And by that I mean I played the hell out of the Zoo Tycoon games and Wildlife Park so I was super excited about this game. I may keep this thread for my future impressions of the game as well, like a diary, if you will. Feel free to join the discussion though if you desire.
First impressions 24.11.19
Started making my hideous little avatar and the game crashed the moment I selected my country on the world. Off to a good start lol. Restart game n proceed.
Started in challenge mode cuz that's how I usually played in ZT2. Did all the things to get African wild dogs and make them happy, realise I may have gone a little bit overboard in the enclosure size, so far so good.
A bit irritated by the staff needing a room to chill, as well as needing water cleaners and generators for electricity, which seem to break every few minutes and all require a path for the staff which is kind of annoying. In other games you pop down a building or just a worker and they find their way without needing a specific path to get to places. It kind of takes up a silly amount of space. And then the zoo visitors complain about seeing it too. Well stop staring at it then Karen, it's not even that close!
The path. The struggle. It's really buggy and you can't really create areas of path(like idk a nice little square to place some picnic benches down or so, like in ZT2) , it always has to be in lines, and with some buildings the autoconnection just goes crazy.
The workers are damn slow and lazy at the start. I know you need to star 'em up first but it's not really what I bought the game for. I mean in general there's a lot of micromanagement that I wish would either be simpler or had the option to be turned off, but I'm just speaking for myself here and maybe someone else enjoys precisely having so much control.
I wish the trees would have a random rotation when you place them like in other games, it gives the impression that every tree looks different even if they're just spun a different way. Spinning each one by hand is a bit exhausting when you wanna make a forest. Also the plants that should be on top of water instead of auto-appearing at the bottom... and some items shouldn't even be so weirdly rotated from the get go, I obviously don't want things that only look good vertically like vines to be flat on the floor, unless I want to greatly disappoint Tarzan.
I really like the animals and options for them, they certainly have more activities than in other games. One of my favourite parts in these games besides making a nice zoo was to just go into first person mode (we need this) and just watch the animals go about their day or walk around the zoo. I zoomed close to the gavials and watched them for a while, really dig the animations and how well done the animals look. The babies were super cute with their squeaks as well. Adorable.
The fact that the zoo visitors can protest or commit crimes is new to me, but it's actually quite interesting. I like that.
Placed a food platform for my bonobos down. First thought: Oh, I can put it in a tree! Well never mind, the zoo keeper can't reach it. Put it closer to the ground, he still can't reach it. Put it literally on the ground, still can't reach it. Finally realise the platform is just cursed so I remove the thing altogether. O well.
Bothered by items I buy not really being together so when I want to move the entire thing I end up just grabbing a roof or a stand and not the whole thing. Even using the multiple select tool is annoying. If I buy an African looking zoo keeper hut or something, it should be one item whenever I click on it, just to make life easier. Moving buildings or fancy vivariums has never been more annoying than in this game.
The vivariums themselves are super cool, didn't expect to like them as much as I do, especially with the sweet decorative options. Such little but cool things.
Wanted to expand the swimming area for my gavials. It's weird that I can't just expand it after adding water, so I have to remove, reform, refill, rise repeat until it looks good. Could be solved easier.
Trees and plants in general stack on top of eachother. Makes no sense but it's also kind of hilarious.You can stack trees up to spell out a word! So silly.
All I got at the top of my head. More to come after my next playing session.
First impressions 24.11.19
Started making my hideous little avatar and the game crashed the moment I selected my country on the world. Off to a good start lol. Restart game n proceed.
Started in challenge mode cuz that's how I usually played in ZT2. Did all the things to get African wild dogs and make them happy, realise I may have gone a little bit overboard in the enclosure size, so far so good.
A bit irritated by the staff needing a room to chill, as well as needing water cleaners and generators for electricity, which seem to break every few minutes and all require a path for the staff which is kind of annoying. In other games you pop down a building or just a worker and they find their way without needing a specific path to get to places. It kind of takes up a silly amount of space. And then the zoo visitors complain about seeing it too. Well stop staring at it then Karen, it's not even that close!
The path. The struggle. It's really buggy and you can't really create areas of path(like idk a nice little square to place some picnic benches down or so, like in ZT2) , it always has to be in lines, and with some buildings the autoconnection just goes crazy.
The workers are damn slow and lazy at the start. I know you need to star 'em up first but it's not really what I bought the game for. I mean in general there's a lot of micromanagement that I wish would either be simpler or had the option to be turned off, but I'm just speaking for myself here and maybe someone else enjoys precisely having so much control.
I wish the trees would have a random rotation when you place them like in other games, it gives the impression that every tree looks different even if they're just spun a different way. Spinning each one by hand is a bit exhausting when you wanna make a forest. Also the plants that should be on top of water instead of auto-appearing at the bottom... and some items shouldn't even be so weirdly rotated from the get go, I obviously don't want things that only look good vertically like vines to be flat on the floor, unless I want to greatly disappoint Tarzan.
I really like the animals and options for them, they certainly have more activities than in other games. One of my favourite parts in these games besides making a nice zoo was to just go into first person mode (we need this) and just watch the animals go about their day or walk around the zoo. I zoomed close to the gavials and watched them for a while, really dig the animations and how well done the animals look. The babies were super cute with their squeaks as well. Adorable.
The fact that the zoo visitors can protest or commit crimes is new to me, but it's actually quite interesting. I like that.
Placed a food platform for my bonobos down. First thought: Oh, I can put it in a tree! Well never mind, the zoo keeper can't reach it. Put it closer to the ground, he still can't reach it. Put it literally on the ground, still can't reach it. Finally realise the platform is just cursed so I remove the thing altogether. O well.
Bothered by items I buy not really being together so when I want to move the entire thing I end up just grabbing a roof or a stand and not the whole thing. Even using the multiple select tool is annoying. If I buy an African looking zoo keeper hut or something, it should be one item whenever I click on it, just to make life easier. Moving buildings or fancy vivariums has never been more annoying than in this game.
The vivariums themselves are super cool, didn't expect to like them as much as I do, especially with the sweet decorative options. Such little but cool things.
Wanted to expand the swimming area for my gavials. It's weird that I can't just expand it after adding water, so I have to remove, reform, refill, rise repeat until it looks good. Could be solved easier.
Trees and plants in general stack on top of eachother. Makes no sense but it's also kind of hilarious.You can stack trees up to spell out a word! So silly.
All I got at the top of my head. More to come after my next playing session.
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