Frostpunk 1 is better

[Gucky]

Frostpunk 2 abandoned several gameplay mechanics which made Frostpunk 1 very good.

1. Heatmanagment.
In part 1 you had to consider where you build your structures and keep them warm or your people get ill or die.
And when you placed your building too far from the generator, they didn't get warm until you had the late game buildings/research. Which made the placement of buildings more impactful.
There were also different heatzones, which can influence the health of your people.

In part 2 it is a simple on/off toggle.
You can just reduce the total amount of fuel needed, by chaining districts like a puzzle.
But in reality you can just place any building anywhere you want and it is warm without doing anything.

2. Timemanagement
In part 1 you had a day/night cycle. Working at the day, sleeping at night.
You were able to make people work round the clock and you had other options.

In part 2 you have none. The only important thing is every 7 days you get heat stamps...

3. People
In part 1 you had 2 types of people: normal workers and engineers.
And for the most part you had not enough of both to use all buildings at the same time.
But you could build them and only place 1 worker for minimal use and switch on demand.
Engineers were needed for certain buildings.
In the late game there were also automatons, which replaced workers and worked round the clock.

In part 2 they are just a big faceless number. Even if a few hundred die, it usually doesn't matter.

3. Illnesses
In part 1 illness was big. You either kept your people warm and fed or they get ill, get disabled or die. Every worker was important.

In part 2 I played on difficulty 2-3 (story and utopia) and I never had more then 600 people get ill at the same time, even without any hospitals. 600 is nothing with >30k people.
There are also no disabled people you have to care for.

4. Politics
Both games have good politics, but part one felt much more brutal and it felt like every decision has a much bigger impact.

There were also the 2 side of either faith or order.
While part 2 has "radical ideas", they don't have a that big of an impact. They just make one side of the people angry, but the city itself doesn't really change.
In part 1 you could see the change. It becames a bright faithful city with crosses everywhere or a dark totalitarian one with banners.

I could continue with almost every part of the game.
Part 2 feels like a dumbed down version of part 1.

Frostpunk 2 is ok, but part 1 was much much better.

[onlyforamicro]

I can only agree.

I would like to tell you "no! wait! I would see that after it gets better" but the simple truth is that frostpunk2 is worse than the first one in every way, not for this unplayable, you can finish it 1 or 2 times, then uninstall and forget about it.

you will see that in a few days the disappointment will have passed and you will continue with your gaming life as before

[andersonm]

FP2 is a spreadsheet with art on top of it, and it's not a super fun spreadsheet.

So many strange decisions that feel immersion breaking. Like:

- describing housing as "Output" - we have "housing output" of 200. Never heard anyone describe a city with 100 000 houses as having housing output of 100k.

- Tetris placement of districts added just as a pointless gameplay element. If you place three districts next to each other, you get no bonus. But if you place them on the same tiles but layered like snakes, you get a bonus,

- icebreaking cannot cross an earlier icebroken tile. In fact, if you have a single tile without icebreaking on it, you can only icebreak that 1 tile and it costs the same as 8 tiles.

- usually if you read "Stockpiling: 158 / 1 day" that means you are adding 158 to a stockpile. Here it means you are removing 158 from a stockpile.
How about just "From stockpile: 158 / day"

- Automatons? Giant hulking metal beasts working day and night? Too complicated to implement, let's just say they add a flat 1500 to your workforce.

- Trust is treated as a kind of generic health or action points bar:
Let's have an ability to speed up research. But since that is a strong benefit, you can't just have it available for free -- in spreadsheet terms the benefit must have a cost.
So let's just make it cost a lot of Trust.
But why? Since when did a head of state lose a large amount of trust from just pushing researchers to work faster? In reality, if there was a crisis of some kind, I would trust leaders more if they incentivized researchers to work faster on it.

Laws give bonuses, so we can't have too many too fast.
Let's give the player the option to enact more laws early, but at a cost - calling a vote early costs trust.
But why? If a city is facing some unprecedented crisis, why does the governor lose trust from calling an assembly earlier than usual?


It's just extremely rigid. Rigid in design, rigid in implementation, rigid in how you are forced to play. Here, play this little "tile clicky minigame" exactly like we want you to unless you want to receive a little punishment.
And never forget - "Every benefit has a cost!" (Nah, you won't forget!)

[Harris]

Originally posted by Gucky:

Both games have good politics, but part one felt much more brutal and it felt like every decision has a much bigger impact.

The laws are mostly toothless, which to me defeats the whole point of politics. Why do I care about "heatstamps per capita marginally increased"? The overwhelming majority of laws do not open new abilities or ways to play and as such don't feel nearly as impactful. And even the laws that are supposed to be impactful in the sequel feel very basic.

Like, Martial Law which only impact is 30% less guard squads required to do stuff? So I can't ban protests? Disband factions? Are you joking?

Originally posted by andersonm:

It's just extremely rigid. Rigid in design, rigid in implementation, rigid in how you are forced to play.

Mhm. There but a few scripted ways how the civil war can end and I can't really do anything about the factions outside of it. Their numbers are capped and can't go below 100, so having your actions remove something like 29 people from a faction is frustrating and anticlimatic.

I'm the kind of player who loves to get into the nitty-gritty and master the game, and the first one provided a lot of room for that. But in this one, there's just not a lot to master for how basic everything is. It tries to explore many things, but fails to really deliver on anything in particular.

Originally posted by andersonm:

FP2 is a spreadsheet with art on top of it, and it's not a super fun spreadsheet.

That's a quote. A shame you were not around to make it a month earlier, I'd love to have it included in my review.

[Thunderball]

Totally agree. I refunded the game. FP1 is one of the best games in history for me, FP2 is a game in the same universe. def feels like a trial and error spreadsheet. none of the choices presented appeared to do anything other than unlock achievements.

[Dealer]

1. No. That's simply not strictly true. By placing the districts far away from eachother you will starve yourself out of fuel. Granted I feel like the issue is because the game is too easy, but that's another thing. Placing stuff in a smart way matters no less than in FP1. The difference being you have heat demand instead of the heat zones, which leads you to cramping everything in a way to minimalise heat demand rather than cramp everything in a heat zone.

2. While I understand what you mean that's just a matter of the game increasing its scale. Having a day-night cycle doesn't make sense when a day is 10 seconds long on the slowest speed. And time management still comes in the matter of building stuff.

3. Same as 2, that's the matter of increasing the scale of the game. You're no longer managing a town of 500 people tops. You're managing a metropolis of 30000. In FP1 you had engineers, workers and children. In FP2 you have working folk and non-working folk. I don't see it make sense to arbitrarily split the working into half just to maintain a mechanic from the first game which only showed in 3 cases (In 1 there are literally only like 3 different types of buildings requiring specific type - hunters, hospitals and workshops. The rest takes anything.)

4. You have radical ideas, but you also have special abilities you unlock when pushing one ideological side to its max, as well as the laws from the rule cathegory. Although I will agree it would be nice to have some faction specific scenography or have the buildings of different ideas have different colour-coded roofs.

Conclusion: Idk. Make the game more difficult.

[kylix999]

Yes f1 is much better

[idiot2]

Originally posted by andersonm:

FP2 is a spreadsheet with art on top of it, and it's not a super fun spreadsheet.

So many strange decisions that feel immersion breaking. Like:

- describing housing as "Output" - we have "housing output" of 200. Never heard anyone describe a city with 100 000 houses as having housing output of 100k.

- Tetris placement of districts added just as a pointless gameplay element. If you place three districts next to each other, you get no bonus. But if you place them on the same tiles but layered like snakes, you get a bonus,

- icebreaking cannot cross an earlier icebroken tile. In fact, if you have a single tile without icebreaking on it, you can only icebreak that 1 tile and it costs the same as 8 tiles.

- usually if you read "Stockpiling: 158 / 1 day" that means you are adding 158 to a stockpile. Here it means you are removing 158 from a stockpile.
How about just "From stockpile: 158 / day"

- Automatons? Giant hulking metal beasts working day and night? Too complicated to implement, let's just say they add a flat 1500 to your workforce.

- Trust is treated as a kind of generic health or action points bar:
Let's have an ability to speed up research. But since that is a strong benefit, you can't just have it available for free -- in spreadsheet terms the benefit must have a cost.
So let's just make it cost a lot of Trust.
But why? Since when did a head of state lose a large amount of trust from just pushing researchers to work faster? In reality, if there was a crisis of some kind, I would trust leaders more if they incentivized researchers to work faster on it.

Laws give bonuses, so we can't have too many too fast.
Let's give the player the option to enact more laws early, but at a cost - calling a vote early costs trust.
But why? If a city is facing some unprecedented crisis, why does the governor lose trust from calling an assembly earlier than usual?


It's just extremely rigid. Rigid in design, rigid in implementation, rigid in how you are forced to play. Here, play this little "tile clicky minigame" exactly like we want you to unless you want to receive a little punishment.
And never forget - "Every benefit has a cost!" (Nah, you won't forget!)

The criticisms in this list that are valid are the inconsequential ones. For example i agree about some interface issues and stuff like the "housing output" and the "stockpiling" thing. But thats 2 lines of slightly awkward text that can be changed in 30 seconds. Not an example of "rigid design":

As for the more substantial cricisms, you are just objectively wrong. Losing trust for calling votes early actually happens in real democracies (because leaders trying to manipulate the timing of the votes is suspicious).

Losing trust for pushing research absolutely makes sense. First of all, you are pushing the researchers to work harder than their natural pace, pressuring them = ergo they lose trust. Secondly, rushed research may lead to experimental, unproven results, which again, makes the general public lose trust.

This happens in reality all the time, see for example the reaction of a large part of the western public to the MRNA covid vaccines that got rushed through the process.

As for being able to play the game only in one way... I don't even? You can choose to become a totalitarian dictatorship that makes women into breeding machines or an egalitarian democratic utopia (among many other choices). Many of the choices have distinct and meaningful gameplay differences. Sorry but if you feel like you can only play this game one way, then that is on you, not on the game.

[DopeDawg]

Politics feels way off in this setting. Hey I didnt like that research you did, i am going to start a civil war and burn the city. Yeah sure, very reasonable.
Its a survival setting ffs you might be the only city left on the planet and you care about agenda? Instead of makimg the most efficient decisions for development you are forced to appease factions so they dont start civil war. This is very real world politics lol, all politicians only care about votes, not about efficiency.

[idiot2]

Originally posted by DopeDawg:

Politics feels way off in this setting. Hey I didnt like that research you did, i am going to start a civil war and burn the city. Yeah sure, very reasonable.

Nice story bro, except the part where it didnt happen.

Factions gradually dislike you more if you develop society in a direction they dont like (by researching, building, passing laws,e etc.).

If you go out of your way offending parts of society, eventually you get some tension and then if you ignore that for long enough, you get a civil war.

[HardNRG]

There were no politics in FP1. There were laws, that you chose at your own pleasure. And after that they were like written in the bible, unrepealable.

[Emjay]

I like both and I also like that they are different enough that 2 hasn't made 1 irrelevant.

Both are different games with different experiences, so that's cool. I still have a reason to play 1, even though I have 2, which is rare in gaming.

I'm happy.

[adrien_perleflamme]

It seems you haven't discovered heat management in FP2. It's there. Or if it's not, then try putting your housing districts in the wind and without any other district close to it to keep the warm. Then, try to survive the whiteout with that lack of city planning.

That said, I miss the heat UI. They could add it back. It wouldn't be hard to do, it's just a layer.

[adrien_perleflamme]

I stand corrected: heat overlay is here. It's just hidden behind a shortcut (4). I haven't found it in game UI, though, and it's not explained in prologue either, sadly.

[Ozymandias]

Originally posted by idiot2:

Originally posted by DopeDawg:

Politics feels way off in this setting. Hey I didnt like that research you did, i am going to start a civil war and burn the city. Yeah sure, very reasonable.

Nice story bro, except the part where it didnt happen.

Factions gradually dislike you more if you develop society in a direction they dont like (by researching, building, passing laws,e etc.).

If you go out of your way offending parts of society, eventually you get some tension and then if you ignore that for long enough, you get a civil war.

Except, when I played I ended Chapter 4 with zero fervour on both sides. But I still got civil war, for reasons...

[lily40k]

I dont think heat management or constant micro of toggles or moving around workers and minmaxing was good... i prefer how FP2 does it.. if there is need for heat you burn more... yeah you cant deliberatly freeze people (unless you turn off the heat completely) but you dont need to either.

Agree about laws being more impactful in FP1 though.

The problem is in FP1 you dealth with illness and many other challenges, why would you start doing that again in FP2? there would be new challenges and they delivered. People are too attached to nostalgic feeling of the games they played.

I played few months before fp2 maybe thats why i dont...