Recent reviews by Rexus Hunter

Honestly, don't have much to say about this DLC. Farm animals are not really my forte, so I can't really comment on whether I like the new animals or not. I guess it's a great DLC for those who wanted to make a petting zoo kind of area for younger guests, but other than that there's not much else I can say. I will say it's interesting that Frontier seems to have finally taken my suggestion of creating a pack that functions both as an animal pack and scenery pack, so maybe that's a good sign for whatever future support this game has left.

Again, I wish Steam had a neutral review option, but alas no. I guess if you've been waiting for a petting zoo DLC this is good, but otherwise it's just okay I guess.

Right out of the gate, not a fan of this DLC because in my opinion, with the exceptions of the Indominus rex, Indoraptor, and Scorpios rex (and I guess the Spinoceratops a little bit) which all have film canon relevance, hybrids are something of a plague upon the Jurassic franchise as it currently stands. For reference, just look at the mobile games which Ludia have infested with so many ghastly and over-the-top hybrid designs that the real prehistoric creatures they're made from struggle to stick out.

Plain and simple, I very much subscribe to the Owen Grady school of thought when he told Claire in Jurassic World in conversation on the Indominus rex "They're dinosaurs. Wow enough." I've always interpreted this to mean and firmly believe myself that real life dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals will always be superior to hybrids regardless of what franchise we're talking about.

Another reason this pack leaves a bad taste in my and many others' mouths is because it's largely recycled content. This is the Huayangosaurus in the deluxe edition situation times three, on steroids, and drinking radioactive water from Fallout. The only new thing is the Spinoceratops. Yeah, the Ankylodocus got a massive model overhaul because the old version was a ungodly abomination that would turn Medusa to stone, but the Spinoraptor and Stegoceratops are straight up ports from JWE1 and the Ankylodocus is as well even if it's not the same model. They were already in the Secrets of Dr. Wu expansion for JWE1 back in late 2018, so effectively Frontier is making players pay for mostly recycled content instead of them being in an update which is just greedy and scummy to me. I don't give a fat flying Pteranodon's squawk how bad off Frontier's financials are at the moment. First of all, that's on their higher-ups and corporate officers for committing financial mismanagement and wasting time with worthless projects like F1 Manager 2023. Second, you just don't charge paying customers for the same content twice. That's just pure undistilled greed. Third, they are banking on a certain subset of the Jurassic fanbase to keep them afloat for the time being and completely ignoring everyone else seeing as how no update was attached to this DLC to at least mitigate the polarizing reception they knew this DLC would have. And do not try to gaslight me and tell me they didn't know this DLC would be divisive. They knew it would be due to charging for recycled content and because it's all hybrids.

Personally, this makes me worried as hell for the next DLC and the future of the game. While this might be the worst of what the game suffers from Frontier's current financial crisis and employee layoffs (which should never have happened, but again, when the CEO and company screw up, it's the guys on the factory floor who get screwed), I am not looking forward to the next DLC because of what they teased during the livestream. Suffice to say, if the speculations are true, get ready for a bunch of ignorant movie monster junkies slobbering over the addition of one of the most over-hyped and over-bloated prehistoric creatures of all time: Otodus megalodon. Suffice to say, I blame the Meg movies for this, which are complete and utter Jaws ripoffs in every sense of the phrase.

Anyway, regarding this DLC, I'd only recommend this one if you have an attachment to or otherwise have no issue with hybrids. Otherwise, you could skip this entirely and not miss anything. Also, I have stated quite plainly before I take serious issue with reselling recycled content like this, so I would strongly urge you to consider that before buying this. It is unwise to reward this type of behavior from anyone, game developers or not.

While I am not too personally fussed about the animal choices for this one, the general sentiment I've seen is that half the animals in the pack were needed/requested and half of them are filler picks. While this and other packs prove Frontier is willing to revisit regions with animals that were previously overlooked, the fact is that most people consider Europe to be pretty lackluster on animal biodiversity (which is at least partially true). My guess is most people would have preferred a DLC focusing on Greater Asia, India, or just on an Asia-specific area in general rather than bringing Europe into this. I have also seen a lot of complaints that a lot of these animals just aren't exhibited in zoos on the regular (which to me is not super important and I think if Frontier based their species selections solely on animals with captive representation, the game's roster would get very repetitive and boring). Suffice to say, it doesn't bother me too much, but I think others are getting a little feisty and picky with what they want to see in the game, maybe more than they should be.

To the animals themselves, they are all perfectly acceptable picks for a pack of this nature. This pack does however suffer from a similar problem as the Arid Animal pack in that at least half the animals presented are ungulates (wisent, saiga, takin, and wild boar are all hoofstock). For me personally, the most noteworthy additions are the wolverine, mute swan, takin, and sloth bear. The Hermann's tortoise is a reptile I'd not heard of before, but does mark the game's first terrestrial exhibit tortoise/turtle. The mute swan is also the first bird that I would consider a traditional and typical waterfowl to be added (such waterfowl being things like ducks, geese, swans, etc.).

Overall, it's not a pack I would consider as having bad choices, but it's not one that strikes me as a must-buy either. I would say get it on sale if you're on the fence. I'd ultimately rate it as neutral, not good, but not bad either, just okay.

While I can say the game's prehistoric animals are some of the best ever made for a video game design-wise, the rest of the game has not impressed me so far. Yes, I know it's in Early Access, but for the time being, the game is just not ready or technically stable. I have attempted the tutorial several times and have never been able to complete it due to some bug or glitch happening. If you can't even get through the intro stuff, what's the point? Also, the framerate is horrible. It's like it's locked to 30 fps or less so the game moves so slow. I have an Alienware M15 R5 with an Nvidia RTX 3070 graphics card and an AMD Ryzen 9 5000 series processor. My laptop should be able to run a game like this at 60 fps+. Also, the modular building, while it allows for creative freedom, is irritating for building neat-looking parks just like it is in Planet Zoo. And like PZ, the controls of said building are poorly explained in the interactive tutorials and instead they shove a bunch of text instructions your way instead of giving you tutorials that actually guide you through the controls to get you comfortable with the building system. The control scheme for this game, compared to other similar games like Jurassic World Evolution 2 and Planet Zoo, is somewhat unintuitive. The UI and other interfaces, while they look clean and well-organized, are also quite counterintuitive at times. It feels like I have to execute ways more commands just to send out fossil expeditions and create animals than I ever have to in JWE2 or indeed way more commands than are needed to adopt animals and place them in enclosures in Planet Zoo.

At this stage, this game is not ready and it's not stable. Bugs and glitches galore can ruin everything in a heartbeat. I do understand the PK devs wanting to get their animal roster and game content/features nailed down which is why they are pushing all that so hard, but as with other EA games that have followed similar development styles this comes at the cost of performance and polish in the more immediate term. It looks good, but functions with about the same grace and coordination of a Triceratops on stilts. I purchased the game earlier this year to support the developers, but I wouldn't recommend trying to seriously play this right now unless you can deal with the frustrating lack of technical polish and performance. It just makes for a frustrating gameplay experience (especially if you're like me and can't finish even the opening tutorial). Overall, I like the concept of a game that merges the prehistoric animal park builder aspects of Jurassic World Evolution 2 with the realism aspects and creativity of Planet Zoo, but the current product is far from finished and is not in a technical state I can recommend people play right now unless you are dedicated to influencing the future development of this game in terms of content and features, and finding all the bugs, glitches, and optimization problems to report to the devs. In conclusion, buy if you like the game's concepts and want to support the devs for when the game is fully finished, but only play it if you are serious about influencing game development and reporting issues to the devs to be fixed.

Honestly didn't expect this as a DLC, but all four chosen species are fantastically modeled and animated. However, this pack does bring up some gripes that I think a lot of others, myself included, have with the DLC formula for JWE2 so far. Let me explain with the following points.

1. There has been very little new species from the Jurassic or Triassic periods introduced (the Prehistoric Marine Species Pack was the sole exception with only one creature from the Cretaceous). I understand the Cretaceous was effectively the time of greatest diversity for dinosaurs, pterosaurs, and marine reptiles, plus many of the exposed fossil formations are from the Cretaceous. That said, there are a decent amount of interesting species from the rest of the Mesozoic to explore and add as well. There are sites in the game now that contain a number of Jurassic or Triassic species not in the game yet. Just saying that Frontier could stand to go away from the Cretaceous every now and again.
2. The trend of the continents and regions that DLC creatures are from exposes another bias: North America is still getting the T. rex's share of new species additions in some cases. Granted, Evolution 2 has done a little better to fix this, but some of the other continents are still being neglected a bit. South America, Africa, Europe, and parts of Asia especially are victims of this unfortunate trend. There are so many rich dig sites from outside North America that have piss poor rosters because of this when they should be full of unique species.
3. Theropods, while they are interesting additions in many cases, seem to be getting way more support than other groups of dinosaurs in the roster. Let me remind everyone there has not been a single new ceratopsian or pachycephalosaurid since the base game's launch, there have been no new ornithopods introduced, only one or two new sauropods, and only one or two new stegosaurs or ankylosaurs/nodosaurs. The fact is, while this pack was definitely needed for the dinosaurs it brings to the table, I think we could stand to look at the other groups of dinosaurs for future DLCs for a while.
4. I have harped on this constantly and will continue to do so until Frontier gets the message: restricting DLCs to only four new species every 3 to 4 months is abysmal content output. I have suggested many times that they could adopt how Planet Zoo does DLCs where they alternate scenery and animal packs. In the case of this game, the latter would have more than 4 new species with little to nothing else. Even if they were more expensive, Planet Zoo shows that people would buy them as long as the species on offer are perceived to be valuable.

Overall, this is a really good DLC that was unexpected, but it also highlights the cracks and flaws in Frontier's post-launch support of this game. Granted, the budget cuts and employee layoffs from F1 Manager 2023 failing hard in terms of profit probably haven't helped. I do want to see JWE2 supported for a long time to come as I think in some ways Frontier are starting to get their crap together and producing quality content. The accompanying update to this one was also somewhat weak like the one with the Marine Species Pack before it, but hopefully those can pick back up in quality in 2024. Overall, as with the Late Cretaceous, Feathered Species, and Prehistoric Marine Species DLCs, another surprising home run.

This DLC honestly has an animal selection I can't really criticize. Everything here is either highly requested or unique. We finally have Tasmanian devils and kiwis! The little penguin and quokka also are good shouts adding to the Oceanian variety in the game. The spectacled flying fox surprised me for being yet another animal I hadn't heard of before this DLC. Plus, we have two bats in the game now, the other being the Egyptian fruit bat from the less-than-stellar Twilight Pack. Honestly, this is probably the first scenery pack since the Conservation Pack that I can praise for both the animal selections and the scenery items included. The new building pieces look amazing and it's great we finally have a way to make volcanic landscapes or outcrops now. This pack is a definite recommendation from me for the animals alone and even the scenery adds a little bit of extra flair this time around.

Yes, I went and got this map for free before the deadline from early this year. I figured why not? They weren't likely to make such an offer again. It's interesting though that these maps cost more to buy than new maps for theHunter. I'll be breaking down my praises and grievances with this map.

Positives
1. The map itself is very beautiful with stunning landscapes and plenty of places to fish. However, the map itself is very mountainous and this makes it a pain to reach certain mission objectives, particularly when it's on a freaking mountain summit over half a mile up.
2. Some of the fish on this map like the Atlantic salmon do give you and excuse to break out some of the stronger gear that would've been overkill on Golden Ridge. Even the Northern pike get significantly bigger on this map and can provide quite the challenge.
3. While some people have complained about the characters on this map, I find them an improvement over those of Golden Ridge. Yeah, the shopkeeper can be a bit much, but I find him a bit more likeable in a bit of a silly oaf kind of way. The warden, Astrid, is also more interesting because of the storytelling incorporated into a large part of her dialogue. It adds a certain air of myth and mystery to the map. Considering we're in ancient Norse/Viking country on this map, it does make sense.

Negatives
1. The lack of fishing challenges that task you with catching diamond rank specimens of each new species is a huge misstep in my opinion. This is made worse because a lot of equipment upgrades introduced with the Evolution update in the local souvenirs are locked behind getting tokens from gold, diamond, and legendary fish. Plus, it kind of denies players that feel-good achievement of catching a big specimen of each new fish even if it is somewhat scripted.
2. The bait/lure preference shenanigans have infected the fish of this map as well as re-infected the fish on Golden Ridge. Fish are starting to ignore preferred lures and baits again, as well as going after lures and baits they don't like. This is especially egregious on this map with the bullhead catfish. Them also frequently being in areas where other fish will strike the same lures and baits they strongly prefer does not help with the frustration of catching them, especially for the fishing challenges involving them. I feel like the devs may need to fix this again and figure out a way to future-proof this issue from cropping up again.
3. This map further accentuates and exacerbates the issue of not being able to change your time of day. How is it that this game came out over a year ago and the ability to rest to move the time of day like you can in theHunter hasn't been implemented in this game? If you're going to make certain fish nocturnal, we need to have a system in place where we're not wasting time waiting until it gets dark, especially as the night length has been recently increased.

Overall, this map is fine and the period to get it for free may have softened some people's opinions of it. Like I said, it's a nice looking map with some decent new fish. However, it is bogged down by a lot of the problems the base game still has.

I do not want to be exceedingly harsh on this game, but I feel I must be brutally and unfailingly honest so that potential players/buyers know what they are getting into and signal the developers behind the game that there are problems that need major fixes. As I do on a lot of these reviews I will break my points down into a positives section and a negatives section. With that, here are my thoughts on the game after 80+ hours of playtime.

Positives
1. The game is exceptionally technically polished for the most part. Loading times are reasonable and often tolerably short. Also, being able to change how far you can see off into the distance is a good call, something more games should implement by default and often forget to do.
2. The art style of the characters, animals, and environments, while somewhat cartoony and childish-looking, is pleasing to the eye. The world, regardless of the time of year is beautiful, vibrant, and colorful. I just wish there was more to explore than just three zones (grasslands, forest, and desert).
3. The dinosaurs and other prehistoric life feel alive and unique from species to species. Apparently, there was a paleontological consultant brought on for the designs of the animals to make them as accurate to current science in terms of appearance and design as possible, which is a plus. Despite the cartoony art style, I can confirm that each animal does feel authentic in this regard. Feathers are also properly given to dinosaurs where they should be (pretty much all theropods that should be feathered are, Psittacosaurus has its characteristic quill sail along its back and tail, etc.). Overall, the animals are fantastically modeled and designed.
4. The named characters within the world all have their own personalities. Also, through completing quests related to the named characters, you can build your relationship with them which has differing effects (shop discounts, additional overnight sleep points, item rewards, etc.).
5. Different creatures have different abilities that help with farming, ranch maintenance, and navigating obstacles in the environment.

Negatives
1. The day and night cycle is way too short. A single day goes by in like less than half an hour. This means that you only have so much time to accomplish all the tasks you want to do for a day before the game literally forces you to go to bed. I think the day-night cycle needs to be greatly extended because as it is, it makes it extremely frustrating to have to pick and choose tasks (some of which like tending to your creatures by restocking their food, cleaning poop, watering crops, harvesting crops if they are mature, weeding crops, clearing respawning debris, and other such things have to be done on a daily basis which eats up valuable time). Yes, I get this is a farming simulator, but you should be able to accomplish all the tasks you want or have to do in the same single day-night cycle. Even if the day-night cycle of each day was like an hour or two, that would be a vast improvement.
2. Shop owner characters can often not mind their stores randomly when you really need them to be there because you need to buy something or complete a quest objective. This becomes especially egregious when you open the paths to the forest and desert areas up as such NPCs will often vanish without a trace for a day or more, so you can't buy things you need from them or complete quests related to them until they show up again.
3. The quest system in this game is very rudimentary and weak. Most quests in the game are simple fetch or delivery quests, which when they bombard you with 10+ at any given time, can get extremely repetitive, boring, and mindless very quickly. You also have no good way of distinguishing main quests from simple fetch or delivery quests as all quests are in the same tab in your journal. This can make it hard to concentrate on specific objectives. Some quests also require you to obtain specific items or other conditions that you might need to wait multiple days, weeks, or sometimes months on to be able to complete, which is infuriating. Tutorials too at times can be extremely vague and confusing.
4. There are some bugs in the game that need immediate attention. Firstly, when completing objectives where different named NPCs come to your ranch in a sort of cutscene, this can randomly cause all your creatures to scatter and wander about your ranch outside their pens. To correct this problem, you either need to herd all your creatures back to their proper enclosures with you flute or else go to bed to advance to the next day. Second, I think the Music of the Night subquest related to the main quest to find more Parasaurolophus other than Lucky can cause a game-breaking bug where you cannot complete that subquest and advance the game. I was in the desert one night taming some creatures to bring back, we didn't get back to the ranch in time, so the game forced me to bed, going to the next day. It then triggered the interactive sequence where you are supposed to play music near the tablet at the entrance to the desert canyon to attract more Parasaurolophus, only it did so at the ranch. My game then went to a completely black screen where I could still hear music, but couldn't do anything. I forced closed the game using the Steam overlay and then restarted the game, which seemed to fix the problem. However, I have come to realize that quest may now be completely bugged out because every time I have gone to the entrance to the desert at night to play the flute, nothing happens. Suffice to say, I really do not want to have to restart my second playthrough because of this bug and I am afraid my game's progression is now completely broken because of that issue.
5. There were approximately 11 species cut from the game's launch (Amargasaurus, Apatosaurus, Brachiosaurus, Dimorphodon, Diplodocus, Pteranodon, Pterodactylus, Quetzalcoatlus, Sarcosuchus, Spinosaurus, and Tupandactylus) which explains the lack of sauropod dinosaurs and pterosaurs. The developers have apparently expressed the desire to add these species back in later, so hopefully that does happen.
6. As others have stated, there are several things that point to missing features. There are resources like wood, stone, and fiber, but no real crafting mechanics. There is no fishing. There is no aquatic traversal. There are no additional areas to explore outside the three already mentioned.
7. The Dreamstone system is, I'll be blunt and unashamed to say, infuriating and senseless in its design. There is only a certain amount of them (45 in total) period. I'm not even sure at this point if you can even tame one of every creature in the game (there's 38 unique species in total). Some have claimed that it's due to engine limits or because the devs wanted each creature befriended to feel unique. To that I call their bluff. Players should be allowed the freedom to tame as many creatures as they want, they should not have to sweat if there are enough dreamstones to accomodate all the unique species, and if this game had been designed properly, it would be able to handle such things.

Overall, while there are aspects of the game that are fun, there are things that feel unfinished, the quest system is extremely weak, there are game-breaking bugs present, the hard cap on how many creatures you can befriend is utter lunacy, and the day-night cycle is so short and the tasks so repetitive that it feels pointless at times. This honestly feels like a big-budget mobile game at times. I do think the game has some fun elements, but for right now, my review remains neutral, leaning slightly more towards the negative until some of the major bugs, glitches, and other problems are fully addressed to my satisfaction. To potential buyers, I would wait until some of these things are fixed. To those who have already bought the game, we need to continue to make the devs aware of these problems in our reviews so they can be fixed.

The arid animal pack is an interesting case. On one side, the animal selections for the most part are excellent. The dromedary camel, black rhinoceros, African crested porcupine, and addax are all excellent choices that have been highly requested for a long time. The dama gazelle feels like an odd choice given there is already one other antelope in this pack, but I suppose it's not an offensive pick and makes for a semi-unique African desert antelope. The sand cat is honestly an animal I had never heard of before this DLC dropped and is an interesting choice for a small feline species. The Somali wild ass is also an eyebrow-raising choice to me at least. I know some people wanted it and it is a wild horse species being ancestral to the modern domestic donkey, but it seems an odd choice overall. The desert horned viper is a unique pick for the first exhibit snake to be introduced since the game launched, but I feel there are some other desert snake choices that would've done just as well (the Egyptian cobra, black mamba, spectacled cobra, monocled cobra, and a few others spring to mind). Still, it is good to see Frontier has finally overcome their ophidiophobia.

There is however one big glaring issue with this DLC: the lack of global diversity in the species picks. All of the animals in this pack are from at least of one of three places in relatively close geographical proximity: north Africa, the Middle East, or the more arid regions of India/the various Stan countries of middle Asia. There is no representation from any other continent with any sort of desert or scrubland habitat. Nothing from North America (like the bobcat, horned toad, California king snake, collared peccary, or the like), nothing from the Atacama desert of Chile or any other arid South American habitat, and nothing from the Australian Outback or similar. It's no great wonder some people have touted this DLC as version 2.0 of the Africa Pack because every single animal present can be considered African. Yes, the populations of a few of them do extend into the Middle East, the Stan countries like Pakistan or the like, and the more arid regions of India, but every single animal in this pack is principally associated with north Africa with the exception of the black rhino (which has a scattered range across a large swath of Africa, most principally east, lower west, and south Africa, though it does persist in parts of north Africa and used to have a much wider range in that region) and the African crested porcupine (which also has populations in southern Europe besides those in Africa).

Overall, I can recommend this DLC due in large part to the good selection of animals, primarily from Africa. However, the lack of species from other regions outside Africa and the Middle East might be a drawback for some, plus as I said, it is kind of a not-so-subtle retread of the Africa pack from back in June of 2021, so take that as you will. Overall good, but could've been strengthened by a bit more worldwide variety.

The tropical pack is a hard DLC to gauge. On the one hand, you have a few highly requested animals introduced (the fossa, lar gibbon, red river hog, and brown-throated sloth). On the other hand, the animals and scenery in this pack feel like items that could've been shuffled into other DLCs released beforehand if more careful planning had been followed and content had been sold more generously. The fossa and red river hog feel like animals that could've been part of the Africa pack a long time ago, the brown-throated sloth would've been perfect for the South America DLC from the beginning of 2020, and the lar gibbon and Asian water monitor could've been in the Southeast Asia animal pack (though admittedly that particular DLC's animal additions were already stacked and well-done, so that might be a harder point to validly make). As I said, it's hard to gauge this one. I have no complaints about the animal choices (though I think the Asian water monitor could've been substituted easily for a lot of other things as there is no shortage of highly requested tropical animals players want to see in the game). That being said, this feels like a DLC that would've benefited more from the animal pack model than the scenery pack model or better yet a combination of both (something I have harped on for a long time now and I am a bit frustrated that Frontier has not gone this route or even considered it). Overall, not a bad DLC, but there are some unfortunate missed opportunities.