Frostpunk 2 Review
My spoiler free review of the game but also how it works on the Steam Deck
Frostpunk 2 was out on 20th September, I bought it the day before for 44euros and it was worth every penny! After finishing the story mode, I feel ready to review though there is still so much to this game, to make things easier I am going to break it down, and say how it works on the Steam Deck which is how I played the game from beginning to end.
The story. Let’s start off with the story itself and right away I’m just going to say, I love it. It’s been some years since the first game, the Captain that once led people out of the cold is now dead leaving you, the Steward, to deal with the aftershock. This time it is not just weather you’re dealing with, in fact only once does the weather actually play a big impact on the game, it’s the people that really make this game fun as well as hard. You have a new system where your laws have to be voted in, and every different faction has different ways they think the city should be run. I found this very good fun, I loved the law system, the fact you can change the vote by promising different factions their way making them vote for or against the law.
The story is spilt into different chapters making new goals and challenges in each one, I love how they link the old game to the new game with locations and snippets of lore that gets thrown in. The story mode felt longer than the first game, more depth to it and so much more replay ability as you have several factions to side with, different laws to make and so on. The first game you could be good or evil but with this game you can be in the middle bit of both, there is just more ways to make your playthrough unique to others. For me the story was 8.5 out of 10. I marked it down because sometimes it felt like there was too much going on at the same time making it very hard to keep an eye on everything.
Taken from Steam page
Gameplay. Just because you loved the first one doesn't mean you will love this one. There is so much more to this game, your city has now thousands of people inside all waiting for you to give them what they want. The game even uses different resources and instead of having to build one house or a medical centre, you have to build districts that can give you coal, oil, materials and goods. Which is a lot more than the last game when it was just wood and steel most of the time. The gameplay is easy enough to understand when you get into the swing of it as it's not that in-depth. They do give you tutorials but sometimes I did have to look up some things as they weren't all very clear. Once everything does make sense it's really fun to play.
Music and graphics. I will put these two together as they are both amazing. The music is just as I hoped it would be like the first game, it's striking, makes you feel stressed without even knowing it or has a cold calm feel to it. The graphics are beautiful, they really changed the look of it for the best, more bright colours, more ways to see people moving around. I love how the main screen also changes on how you’re doing with your people, as the tension starts to build the screen goes blacker, lines appearing around showing the effect as the music builds. Really makes you feel '‘oh shit I got to do something’. For this I give them a 10 out of 10 and will be listening to their music for a long time as I do for the first game.
Frostpunk 2 on my Steam Dec Steam Deck. So how did it work on the Steam Deck? Very well! I lowered the graphics to ‘performance' and kept everything to low. While this worked great sometimes it did lag when a lot was happening on the screen but not enough to worry about. Valve are working on making it more compatible for the Steam Deck but if you want to play with it right now, you definitely can.
Photo taken from Steam page
My conclusion is that this game is great, it is the best sequel they could do. I am glad it's not just Frostpunk 1 with a bit of make-up, as much as I LOVE the first one, they had done everything they could with it so this felt right. I love that it continues from the last story and you can see some choices from the laws you made in the first game play out for long term. My only thing I would say is people are right that it feels less personal. I love their factions but there every day people don't feel as real. You’re now running a huge city, when the cold got very bad the game told me 450 people had been lost due to the cold, I just shrugged as I have got enough people to keep the city going. In the first game I would have heard the bell for each one of those people, would have felt their impact, their names were put on display and their families would be mad. This time it all boiled down to just not having enough numbers of people. While I wish it could mean more, this is a huge city not the small collective of survivors you had last time so it makes sense as well as there are others ways for your choices to make an impact.
All in all, I love this game and it's all I wanted from it, well done to 11 Bit Studio for getting this right, the music, graphics and tone of the game. I have so much more to play and can’t wait to see what else this game can show me.
If you enjoyed this, check out my other review on TikTok where I show clips from my gameplay. See you all in the Frostlands.
Games mentioned:
Frostpunk 1 - On all consoles but Nintendo Switch
Frostpunk 2 - Only on PC for now, soon to come to all consoles but Nintendo Switch