Frostpunk 2 | Review – A revamped and even deeper city builder

Six years ago, the Polish studio, 11 bit studios, successfully launched what would soon become one of the most original and well thought out city builders in the videogame scene, Frostpunk. The success was so great that the team significantly expanded the steampunk IP with DLC and additional stories, which led to the experience being played even many years after the official release.

Despite the results, however, it was not so obvious that we would see a sequel. A great idea was needed to bring back the management game and that idea not only did the studio find it, but it also transformed it into a quality sequel that we are sure will keep us company for many years. Frostpunk 2 it is in fact a very different game compared to its predecessoralmost distorted in many aspects, but equally well balanced, effective on a narrative level and above all with an extremely satisfying gameplay management.

The difficult choices

A good thirty years have passed compared to the events of the first chapter: humanity has managed to survive the glacial storms and settle permanently, returning to prosper and hope for a better future. However, the sudden death of the superintendent creates confusion in the population of New London who must face an ever closer end of resources and a decidedly precarious internal balance of the factions.

And this is where we come in; as a new neutral superintendent We will have to save the city and find new means to survive the snowstorms: increasingly stronger, colder and clearly dangerous for all civilians.

Compared to the first Frostpunkthe story of Frostpunk 2 it is noticeably more refined, with a more complex narrative fabric. The main campaign is divided into five chaptersi, sprinkled with lore, texts, and some high-profile cinematic moments, such as the powerful and emotional opening cutscene that manages to immediately immerse us in the desolate world of the game. The narrative choice system of Frostpunk 2 represents one of the central elements of the game. Every decision has the potential to radically change the evolution of the plot and the way in which the citizens react. You can choose to make controversial choices to safeguard the city, at the expense of the well-being of the individual, or risk everything to try to save as many people as possible. In general, you feel a greater depth in the story and in the decisions to be made, some of which can put you in serious difficulty from a purely moral point of view.

A more ambitious city

From the point of view of city management, the game has been radically changed compared to the first episode. All things considered, we are faced with a totally new product that features many novelties. A fairly normal choice considering that we are no longer at the beginning of the city’s foundation where civilians were forced to venture out into the snow and the population was around a few hundred people, but in a real urban center with thousands if not tens of thousands of civilians.

Even the perspective from above has completely changed, where before we had a very small area, we are now faced with a gigantic territory to coverwith a much more elevated view where even the Automatons (giant four-legged robotic machines) appear tiny from a distance.

All this is inevitable, given that Our task has changed completely compared to the pastwhere it is no longer a question of understanding where to start survival, but on the contrary of evaluating how to carry it forward for the next few years.

To ensure this, we are supported by new mechanics. Unlike the predecessor where we could only build around the main core of the city, now it is possible to build in any area of ​​the territory, net of breaking the ice below with powerful ice-breaking vehicles. This is possible thanks to the new technologies that can easily transport heat everywhere from the city center and that also allow us to establish different extractors to recover resources, from coal, to materials (useful for preserving buildings) to the production of food for the inhabitants.

The various deposits, however, are not infinite and this is where recon comes in. If you played the first game, you will remember that exploration was quite guided: scouts were sent out and reported what they found, from missing people, to resources to narrative elements. In Frostpunk 2 all of this has remained, but has been significantly improved in all respects. First of all, the reconnaissance area is significantly larger, so much so that we can build zip lines to move faster or even freight trains to extract resources remotely in specific places.

Then there is the new feature of the colony. In some areas you can find old battleships or heat generators that allow you to establish additional hubs. These work in the same way as the main city, which means that you need to ensure all the basic necessities, from heat to food, sometimes by transferring people dedicated to production or materials from one place to another. Colonies are very useful, because some have deposits that can help us a lot in the continuation of the adventure, such as oil, which becomes essential for heating the city instead of coal.

As you may have understood, the city building element has been deeply renewed.. In Frostpunk 2you have greater creative and managerial freedom which inevitably, however, ruins a bit that charm of solitude that players loved and appreciated so much with the first episode. In any case, this expansion of urban management makes the gameplay more varied, but also more complex, forcing you to balance multiple aspects: from the maintenance of buildings to food production, up to the management of fuel for heat generation.

Obviously there is no lack of opportunity to research new technologies to improve structures or unlock better survival methods thanks to heat vouchers (the virtual currency that citizens have to pay to the government as a tax), but above all there is no lack of opportunity to pass new laws. As we described earlier, the city has become much larger and divided into factions, from those more tied to religious faith to those more tied to city order. To pass a law, therefore, it is now necessary to obtain a government majority and this is only possible by maintaining a good level of trust with all the factions in play. If you think it is simple, you are wrong, because the same groups propose different laws and also alternative research methods, which means that making one choice instead of another can lead to citizen imbalances. Everything, as always, is up to us.

The difficulty remains well balanced, but it wouldn’t be Frostpunk if the game didn’t put us in difficulty. Completing the game on more punishing game modes, in fact, is a challenge that will surely be well appreciated by the most assiduous players of this management game. We appreciate the fact that the team wanted to customize the difficulty levels too, with the possibility of choosing how to play the game at will.

The game, however, does not end with the 9-10 hours of the main story. In Frostpunk 2, 11 Bit Studios has created a “Utopia” mode with seven sandbox locations to build the city of our choice, letting us choose the objective to reach, the starting communities and guaranteeing several additional hours of gameplay and greater general freedom.

Nice to play and to see

You can clearly feel how much bigger the production is compared to the past and this is not only noticeable from the immense territories that we find ourselves managing, but also from the fact that all the camera movements between one colony and another are in real-time, as if it were a single large area.

Even on a graphic and artistic level, Frostpunk 2 It presents itself as an excellent product. The snowstorms are so realistic that we feel like we are inside a real blizzard.with an impressive lighting system and particle effects that elevate the entire visual aspect. The performance is excellent and although it drops slightly as the city gets bigger, we never faced any critical issues in the more than twelve hours that we gave the title for the review. To give you an example, with a 3070 Ti, we played with the high preset in 2K maintaining 60fps for almost the entire duration of the story, dropping slightly in the fifth chapter due to the amount of inhabitants we had at our disposal.

If we had to find a flaw it would be the HUD, now more present and more invasive than what we could see with the first chapter. It takes little to get used to, but the first impact was not exactly the best.