A New Era of Difficult Decisions
When compared to its predecessor, Frostpunk 2 feels both incredibly familiar, yet different at the same time. The story takes place directly following the events of the original Frostpunk. The city that was built then succumbed to the frozen tundra and a new city, cleverly named New London, sets the stage for the new game.
Many of the mechanics from the first game have been expanded on, and others have been significantly changed. The goal is still the same, though – survive the encroaching cold. Different factions populate the city, each with their own worldview and desires for the city. Managing their relationship with each other, as well as maintaining their trust in you as the city’s leader is vital in surviving. But managing those relationships sometimes directly competes with the decisions you want to make to ensure the survival of the people.
These difficult choices are the foundation of the Frostpunk experience, and it is great to see those core principles continue in Frostpunk 2.
Building a New London: Gameplay and Progression
City development and exploration are the two major departures from the first game. While Frostpunk focused on building up a single city, Frostpunk 2 goes deep into the expansion of the city and exploring the tundra to a greater degree. Instead of building individual structures around a hub point, Frostpunk 2 focuses on building various districts to satisfy the city’s needs. Residential districts will increase housing, extraction districts will collect resources, industrial districts will create essential items, and so on. Districts can be expanded to improve their capabilities, and these can also be improved with various structures.
Housing can be added to various districts to better support the population, heating hubs can improve the district’s temperature, and different extractors can be added to make material harvesting more efficient.
Strategic Management
These various structures can be unlocked via research. Research greatly improves the selection of buildings available, able to increase production and extraction efficiency, as well as allow for the implementation of various social decisions that will influence how the city moves forward. Each research decision has multiple options that are preferred by different factions in the city.
Of course, it wouldn’t be Frostpunk without needing to implement laws that dictate how the citizens behave. These dictate how resources are distributed, how citizens behave, who is allowed into the city, and so on. Each vote’s success is based on the support of the various factions in the city. Those that support it will naturally vote for it, while others may be hesitant or vehemently opposed to it. Hesitant factions can be negotiated with by offering favors, while some factions may have a worldview that stands in direct opposition to the law and will never accept it.
The last major component is exploration of the frost lands. There are different regions that will require a various number of scouts to explore. After each zone is uncovered, points of interest will appear. These can be isolated pockets of survivors, wrecks full of valuable resources, and even supply points that can provide a steady stream of supplies to the city. During the campaign, exploring the tundra is also vital to progressing the story.
The Frigid Flaws of Console Optimization
Sadly, Frostpunk 2 suffers from poor console optimization. Playing the console version on Xbox Series X|S and the PC version side-by-side, it’s clear to see a lot of effort was put into making the game playable on console. Menu navigation is done entirely by controller without a cursor, which is commendable, but navigating the menus is inconsistent at best. There is a steep learning curve too, and it took me a couple of hours to become comfortable navigating the different menus. This is a struggle with every RTS game that gets released on console.
If it was just a matter of there being a steep learning curve, it would be manageable. However, there are several performance issues as well. This can be as minor as a piece of information not being visible for a few seconds, to more major annoyances. One of the most frustrating is that cycling through options sometimes only moves through half of what is available. For example, when cycling through the different factions, you could see all four factions on the first loop, but then it would only select the last two factions. After that, I would need to back out of the selection and reselect them.
There are also issues with stuttering and freezing. Sometimes when selecting a district, building, or opening a menu, the game would freeze for a few seconds. This was also an issue in the exploration menus. When resource caches are discovered, a trail needs to be made that connects the resources to the city. More times than not, these trails wouldn’t place properly and I would need to back out of the menu and try one or two additional times to get the placements to register.
The worst issue I faced with Frostpunk 2 was when at the end of the game I was about to complete the final story objective, left to deal with detained protesters. When I selected the prisoners, the pop-up dialogue would appear on-screen, but I couldn’t select any options to progress. I also was unable to close the dialogue box and needed to restart the game to do anything else. After several attempts, I was left unable to finalize things. This was after seven hours of playing the campaign.
A Promising Sim That Needs More Polish
It’s unfortunate because the foundation of Frostpunk 2 is fun and challenging. Managing resources and relationships throughout the campaign is a satisfying process, and the story itself is engaging. But the performance issues on Xbox bring the experience down significantly.
The menus would still take some time to get used to, but until those issues are fixed, it may be worth holding off from playing. That said, if you are patient, the game itself is fun and does have a lot of positives outside the performance issues. It’s a really tough spot to be in because Frostpunk 2 is a unique RTS game that changes the formula of the first game in an interesting way, all without losing its essence.
Important Links
The Unforgiving Winter Returns – Frostpunk 2 is OUT NOW on Xbox, Game Pass, Play Anywhere, PS5! – https://www.thexboxhub.com/the-unforgiving-winter-returns-frostpunk-2-is-out-now-on-xbox-game-pass-play-anywhere-ps5/
Download Frostpunk (via Game Pass if you like) – https://www.xbox.com/en-gb/games/store/frostpunk-2/9n0kn24fwp6b
Buy the Deluxe Edition – https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/frostpunk-2-deluxe-edition/9PFM09X52KS9/0010
