Jurassic World Evolution 2 is, in my personal, humble opinion, a hot mess. Here I am going to do my best to lay out exactly why. I have beaten the campaign and have now attempted multiple Chaos Theories, only to have the game literally sabotage hours of painstaking effort in predictable but seemingly unavoidable ways.
1) The Amenities system is broken and far too enigmatic. Yes, I've followed the advice of multiple "How to" videos on Youtube (since the game itself...by way of the designers...doesn't bother to tell you anything regarding their mechanics), and the result is the same frustrating, useless mix of profitable and non-profitable shops that leave me treading water instead of accomplishing in-scenario goals. Yes, I know that supposedly a red path indicates higher traffic/demand and that adjusting your sliders until everything's out of the red supposedly maximizes a given store's profitability. Only it doesn't always work like that. No, all too often I've planted shops down on a red-colored path and configured them just so only to come back and find they're losing upwards of $10,000. And by the same token I've laid a new shop on a blue path and made tens of thousands of $$$ from it, and I have some shops making a profit whose sliders aren't all in the white.
In short, Amenities are an unintuitive mess, and that's inexcusable since they're so integral to completing tasks and scenarios.
2) While storms appear to be less frequent than when JWE2 launched, the way they happen is, quite simply, both unrealistic and frankly cheap. I restarted my latest attempt at the Chaos Theory: Jurassic World twice after the first storm, a tornado, came smack through the center of my park and administrative buildings. On the third attempt it was a far less harmful regular hurricane. But today, roughly 60% through the scenario, another tornado struck, and this one literally followed a direct, DELIBERATE path from east to west across my main thoroughfare working its way in a perfect line to damage every single structure and enclosure. In short, the tornadoes are TARGETING your facilities to do the most expensive damage possible. There's nothing random about them; they're just a cheap and malicious mechanic made to ruin hours of work.
3) You have a couple dozen dinosaurs in your park, but just ONE...a T-Rex...dies from old age and your park immediately goes into an irretrievable financial tailspin. I get that T-Rex would be a huge draw, but between the lopsidedness of its influence on crowd attraction and the fact that the expeditions and incubation for a replacement amount to insane $$$ you almost certainly don't have available when the original dies, it's an instant Game Over.
Oh, and that's without mentioning how several Triceratops, Ankylosaurus, and Gallimimus can also drop dead of old age practically AT THE SAME TIME, as happened to me on one particular attempt. Again, there's nothing that feels remotely natural or "chaotic" about any of these "disasters"; they are methodical, deliberate, malicious, and cheap ways of impeding or outright stopping a player's progress. And when that comes at the cost of hours of work, guys, it commits a cardinal sin of game design: it's no longer FUN.
And here's the real rub where I'm concerned: I couldn't care less about ANY of the half-baked, cheap scenarios in this game. I love the films and just want to make a park and fill it with dinosaurs and flying and marine reptiles, full stop. Ditto the likes of RCT3, Planet Coaster, etc.; I go straight to the Sandbox mode EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. But here, not only are most of the maps locked behind having to endure the frustration of playing through hours of modes I WOULD RATHER NOT PLAY THROUGH, but most of the dinosaurs and facilities are locked behind them as well.
On that note, the Lagoon is so deep in the research tree of the scenarios that I don't know if I'll ever unlock it, especially when I'm being stonewalled by constant cheap storms, medical emergencies, and Amenities whose overall profits never seem to fluctuate regardless of how much I adjust them. And by this point I don't know if it's even worth the effort.
Sometimes the amount of time spent in a given videogame isn't necessarily indicative of how much fun the player is having. Sometimes said player is simply doing his/her best to tolerate and push through a bunch of stuff they'd rather not in order to finally get to what they hope might make it worthwhile. After many hours, such is the case with my personal experience with JWE2. But I only have so much patience and there are, especially this time of year, other games calling for my attention.
I didn't write this post to troll. I want this game to be what I envisioned when I paid for the Deluxe version at launch, to be a park sim I can relax and do whatever I want with, right out of the box. Maybe that doesn't fly with Frontier's vision, but I've done what I can on my end toward compromise in attempting the other modes. If you guys insist on forcing players to go through Chaos Theory and the Challenges to unlock everything for Sandbox Mode, then I strongly suggest you FIX the mechanical problems and downright cheap "Gotcha" disasters that are currently plaguing them, because I suspect that I'm not the only player who's in danger of losing interest in bothering anymore.
1) The Amenities system is broken and far too enigmatic. Yes, I've followed the advice of multiple "How to" videos on Youtube (since the game itself...by way of the designers...doesn't bother to tell you anything regarding their mechanics), and the result is the same frustrating, useless mix of profitable and non-profitable shops that leave me treading water instead of accomplishing in-scenario goals. Yes, I know that supposedly a red path indicates higher traffic/demand and that adjusting your sliders until everything's out of the red supposedly maximizes a given store's profitability. Only it doesn't always work like that. No, all too often I've planted shops down on a red-colored path and configured them just so only to come back and find they're losing upwards of $10,000. And by the same token I've laid a new shop on a blue path and made tens of thousands of $$$ from it, and I have some shops making a profit whose sliders aren't all in the white.
In short, Amenities are an unintuitive mess, and that's inexcusable since they're so integral to completing tasks and scenarios.
2) While storms appear to be less frequent than when JWE2 launched, the way they happen is, quite simply, both unrealistic and frankly cheap. I restarted my latest attempt at the Chaos Theory: Jurassic World twice after the first storm, a tornado, came smack through the center of my park and administrative buildings. On the third attempt it was a far less harmful regular hurricane. But today, roughly 60% through the scenario, another tornado struck, and this one literally followed a direct, DELIBERATE path from east to west across my main thoroughfare working its way in a perfect line to damage every single structure and enclosure. In short, the tornadoes are TARGETING your facilities to do the most expensive damage possible. There's nothing random about them; they're just a cheap and malicious mechanic made to ruin hours of work.
3) You have a couple dozen dinosaurs in your park, but just ONE...a T-Rex...dies from old age and your park immediately goes into an irretrievable financial tailspin. I get that T-Rex would be a huge draw, but between the lopsidedness of its influence on crowd attraction and the fact that the expeditions and incubation for a replacement amount to insane $$$ you almost certainly don't have available when the original dies, it's an instant Game Over.
Oh, and that's without mentioning how several Triceratops, Ankylosaurus, and Gallimimus can also drop dead of old age practically AT THE SAME TIME, as happened to me on one particular attempt. Again, there's nothing that feels remotely natural or "chaotic" about any of these "disasters"; they are methodical, deliberate, malicious, and cheap ways of impeding or outright stopping a player's progress. And when that comes at the cost of hours of work, guys, it commits a cardinal sin of game design: it's no longer FUN.
And here's the real rub where I'm concerned: I couldn't care less about ANY of the half-baked, cheap scenarios in this game. I love the films and just want to make a park and fill it with dinosaurs and flying and marine reptiles, full stop. Ditto the likes of RCT3, Planet Coaster, etc.; I go straight to the Sandbox mode EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. But here, not only are most of the maps locked behind having to endure the frustration of playing through hours of modes I WOULD RATHER NOT PLAY THROUGH, but most of the dinosaurs and facilities are locked behind them as well.
On that note, the Lagoon is so deep in the research tree of the scenarios that I don't know if I'll ever unlock it, especially when I'm being stonewalled by constant cheap storms, medical emergencies, and Amenities whose overall profits never seem to fluctuate regardless of how much I adjust them. And by this point I don't know if it's even worth the effort.
Sometimes the amount of time spent in a given videogame isn't necessarily indicative of how much fun the player is having. Sometimes said player is simply doing his/her best to tolerate and push through a bunch of stuff they'd rather not in order to finally get to what they hope might make it worthwhile. After many hours, such is the case with my personal experience with JWE2. But I only have so much patience and there are, especially this time of year, other games calling for my attention.
I didn't write this post to troll. I want this game to be what I envisioned when I paid for the Deluxe version at launch, to be a park sim I can relax and do whatever I want with, right out of the box. Maybe that doesn't fly with Frontier's vision, but I've done what I can on my end toward compromise in attempting the other modes. If you guys insist on forcing players to go through Chaos Theory and the Challenges to unlock everything for Sandbox Mode, then I strongly suggest you FIX the mechanical problems and downright cheap "Gotcha" disasters that are currently plaguing them, because I suspect that I'm not the only player who's in danger of losing interest in bothering anymore.
