Frostpunk 2 Review – The Day After Tomorrow

Anybody who knows me knows I like my strategy and simulation games. Then again, if anybody has any memory of my nine years of writing reviews here at Wccftech (and before then), they’ll also know my fondness of the genres – so much so that of the 303 reviews for this site, 103 of them sit firmly in strategy or Simulation. Others have a bit of a toe-in, too. I’m saying this here mainly to fill space because I’ve already previewed Frostpunk 2 twice, covering both the Utopia Builder beta and then getting hands-on with the story mode while in Warsaw.

Let’s cut to the chase: if you liked Frostpunk, you will love Frostpunk 2. I liked Frostpunk quite a bit, and Frostpunk 2 is just Frostpunk but more, in every way that matters.

I’ve been able to play through and complete Frostpunk 2’s five-chapter story and a game in the Utopia Builder mode, and there’s a lot on offer, with a good amount of replayability on both. The story truly starts thirty years after the events of Frostpunk. It’s still new London, but everything else from Tesla City to Winterholme to the dreadnought is the initial tutorial to smooth you into the new way of working.

Time hasn’t been kind, but you can build bigger and better. I will skip the Dreadnought as I covered that in my story mode hands-on. The inner city is there when you get to New London, but it’s time to spread out. Frostbreaking is where you send out huge machines to break the frost and open up new land to expand your city. On a large map, split into hexagonal pieces, you find access to different resources that, in the first game, will be what you barely touched upon when exploring.

Before we get to how you play, more on the story. As you progress through the campaign, you will be pushing New London from the original circle it was, finding a new fuel source, surviving a whiteout, spreading out and going to Winterholme from the first game, and eventually looking to hold off the downfall of what will now be a thriving metropolis. On your way, you will make decisions that will improve your standing with one or more factions. In the core story, the fervent ones are the Stalwarts and the Pilgrims.

At the end of it all, the ending line from Frostpunk’s On The Edge DLC is the most persistent: “The ultimate threat was not the storm, but discord”. Finding the balance between factions while trying to maintain resources is not easy. I would argue it’s impossible if you wait too long – particularly on a harder difficulty setting. The journey is all worth it, even if the resulting text screens only explain how your decisions impacted the city and its people.

The last line is a clear link to the new Utopia Builder mode, which is endless. There is a target to achieve, but once that’s achieved, you can continue until you want to stop or until the city falls. Here, you get to set up outposts using the population of your current city; you don’t need to build in manually, and they are essential as they will give you resources from an unlimited pool. There are also other areas you can colonise and build other cities.

Of course, there’s only so much you can do and survive; food is limited, and the longer you carry on, the longer over-population will create an impossible strain on what little there is. Win before you reach that point. All I can say from this is that each Utopia Builder mode, with the seven different starting points and various maps, will give you a different story. This story is exactly what Frostpunk 2 is all about, much like previous similar 11 Bit Studios games, and it does it fantastically.

Whichever mode you’re in, the gameplay remains the same. As you expand further out, breaking the frost and building new districts – each district starts by using six hexes. Housing districts can be expanded twice, with all other districts once, and each expansion uses three additional hexes. As you expand, you can build an additional specialist structure; each is researched over time, and building them impacts your standing with different factions and the various metrics and resources your city runs on.

Heat, Squalor, Hunger and Disease. These are the things you will be balancing, and the worse they get, the more the tension in your city rises, particularly if the factions do not well think of you. The resources you’re managing are one of the various fuel sources, be it Coal, Oil, or geothermal energy. Heatstamps are the world’s currency, with fabrications, materials, goods, and food rounding it all out.

In addition, you will be directing political choices. In the first, you selected what happens. In Frostpunk 2, once you have built the council chamber, the factions – based on population – will have a portion of the 100 seats. You can select a law for a vote to happen or even offer the agenda to one of the factions and boost your popularity, which is interesting if you give them the agenda and don’t want their vote to pass. It won’t due to sheer numbers, so you get the bonus of making them happier while not having the law go through.

With these laws and the new layer of voting, you can find even more interest, and the factionalism of real politics comes through. If you want a vote to swing one way, you can make promises or, once researched, use some of your trust to swing people. Keep any promises, too, as you have time limits; not fulfilling them will set you back.

I haven’t touched upon visuals and audio yet because there isn’t much to say. Frostpunk already looked fantastic, and Frostpunk 2 does again. The districts are very detailed, letting you zoom in and see part of their workings, and the effects of the weather and surrounding areas are fantastic. Like the original, the audio is also extremely fitting, with the audio effects planting you firmly in the frozen wasteland and a soundtrack that never feels out of place. That’s often the best praise I can give a game. I want the sound to immerse me, and it does.

Frostpunk 2 is, like other titles by the same studio, a game about balance and perseverance and follows on from the original in a fantastically organic way. Once a city has reached its initial limits, it will naturally have to spread and use the resources around it. In such an inhospitable world, you will be forced to make difficult decisions and forge a path that will not suit everybody, and human nature and our inability to think beyond our narrow field inevitably leads to conflict, as we have seen ourselves – and continue to see – all too recently.

If you liked Frostpunk, you will love Frostpunk 2.

Copy provided by the Publisher.

Frostpunk 2

Frostpunk is an excellent looking, excellent sounding, and great playing organic growth and succession from the original. Spreading further along the wasteland, you have to balance more as you deal with politics, resources, factions, and ever more challenges, often including settling and building in new areas. Still a challenge, but more approachable, this is yet another city builder that will shine out amongst others.