Frostpunk 2 Review
Overall - 90%
90%
Official Score
With its unique blend of strategy, survival, and city building, Frostpunk 2 stands as one of the best titles of 2024.
11 bit studios’ Frostpunk 2 has entered the ring during a busy 2024 season, bringing winter to PC gamers this fall. Should players set out to survive its harsh conditions?
Frostpunk 2 Review
Takes place 30 years after the events of the first Frostpunk, this sequel has players still feeling the effects of The Great Storm. The world is still frozen and covered in ice and snow, making survival extremely difficult. With the old leader dying, you take the role of Steward and try to lead New London through your frozen nightmare.
Your first priority in Frostpunk 2 is to find a new source of fuel and fix up the old, broken-down generator. The old captain left a large stash of coal behind, giving you time to set up a new fuel source before you freeze to death.
In addition to keeping everyone warm, you need to worry about food and goods. If it sounds like everything is against you, that’s because it is. You have a clock, and if the timer hits zero, you and everyone in your city dies. It’s more of a stress manager than a resource manager.
To satisfy all your people, you need to build districts. For instance, housing keeps people warm and safe, resource stations and factories pump out materials for citizens and buildings, and mines drill up precious black gold.
It’s a delicate balancing act, due to only so many people who can work. Early on, it is all about sacrifice. What can you live without right now to survive to the point of more workers arriving? Frostpunk 2’s management can quickly become addicting.
You can speed this whole process up by doing research. Using your research station, you can unlock new buildings, laws, or even passive buffs like less heat lost in housing districts. The new laws can be voted on at the council and will give you more passive buffs like an increased workforce, more population growth, extra cash, or reduction of diseases, among other things. It all sounds simple, but then one needs to factor in reputation and favors.
When you start Frostpunk 2, there will be a few factions in your city who basically act as the “government” and vote for laws. You can increase the likelihood of a law passing by offering a favor to a faction. This is a great way to get an easy reputation with factions early on and raise your overall trust as a leader.
However, the problem comes down the line when you start having promises that actively oppose other factions. From there, one will have to worry about appeasing these whiney babies on top of keeping your city feed and warm. Their buffs are totally worth it, so maintaining high rep with them is usually a good idea.
One of the funnest aspects of Frostpunk 2 is the Frostland Teams – survivors who you send out into the wasteland to search for supplies, survivors, relics, or new places to set up a colony. There is an element of randomness to this each time, and the rewards out there can be incredible. You can stock up with 50,000k materials sometimes or even unlock a whole new resource point. The Frostlands are essential to stockpiling your cities. You’ll need to be stocked up, too, because every so often, a cold death creeps into the air, the Whiteout.
No matter how well you might be doing, once the Whiteout hits, your cities turn into a frozen wasteland. All outside communication is cut off, and you have to fend for yourself with what you have. This is a tense time for the city, and if you aren’t stocked up with fuel and food, you will lose people and likely lose the game. Month’s of this intense blizzard will grind your productions to a halt as you focus on surviving. If you make it, though, there is light on the other side.
Choices also play a crucial part in Frostpunk 2 – and actions have consequences.
While one can make basic choices for little buffs or debuffs, the major choices in Frostpunk 2 are truly game-changing. One of the early choices I ran into was to either collapse a mine and kill the kids working inside or snuff out a fire and save the kids but lose the mine. I thought I did the right thing, but later on the kids got mad at me. We lost our fuel source, and as a result, my heat tax went up, and I had to pay more fuel per week. That’s just one example, but they are fun choices and have real results.
I did have a couple of bugs. Sometimes, when I load back in, my cooldowns will show as being ready, but they aren’t ready. Then, I have to wait until they reset, which is annoying. When the Whiteout hits, I get some sound issues. Outside of that, I did have some frame drops, but I didn’t get any game crashes.
With its unique blend of strategy, survival, and city building, Frostpunk 2 stands as one of the best titles of 2024.
Frostpunk 2 Review
Reviewed On: PC (A digital code was provided)
Release Date: September 20, 2024
MSRP: $44.99
Platforms: PC
Developer: 11 bit studios
Publisher: 11 bit studios
Alternative Reviews: Push Square, GamingTrend, TechRaptor
Aggregate Scores: Metacritic, OpenCritic
Review Policy | Scoring Policy
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