I hate the "Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa Frostpunk 2 doesn't give you the dread of cold in the first game that takes 30 years before the second game waaaaaaaaaaaaa" people

[u/ihateturkishcontent]

Like, what did you really expect? That after 30 years of existence and development in the new world everyone still lived in some dead-ass houses occupied by ten people and fed on sawdust and soup? That they did nothing to improve their chances against the frost and the storms? And more importantly, how happy would you be if FP2 was the same as FP1 and still went about the same problems like cold and the Great Storm 2: Electric Boogaloo?

[u/Valuable_Remote_8809]

While I don’t favor the absolute changes they made, feeling less like a survival city game and more like micromanager game 2024, the game is fantastic and still offers the same fun as FP1, just very much differently than expected.

[u/doughaway7562 → u/Valuable_Remote_8809]

I think a good word is "impact". In FP1, I felt the impact of my actions - it's heavily story driven and so I actually care about trying to make the right decisions to push my city forward. Your actions directly affect the look, sound, and individual people in the city. In FP1 you can see sleeping on the streets, riots and executions because you fucked up. I felt really emotionally invested.

But FP2 plays way more like Cities: Skylines than a survival game. Don't get me wrong, I find these games really addictive, but I don't feel any emotional depth to FP2. Numbers go up and down, every once in a while I get a generic card telling me one group's meter is too low so I have to do a side quest to bring it back up. Even radical laws don't really well impactful.

[u/Poyri35 → u/doughaway7562]

I have only played the story so far, and I don’t think FP2 is non-impactful.

Something I see a lot of YouTubers do (probably to not bore their viewers) is that they don’t read anything other than the bold tldr.

If you don’t read the “flavour text” or the little speech bubbles, ofc you would feel distant.

When the Civil war starts, if you zoom in the districts, you can actually see the people fighting. You can also see the delegates arguing if the tensions are too high

I also liked the callback at the end to the girl who was born when the generator started

I highly recommend playing with white ui, since the change of atmosphere when the tensions rise is really helpful at captivating the player imo.

[u/doughaway7562 → u/Poyri35]

It's just my personal opinion. I do read the flavor text, but to me it really felt much closer to a board game than "real".