Some of my rankings have changed slightly, so I’ll just copy over a lot of my old descriptions, change things where need be, and of course add in the two new DLC packs!
16. Deluxe Edition: I love the Komodo dragon and pygmy hippo, and the Thompson's gazelle is cool too, but what drags this pack down massively is its price tag. If the price of the pack was in line with the cost per animal in other DLCs I may even rank it higher just given how much I like the animals, but as is it is perfectly deserving of last place.
15. Arctic Pack: This is the only pack without at least one species I find useable - none of them are kept here in Australia (aside from a few polar bears at Sea World, but that's not a zoo), and hence I don't use them as someone who usually builds realistic local zoos. I also never find myself using the scenery. I think the animal choices for the theme are great - polar bear and reindeer are obvious, the Dall sheep was a pleasant oddball pick, and I don't even find the Arctic wolf to be that bad of a pick (it is very different visually from the timber wolf and also much better looking in general) - there's just not much for me here.
14. South America Pack: Similar to a lot of the packs this low in my ranking, the animal choices for the South America Pack were great for the most part, but I only find one species useful in my builds - in this case, the Colombian white-faced capuchin. This species actually isn't even kept in Australia, but as the only Neotropical primate we currently have it's so essential that it makes it into all my builds anyway. I'd also use the llama if we had other domestic species in the game, but as of now it just feels out of place (and I prefer the alpaca in any case). Some of the pieces in this pack, like the temple blocks and bamboo, can be pretty useful, but I don't find myself using them as much as I use the building sets that came with later packs.
13. North America Animal Pack: My drastically lower ranking of the North America Animal Pack compared to most other people simply reflects how I come from a part of the world where very few North American species are kept. The species in this pack are all very high quality, but the only one I get much use out of is the American alligator, which I adore (it's my favourite crocodilian in the game). Very much a necessary pack that did wonders for its continent's roster, but it's not for me.
12. Arid Animal Pack: Enough’s been said about the Arid Animal Pack over the past few months. It’s got some major pluses, such as its incredible animal quality and the fact it really helps to flesh out the previously desolate regions of North Africa and the Middle East, but also some major drawbacks in the form of an undiverse roster (even just for the region it covers) and the fact it presents itself as a biome pack but just isn’t. Main reason it ranks above the North America Animal Pack for me is because a number of the species in the pack, such as the dromedary, addax and African crested porcupine (as a Cape porcupine) are very useful for the kind of zoos I like to build.
11. Conservation Pack: I'm quite surprised at my placement of this pack so low on this list despite it including three animals I really like (horse, oryx and siamang), but for whatever reason I felt it had much less of an "impact" on my perception of the game than most of the other packs - I forget it exists half the time. The pieces are really cool in theory, but at the moment I don't really do much with backstage areas and so they only have limited usefulness for me. I am planning to go more in-depth with realism in my building in the future though so maybe it’ll be a pack that increases in favour for me over time.
10. Tropical Pack: This is probably the pack that’s shifted most in ranking for me since my previous list - I still love the scenery and most of the animals in this pack, but I’ve generally just found it to not be very useful in my zoos. The only animal in the pack that’s even kept in Australia is the lar gibbon, and in their case there’s only a few aging individuals left in a couple zoos, far outnumbered by siamangs and white-cheeked gibbons. The pack’s biggest drawback is probably the lack of South American animals, especially primates (I don’t have as much of a problem with the sloth now that I know it’s common in SA zoos, but we needed more), a gaping hole in the roster which continues to go unrectified.
9. Twilight Pack: Half of the building set is way too heavily themed for my liking, and the red fox, striped skunk and raccoon do little for me. I think individually they're fine picks, but having three small generalist carnivorans whose range includes North America in a single scenery pack is absolutely overkill and makes the pack feel extremely undiverse. However, the common wombat and Egyptian fruit bat carried this pack hard for me - we’ve since gotten a bat that’s more useful to me personally in the form of the flying fox, which bumps this pack down slightly, but the wombat was my favourite animal in the game up until the recent addition of the Tasmanian devil and still remains one of my absolute favourites. Plus it finally gave me another Australian native tree to use, the silky oak (we hadn't gotten one since the Australia Pack, and haven't had another since, even in the Oceania Pack).
8. Aquatic Pack: I no longer use any of the species in this pack aside from the diamondback terrapin, but I still like a lot of the choices (especially the giant otter, my personal favourite otter species IRL, and the grey seal). What really makes this pack stand the test of time however and stops it from falling into irrelevance is the building set - the stained wood walls and the f a u x r o c k s are easily among the most essential building pieces in the entire game and still make the Aquatic Pack a must-buy.
7. Europe Pack: The European fallow deer is my favourite ungulate in the game (and one of my favourite animals overall), the flexicolour stone wall set is extremely versatile, a lot of the foliage is quite useful and I have never used anything but the European coach as a guest spawner since their addition - all of these factors make the Europe Pack rank much higher than if it had just been yet another pack with only a single useable species for me. The roster for this pack is actually pretty much perfect and I wouldn't change anything aside from substituting the fire salamander for a sheltopusik (but the salamander is still a great pick), there's just very limited representation of European species in my local zoos.
6. Southeast Asia Animal Pack: This pack has issues, no doubt about it. The Malayan tapir is infamous as the only actual lazy reskin species in the game, and the clouded leopard has been stranded on the moon for two years now. That said, I definitely love a lot more about the Southeast Asia Animal Pack than I dislike! South-east Asia is one of my favourite parts of the world IRL, so there was no way I was not going to like the species in this pack! The babirusa, sun bear and binturong are especially big highlights for me - the babirusa is my favourite pig species and vital representation for Sulawesi, the sun bear is the only realistic bear for use in Australian zoos and one of my all-time favourite animals (it was also my favourite animal in the game for a while until it was surpassed by the wombat and then the devil), and the binturong is just plain interesting.
5. Wetlands Animal Pack: I love the whole vibe of this pack, and it was such a surprise when it launched! The capybara, platypus, Asian small-clawed otter and wild water buffalo are some of my favourite animals in the game and they all make it into the majority of my zoos (with the water buffalo being a proxy for the domestic species), and I was even fond of the more unpopular picks like Nile lechwe and spectacled caiman. With one carnivoran, two ungulates, a monotreme, a rodent, a bird and a reptile, all hailing from across the globe, it's objectively the most diverse pack we've had yet!
4. Africa Pack: This is just a fantastic pack all around. The meerkat, fennec fox and southern white rhinoceros are all great and essential species that I include in the majority of my zoos, but as someone who's a big fan of deserts, scrublands and xeric environments in general, I also really love the foliage in this pack. The new plaster pieces are very useful and versatile, but the wood pieces arguably steal the show for me - they're my default choice when it comes to creating structural supports on buildings and such.
3. Grassland Animal Pack: Although it isn't quite as diverse as the Wetlands Animal Pack, the choices for Grasslands are even stronger in my eyes. The emu and wallaby were two absolutely essential animals for Australia, and the maned wolf has always been my most wanted species from South America due to being a personal favourite of mine. Every animal in this pack aside from the wildebeest (which are still iconic enough to deserve a place in the game) was on my wishlist and I couldn't be happier to finally have them.
2. Oceania Pack: I’ve already gone on about how this pack is an absolute dream come true for me, and yet I still don’t feel like I’ve praised it enough. In a single small scenery pack, Frontier managed to give the Oceania roster enough of a boost that it no longer feels like an ignored part of the world, even for most of us that live down here. The Tasmanian devil had been my most wanted animal since before PZ even launched, and its model and animations here are phenomenal. The kiwi finally gives New Zealand its most important animal, while the quokka, little penguin and flying-fox bring some proper oddball picks to Australia - prior to this, it almost felt like Frontier was going through a children’s book of famous Australian animals, so a change of pace is very much welcome. After being one of the few people to push for a Polynesian scenery set after the Tropical Pack, it also feels great seeing how well it turned out! The one and only letdown of this pack for me (aside from the lack of new eucalypts maybe) is the Tasmanian devil’s vocals, but I’ve already whinged enough about that already and it’s still my favourite animal in the game regardless.
1. Australia Pack: The Oceania Pack finally came close to giving it a run for its money, but the Australia Pack still stands clear as the best pack that has ever come to Planet Zoo for me personally. This is the only pack we've ever gotten where every single species included is housed in Australian zoos (even with Oceania, the highly essential kiwi is not kept here), and not only that, each is very commonly kept and arguably essential for building a zoo here - the kangaroo and koala are our two most well-known and beloved marsupials, the dingo is the apex predator and most common zoo canid, and the southern cassowary is the most iconic animal of the north Queensland rainforests. Combine this with some fantastic and essential foliage (such as the game's only Australian eucalypts, which I literally cannot go without) as well as great scenery pieces (all that metal mmmm) and it still tops the list as the most essential pack for me.
(I don’t know when the purple colour started popping up in people’s rankings but for me it means “this pack speaks to me on a personal level”)
, barnyard update version:
