Frostpunk 2 is a overrated, too easy, disappointment

[ЯeÐ ĄnimaŁ ШaЯ]

Two things first:

1. I did not start on highest difficulty and just rolled with it easy peasy. I needed to learn the game, and I did but once you figure out the games mechanics and the map and where and when to tap into resources the game is just too easy. The beginning is pretty hard, but also very forgiving. The first or the first 2 storms are hard in utopia builder, from then it really does not matter what you do, you have to try hard to screw up. I certainly had challenges in this game but 99% came from trail and error and me just learning how the game works.

2. I am not one of those "THIS IS NOT FP1 I HATE IT BECAUSE ITS NOT EXACTLY THE SAME" guys. In fact I think its stupid and lots of people and "journalists" trash or praise this game based on it supposedly being so different. Its not. Its on a bigger scale, buildings are different, there are many factions but the core gameplay is exactly the same. Generator, fuel, scarcity of heat and all the other resources, laws, keeping your population happy, cores, exploration squads on the map. All these things very similar. So how is this a completely different game? How is this praised of trashed for being a "completely different game" or "Not Frostpunk".

Graphics

I am a big fan of Unreal Engine but this was the wrong choice for the game. I honestly even completely overlooking performance issues I was put-off by the graphics and the way the game presents itself. The devs are sure proud of their "fancy" self building city but its all looks overdone and does not actually look that good IMO. Its just overfilled with dust and post process effects and fancy moving lightning on connections that build themselves.

When I first starting playing I was actually put off by the graphics, putting the dust settings to low makes it basically disappear, you hardly see it anymore and I like that for both the 1 FPS it may give me and just visually. It really took me time to get used to it but I STILL do not like the way they did the graphics.

You need to hover over districts to see where they start and end, this is stupid. They prioritized "fancy" looks over actual good gameplay. Bad choice. You actually need to hold down a button to see what buildings you placed where, horrible choice, leads to annoying gameplay. And there is not even some overview screen for your buildings. So if you happen to be in the endgame and want to deactivate or remove a bunch of buildings in your city or even just get some overview what you have and where it is, its such a pain in the ass and just looks awkward you having to press a key and relying on overlays. Who TF thought this is a good idea?

I would prefer them sticking to Unity or just giving the game a clear and distinct look to things without the need for extra helpers to see the most basics things. FP1 was perfectly fine looking and performing in Unity. IXION is also done in Unity, I think it does not perform as good as FP1 but it has this clear and distinct look to it, even better then FP1 that you expect from a game where you build things.

On top of this mess there is the performance and it SUCKS. There are several UE5 games that are 1st and 3rd person that perform WAY better on my system than this title. I basically CANT get 60 FPS. I turned lighting to low that turns off Lumen completely and it still only gives me like 1 or 2 FPS or nothing not sure. I have a few things to low and its one of those many modern games where details basically hardly do anything. Other UE5 games I can play with DLSS on quality and get 60+++ FPS. This game I can not even play on balanced to get 60 FPS.

Frame generation makes the game flicker, on pause specifically. And I need to use FSR to use Framegen, I opted not to use it as its not really helping if the real FPS is not smooth is never feels smoother. In God of War Ragnarok, (also Ghost of Tsushima I think) I can enable AMD Framegen ON TOP of DLSS it seems (I have 2080 TI and Nvidia artificially cuts me out of theirs). It is the only game where I have seen this, in FP2 and others you seem to be forced to use FSR to also use FSR FrameGen.

Saving takes ages and make the game stutter multiple times. At least force freeze the game and show a "saving". The game continues in the background while it saves and presents you with multiple annoying stutters. Bad game design. Bad engine choice / implementation.

And the longer the game goes on, the bigger the city gets the worse the performance gets. Its sucks from the very start and even gets worse over time.

Gameplay

I really do not care that much that it does not feel exactly like FP1, yes its true that you do not care if 100+ people dies because there are new people coming in and getting born. Its true that it does not gives you the exact feeling you have in FP1 but I do not mind. In fact I think its actually great that the game is more forgiving but it makes the mistake of being too easy overall. In FP1 it always was like on harder difficulties that you made one tiny mistake early on it spiraled its way into the entire game and you suffered for hours and lost because of it. FP2 is different in a better but it does not mitigate this in different ways to give you a challenge.

Laws, research and demanding factions get ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ annoying after a while. You have this total illusion of choice, you are basically forced to enact laws you do not want, research things you do not need/want at times in the game just to make them happy. Sitting though the annoying voting animation 100 times is annoying AF. Not sure how the undecided voters work but it seems they vote more in your favor if you have more trust with them. I do not even know how it works and have no issue finished the game on hardest.

At some points you get just annoyed so much by the requests. And early on the requests are basically exactly what you need, it feels like a tutorial or hand-holding when the game asks you in a scripted fashion for things you need anyway to make your city better. Its flawed, not very well thought out mechanic.

"Request Funds" or whatever its called is WAY to powerful, I actually only discovered this very late and basically played completely without it but on buy this thing is like a cheat. You have money so slowly coming in and you can basically use it almost every time its ready if you have the factions in someone OK standing, the points you lose for it are laughable and later on the money you get is insane!

The cornerstones and all the end game research and laws are COMPLETELY MEANINGLESS! I really mean it. When you reach the point where you can research or enact these things that make the game even easier, even if factions oppose things it does not even matter you can balance it out. But it takes so damn long to get there that once you reach that point the game is already won, it does not matter AT ALL if you actually activate and use any radical ideas or not, if you activate any cornerstone or not. Even if you have buildings that are opposed you can just erase them and replace them, its not like that it suddenly flips your game, you would have to try really really hard to build wrong and I think I did it one time on accident and needed to reload one time.

The law making you a dictator seems to only exist so the scripted story can make you enact it, it not needed for any survival or winning element of the game, its flawed mechanic and bad game design, so are all the other endgame things.

"Utopia Builder" is a stupid name for the game mode. It sounds like some unlimited resources, no challenge, builder mode. When in fact its just the exact same game again on different maps without a story. I finished 2 runs on hardest in Utopia building and I needed to reload a save one time each. And if you thinking "go Iron man now, there is your challange, see you failed" now then I say. NO! I detest stupid game modes like this that are just an admission that the game itself is too easy to they introduces some artificial restriction on saving and loading to you have to play flawless because the game does not have any other challenges it can offer.

Operating on a deficit in this game is too forgiving, it can be low and basically nothing happens. Once you build up slowly and get the research and things you dig yourself out of the hole introduced to you in the beginning. And that is all there is to it. The put you in this hole you have to dig yourself out and once you out like mid game its all easy mode.

Conclusion

How is this game so overrated? All a bunch of casuals who play the game for the story on normal and then drop it? I really fail to get it. FP1 on hardest was actually too hard for me. I remember giving up on some DLC I think on the hardest after failing multiple times. And like I said, I did not like how unforgiving and spiraling it was but I think of reinstalling it again just to check out again how different FP1 was.

It was like tightly controlled and calculated. It was like you have to turn on heaters on and off for the last drop of fuel. Resources basically gave you exactly what you needed and not more. In FP2 it seems more sandboxy and overall too much of everything. Too much levers, too much solutions to achieve something. I can build hubs to get trust! I can build hospitals to get cure people but also I can build hubs to do the same. FP1 had a mechanic that had separate engineers and they could be in the need of a robot leg. Was there not some kind of penalty for not curing them fast enough? Or overworking them? FP2 seems to make people just die if you overwork them?

Questions

Are hubs needed? Are they good? I build them but I am still not sure because it seems you do not need them at all and you can achieve the same things with buildings. They eat a lot of materials. And not sure if just researching and getting more fuel is better. I think the most useful once are probably the one that spreads trust and the rail one that makes production faster but they feel like a afterthought. Like they are not mandatory for your city like heaters were in FP1. Your factions almost never even want them ... they cost 100 to research right? They do not advance and or the cornerstones are are just completely detached from everything. I feel this one of the many game design flaws in this game. Early on I always needed the money for different things and later on when I basically can build what I want they do not really matter that much anymore. Early on you are very short on materials so is it worth burning it for heat?

[ЯeÐ ĄnimaŁ ШaЯ]

The game also has supply chains that seems to be not balanced and also make it just easier.

1. You can produce oil out of coal. I guess this makes some sense if you go progress instead of adaption (that seems FAR superior, especially on maps with heat geisiers (how TF do I spell this) in the ground. It seems basically mandatory to me to go for adoption.

2. You can produce materials out of oil? WTF is this? Its almost like producing them out of thin air, all you need is the workforce that is no issue at the part of the game where you research this later. There is plenty of excess oil you can produce and you can make it out of coal.

[Perverius]

Originally posted by ЯeÐ ĄnimaŁ ШaЯ:

The game also has supply chains that seems to be not balanced and also make it just easier.

2. You can produce materials out of oil? WTF is this? Its almost like producing them out of thin air, all you need is the workforce that is no issue at the part of the game where you research this later. There is plenty of excess oil you can produce and you can make it out of coal.

https://www.bpf.co.uk/plastipedia/how-is-plastic-made.aspx

[ЯeÐ ĄnimaŁ ШaЯ]

Originally posted by Perverius:

Originally posted by ЯeÐ ĄnimaŁ ШaЯ:

The game also has supply chains that seems to be not balanced and also make it just easier.

2. You can produce materials out of oil? WTF is this? Its almost like producing them out of thin air, all you need is the workforce that is no issue at the part of the game where you research this later. There is plenty of excess oil you can produce and you can make it out of coal.

https://www.bpf.co.uk/plastipedia/how-is-plastic-made.aspx

I know that plastics are made out of oil. I have no clue what your point is supposed to be. I am talking to a video game that supposedly has limited resources and this game has only 3 basically. Fuel, Food, Material. Tools are made from material so they do not count. I am talking form a game design perspective that its stupid, never said "ITS NOT REALISTIC" that I think is a tarded argument for video games anyway, because they never are. Not even Dirt Really 2.0 is realistic even when people claim it is. There is no video game that is realistic.

It probably does not matter at all, because like I said, late game the all the games mechanics become meaningless. But if the game reduces the overall resources you need from 3 to just two, seems to be another unbalanced and stupid game design. If anything you should need to care about MORE things at this stage of the game and not less.

[Dailao]

Originally posted by ЯeÐ ĄnimaŁ ШaЯ:

Frostpunk 2 is a overrated, too easy, disappointment

Well for me it was extremely difficult in chapter 4 and 5, so your statement is very subjective. They shouldn't tune the default difficulty to people who are naturally very good at it, and instead have voluntary options to make it harder.

As for being a disappointment, I kind of agree. In my opinion it is more like Civilization now, which I don't like very much. I would have preferred it to remain a city builder. For me it lost the charm of individual buildings and caring about people.

Since it's all about politics and negotiations now, you kind of lose the contact with the actual people, it feels more detached and like an experiment. In Frostpunk 1 I actually cared about my people, and I loved watching them walk through the snow, making a warm workplace for them and so on.

To me Frostpunk 2 kind of lost the aspects that made it something special when compared to other games in the genre.

[Perverius]

Originally posted by ЯeÐ ĄnimaŁ ШaЯ:

Originally posted by Perverius:

https://www.bpf.co.uk/plastipedia/how-is-plastic-made.aspx

I know that plastics are made out of oil. I have no clue what your point is supposed to be.

The way you phrased it made me think that you didn't. Plenty of people thinking that meat comes from shop.
By the time you setup and need to make materials out of oil is usually when you fulfilled your ambitions and decided to continue playing.

[ЯeÐ ĄnimaŁ ШaЯ]

Originally posted by Dailao:

Originally posted by ЯeÐ ĄnimaŁ ШaЯ:

Frostpunk 2 is a overrated, too easy, disappointment

Well for me it was extremely difficult in chapter 4 and 5, so your statement is very subjective. They shouldn't tune the default difficulty to people who are naturally very good at it, and instead have voluntary options to make it harder.

As for being a disappointment, I kind of agree. In my opinion it is more like Civilization now, which I don't like very much. I would have preferred it to remain a city builder. For me it lost the charm of individual buildings and caring about people.

Since it's all about politics and negotiations now, you kind of lose the contact with the actual people, it feels more detached and like an experiment. In Frostpunk 1 I actually cared about my people, and I loved watching them walk through the snow, making a warm workplace for them and so on.

To me Frostpunk 2 kind of lost the aspects that made it something special when compared to other games in the genre.

Its not subjective, its a fact that this game is much easier that the first game. There were other people that already noticed this b4 me. And if you struggle that hard you should maybe just start from the beginning and use what you learned and see how much easier it is. The chapters tied into each other so if you build good early on and have multiple research labs and research faster and stuff you benefit from all that in the later chapters.

Or you are doing something wrong or not have figured out the game fully yet, because its not that hard, especially if you already finished it on an easier difficulty b4 you try the hardest.

I never said they should tune the default difficulty, no clue what you are on about. I said the game is too easy on hardest. I started on the one below hardest with just weather on "moderate" actually. Then after some time I restarted the game on the one below hardest on all things and it was pretty manageable for me. I had my struggles and my learning curve but after I finished the story on that I jumped into hardest and it was just not challenging enough. It has the ILLUSION of being hard. I had starving people, I had run out of trust. But a scripted event pops up to get you in the good and you just finish that after the storm is over and you are good to go.

I honestly never "felt" like connected to the people not even in FP1. But deaths really meant something to you that is for sure, because there were a huge penalty on you for the rest of the game. FP2 does not have something like this.

But I get it, this seems to be a very common critique people have all over the place. My point is that even if I do not care AT ALL about "feeling close to the people". The game design is just bad, its unfinished, unbalanced, not thought out well. Its lacks any real good exiting innovation. The cornerstone thing is so deeply flawed because it only kicks in when it does not matter anymore.

The voting thing makes it annoying after a while and its basically the same as the first almost. You have a timer and you need to make sure you progress 3 things as soon as possible, votes, research and exploration. There is too much room and too much levers to balance things out to provide a constant and ongoing real challenge that actually PERSISTS into the late game.

And what I forget to mention the first game had a WAY better audio and visual clue when the explorations were finished. In this one I forgot about it many times because something is missing. Same for the council, the fact this the icon fills backwards and then when its ready it just not looks that different its easy to miss. You need to look for people in the icon to see if the council is ready. Its weird and was much clearer in the 1st game. Like blinking or different color or something really obvious that was easy to see.

Downgrade over many places, sadly. But typical modern game, it eats up your hardware so its praised into high heavens.

[ЯeÐ ĄnimaŁ ШaЯ]

Originally posted by Perverius:

Originally posted by ЯeÐ ĄnimaŁ ШaЯ:

I know that plastics are made out of oil. I have no clue what your point is supposed to be.

The way you phrased it made me think that you didn't. Plenty of people thinking that meat comes from shop.
By the time you setup and need to make materials out of oil is usually when you fulfilled your ambitions and decided to continue playing.

Well I do not think I sound like a guy who thinks meat comes from the shop.

I just learned something though (Brave search AI):

"Direct Coal Liquefaction (DCL): This process involves heating coal in the absence of oxygen to produce a liquid product, known as coal oil or coal liquefaction oil."

So that part even seems to have some reality to it. not that I really care if this would be complete fiction.

[Dailao]

Originally posted by ЯeÐ ĄnimaŁ ШaЯ:

Its not subjective

Difficulty is always subjective. And so is most of your second post.
It's very easy to get into a death spiral in chapter 4 and 5, and there are way more mechanics and resources to balance. Frostpunk 1 was much easier for me personally. But again, this is subjective..

[ЯeÐ ĄnimaŁ ШaЯ]

Originally posted by Dailao:

Originally posted by ЯeÐ ĄnimaŁ ШaЯ:

Its not subjective

Difficulty is always subjective. And so is most of your second post.
It's very easy to get into a death spiral in chapter 4 and 5, and there are way more mechanics and resources to balance. Frostpunk 1 was much easier for me personally. But again, this is subjective..

To claim difficulty is "always" subjective is the biggest ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ cope I have ever heard. No its NOT! Dark Souls games are considered hard - because they ARE, they FACTUALLY and objectively just ARE. Even though there are a bunch of people who tell you how easy the games are (after they died to a boss 50 times). And yes you can make them easier with all kinds of things like leveling or exploit builds ... still the just ARE hard, universally accepted truth. Just because YOU have issues does not mean this is subjective.

Start fresh from what you learned, the chapters play into each other and if you are better b4 and know what is coming you can prepare and its not that hard unless you are doing something completely wrong and still have not really figured out all the game mechanics correctly. Its not subjective FP1 was harder on hardest. FP2 gives you way many levers to pull out of bad sits and is not as punishing when you make a mistake. In FP1 on hardest you really need to make every move perfectly and can't have ANY mistake.

[Maj. Crimes]

Write a review on the store page. Im not reading that wall of text.

[adrien_perleflamme]

Originally posted by ЯeÐ ĄnimaŁ ШaЯ:

Originally posted by Dailao:

Difficulty is always subjective. And so is most of your second post.
It's very easy to get into a death spiral in chapter 4 and 5, and there are way more mechanics and resources to balance. Frostpunk 1 was much easier for me personally. But again, this is subjective..

To claim difficulty is "always" subjective is the biggest ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ cope I have ever heard. No its NOT! Dark Souls games are considered hard - because they ARE, they FACTUALLY and objectively just ARE. Even though there are a bunch of people who tell you how easy the games are (after they died to a boss 50 times). And yes you can make them easier with all kinds of things like leveling or exploit builds ... still the just ARE hard, universally accepted truth. Just because YOU have issues does not mean this is subjective.

Start fresh from what you learned, the chapters play into each other and if you are better b4 and know what is coming you can prepare and its not that hard unless you are doing something completely wrong and still have not really figured out all the game mechanics correctly. Its not subjective FP1 was harder on hardest. FP2 gives you way many levers to pull out of bad sits and is not as punishing when you make a mistake. In FP1 on hardest you really need to make every move perfectly and can't have ANY mistake.

For someone who's very skilled at timing, reaction speed and spotting tiny hints, Dark Soul like games are easy. There's no objectivity at all about Dark Souls being hard. It was easy to realise that. Why didn't you?

If the same person isn't skilled at large scale strategy and planing ahead of time, then many other games will be way harder. Same goes with deduction or detective games. A game being hard or not can only be subjective, simply because each human being is unique.

But, from a single perspective, aka from a subjective point of view, yeah, some games are harder than others and it is a reality. Still not objective, though, as it can't go beyond the perceptions of a single perspective.

[zidercol]

This is 11bit - wait 2 years before they finish the game.