upon the original game's signature desperate atmosphere. The game doesn't sugarcoat the cruel truths of survival, and its gloomy setting is crucial for drawing you into the struggle and giving your choices a sense of gravity and importance. What makes the sequel intriguing is the increased number of possible outcomes compared to the first.

The game is more intricate and offers more strategic options, as each decision you make involves different fractions. Frostpunk 2 expands your choices and challenges you to adapt to new scenarios, unlike the first game's puzzle-like feel. As you progress through the game, you'll need to study and adjust your approaches, which adds depth and keeps you hooked.

The first major change Frostpunk 2 introduces is the districts. Building your city in the original game needed careful strategy due to the scattered resources throughout the surroundings. This city-building aspect of the game was quite challenging yet ultimately satisfying. This idea, however, is pushed further developed in Frostpunk 2, as you construct districts on a grander scale instead of different buildings. So, you construct separate districts and individual structures for different purposes. There are now Housing, Food, Extraction, Industrial, and Logistics districts, and the game will automatically create the buildings within the districts you form.

For instance, you build a housing district for shelter, and the game automatically generates houses. You can expand the districts a number of times depending on their types and also place individual buildings like hospitals, plants, mines, etc, but the game also tells you where to build them. While you no longer have the freedom to build the city however you did in the first game, this way of building a district still requires you to think more strategically and meticulously plan ahead of time. Managing a city in Frostpunk 2 is more complex and immersive, which will put your abilities to the test.

But that's not the only freedom taken away from you. In Frostpunk 2, citizens vote on the proposed laws, unlike in the previous game when laws could be freely enacted. The Council is the primary new gameplay element, and your decisions aren't up to you anymore. The appearance of factions with competing agendas in Frostpunk 2 further changes the game's dynamic. Since you'll have to maneuver through these tensions to keep the peace, it brings a touch of political turmoil to the game. A lot of back-and-forth, promise-making, and, occasionally, dealing with the aftermath of a failed promise is now part of the game.

Members of various city groups, such as the Stalwarts, New Londoners, Frostlanders, and Pilgrims, cast votes according to the principles that are important to them. Although it's a delicate balancing act, you can still win them over by making different promises or a few other tools the game introduces. Promises not kept, however, will cause stress to grow, which could eventually lead to a rebellion. Adding this mechanism to the game increases its difficulty; it enriches the plot and makes you care more about the city's many groups.

Regarding resources, among the many changes, paying close attention to the smallest details is unnecessary in Frostpunk 2. Even if you made it through the first Frostpunk, you still have much to learn in the sequel. You now have to manage more than just a generator and your resources; you have to build colonies to supply resources to your city. Following the original game's success, Frostpunk 2 expands upon its exploring mechanics.

The frozen wastelands are no longer a single map but a series of territories, each with unique obstacles. Another dimension to the gameplay is that trained scouts must trek into the most challenging places. To ensure a constant flow of resources, you can also establish outposts or colonies with economies and logistical systems that can be linked by railroads. Like Frostpunk's On the Edge DLC, this adds a layer of strategy to the game, but it's deeper and more complicated now.

So, your primary objective is to construct your capital city to a certain point, after which you can dispatch scouts to explore the frozen wasteland in search of new settlements. Exploration is crucial for supplementing the main city's scarce resources through a network of outposts, as the main city has limitations. You build colonies in areas with enough resources to supply, and every colony you build essentially requires the same level of management as the main city regarding housing, heating, food, products, social welfare, etc. Now, unlike the micro level in the original game, you're managing on a massive scale.

Outposts, however, have certain limitations since they are meant for extracting resources, not colonizing. Every time you build an outpost, you have to construct the extraction district but at the same time provide housing for the people who'll be working there. While they send you one particular resource, you need to ensure the supply of food, materials, and goods from the capital to that outpost. While no fractions or voting are involved in the outposts, just like the capital, they also require medical and other social attention.

If you fail to maintain a balance, you won't be getting the supplies you were expecting, and this puts the capital in trouble since it relies on the supplies from the different outposts. If the capital fails, it's game over for you. So, this whole management chain is truly challenging and, at the same time, a delight for the city-building fans. The game's new approach becomes clear after you give it some time, and you'll begin to admire the developers' bravery in attempting a sweeping change that eschews the original in favor of something familiar.

Frostpunk 2 puts a lot of emphasis on managing people instead of cold. That's because you'll now deal with the number of people you could only dream of in the original. Now we're talking about hundreds of thousands of people, not tens. You can tell the emphasis has shifted in the sequel because the cold indicator isn't front and center anymore. You can handle the cold for as long as you keep the different fractions and resources under control. It is important to use people carefully because they are also resources.

If you can maintain your city functioning well, you'll be able to expand that population and have more available to you. At some point in the game, I was getting frustrated by the number of people I had to manage, but that's until I realized that's the core purpose of Frostpunk 2: to repopulate the earth. You can even rearrange them according to your needs. As with other resources, you can transfer people between colonies; for example, if your capital city has spare workers, you can transfer part of them to the outpost.

While Frostpunk 2's gameplay had major enhancements over the original, it still has its fair share of flaws. There are some confusing parts of the game because they aren't explained effectively. For example, the housing districts you build don't clearly tell how many citizens fit in there. Also, when you build an outpost and supply food and materials there, the trail has a capacity, but the game doesn't tell you how to increase it since your outpost suffers due to the lack of supplies.

This gets annoying when you've got 5000 idol workers, and you can't put them to use by sending them to different outposts, nor can you expand your city's industrial districts since this will increase the material demands. While it's obvious that how you manage the supply chain is part of the game's difficulty, a bit more explanation on these matters would greatly help the newcomers. There are times of confusion because the game doesn't always tell you where to find the answers you're looking for.

These issues, however, are ignorable since real-time strategy games are built on mastering the gameplay you pour time into. Since Frostpunk 2 deftly weaves its challenges in without being overly apparent, you must figure things out with trial and error, which is most costly in this game. Although this makes the game more realistic and challenging, there are moments when you feel like you're not given enough directions.

The game essentially gives you options; how you view the world and handle the fallout from those choices is entirely up to you. Like the original, this game has much to teach you; it pays off if you put in the time. Having the campaign function as a tutorial for playing the game is a huge benefit. Each chapter brings new challenges, forcing you to think outside the box and use all your resources to survive. And once you finish the five chapters, Utopia is the sandbox mode where you can show off your abilities.

Visually, Frostpunk 2 partially resembles the original, while the overall design is much improved. The districts are represented in different colors, and the city looks futuristic, with electricity passing through the trails. Those who played the original will simply say 'wow' after witnessing the city's new look. Certain buildings or special ones you place inside the districts have a zoom option that shows how beautifully they are designed with life-like animations.

The sound design is also great, and the announcer did a great job. However, I wished for a voiceover for the issues that pop up when you're forced to make a decision. Perhaps this is something the developers will consider for the next release. The background music matches the gloomy tone of the game perfectly. It shifts seamlessly when the game's situation takes different turns.

Expanding upon the original's strengths, Frostpunk 2 adds additional features, a more in-depth storyline, and more intricate city-building. Even while it takes time to get going, once it does, it unveils a massive game that surpasses the original in size and scale. Although there are some issues, especially with how some mechanics are explained, the game provides a deep and thrilling experience worth delving into.

The exciting part of managing the political and weather challenges forces you to constantly plan your moves. The city and its outposts are difficult to manage, and you'll need to be patient and strategic if you want to avoid extinction during the whiteout. Frostpunk 2 is a must if you liked the first game or seek a fresh take on real-time city-building strategy.

Checkout the Frostpunk 2 Beginner's Guide if you're new to playing this game.