The first few times i played this game it had me feeling conflicted, I wanted to love it so bad but the learning curve was a major wall in getting into it. I saw other people creating so many awesome builds, and it's not like i didn't already have experience with other park building games, but somehow i kept hitting walls and not understanding how people were getting the results they had. But after 72h in game i wanna say i finally get it and i love it for what it can be once you get the hang of it, so here is my extremely honest bullet point list of what to expect and some tips: The Cons - The path system is by far the most frustrating part of the game. It's not that its bad, once you get a hang of it you can make really nice looking things, but it's extremely janky and you're going to spend a major amount of time just trying to figure it out and fix it. God forbid you want to place an exhibit in the middle of a pre-existing path. Even if you used the grid system, you might run into the issue of wanting to fit a few exhibits next to each other, and then having to fight with a path that's creating random gaps. and don't get me started on the words "obstructed" and "terrain too uneven". The pathing system is trying to prevent clipping and guest flow issues, but in the end you end up restricted from placing paths in certain places, you still experience clipping, and now you have a weirdly shaped path where you could clearly connect it. - The work zones are honestly something i still need to learn more about, but it's allot of micromanaging and when your parks start getting bigger it becomes harder and harder to manage. - whenever you're playing the campaign, you don't have access to certain tools which would make learning the game much better. in any case, i feel like if you like this game, campaign is more of a secondary way to play the game, rather than the main feature. - Not having the ability to scale objects like you can in jurassic world evolution 3 and prehistoric kingdom is dumb. At the very least i'd expect the decals and letters to be scalable, one thing i really enjoy creating in a park game, is the ability to create custom signs and information plaques. instead, the fonts themselves have a set size that cannot be changed, and it limits you to what you can do. it also takes away the functionality of the shapes. -The UI scale in the game is just off. you can scale it yourself, but it doesn't really fix the issue, i know it is hard to find the right balance between being able to see your objects well enough and being able to see your working space too, but it took me a while for me to get over having only 30% of my screen to work with. i think maybe if the background was a bit more transparent, for example, or it was just placed a little differently and was a bit smaller, it would be much easier. I have used game engines like unity, or editing software like the ones form adobe for example, it's not like having only a small area to work with is the end of the world, but it's the fact that it's a game and the tool boxes aren't neatly arranged in a way that allows your eyes to rest and focus on the contained area of the screen dedicated to the workspace. - Fences are tricky too, but have more margin for work around's, the one thing i do wish they would allow for is to build a fence within a fence and not have it flag the animal as escaping every time it goes in. Awhile back i wanted to include a pool for a tiger in a campaign enclosure, that had some glass so people could watch the tiger do deep dives. this is when i learned that objects in this game don't have collision, so unless you use the terrain tools or the fences, you aren't able to place water anywhere. i thought no problem, i'll use the fences and make a little ramp so it can climb in. turns out even though the tiger cannot physically escape and attack anyone, as soon as it goes in the water, everyone panics because it's gotten out. The Pros - The animals are adorable and complex, they really manage to make them feel alive without too many repetitive animation loops. I particularly love placing cameras in their enclosures and just watching them go. The also really got it right with all the enrichment items. I LOVE watching the little guys just go for it and have fun. - The fact that it sometimes is more like a game engine than a game is a huge plus if you're into making extremely detailed stuff, the terrain tools are really powerful and easy to work with, i love the fact you can just make a tunnel under a habitat and place a path in it, being able to build vertically both up and down is huge. And the modular building system is incredible. You can really spend hours just creating a single shop, placing every item and decor, and it be a functional store is crazy. - If you like, you can fully ignore the aesthetic side of things because the management aspect of the game is extremely complex and detailed. There is always something going on. - And even if you want to make things aesthetic but don't like to build them yourself, there is a massive community of talented people that just post their builds for free in the community workshop. it takes two seconds to install in your game, and then you can just freely place them around. You even Have fully functional, pre-made parks to download that you can either just enjoy, or use as a base. - Once you get a hang of all the shortcuts, tricks and systems in the game, it actually becomes really easy to make whatever you want. For me one thing i always find myself making is custom fences. I you ARE into custom builds, you can just open a sandbox flat game, and start making and saving blueprints. Don't be fooled into looking at an item in this game and think it only have one purpose. You can really combine every single thing into making something new and grouping it. Then just copy paste it a few times in your chosen game save and voila! Extremely satisfying. - Because of the game's complexity, there is allot more to it than you'd previously imagine. I really like being able to experience the game from a visitor's perspective, the fact you can watch the cameras in their habitats, all the little details they've put into the visitor behavior. They're not things i personally am constantly paying attention to, but when i do, it breathes a little bit more life into the game. Tips and Final Thoughts Overall, if you like being creative, you love animals, you just want to spend a few hours making something cozy and creative, and you have the patience or interest to learn some advanced piece by piece construction tools, and you like pouring hours of labor into making something look fantastic, or just care about the tycoon aspect of it, then i recommend you get this game especially now that it's on sale so often. My biggest tips are to watch some tutorial videos on it, and for the love of everything you care about, when you first start playing the game, try to memorize the keyboard shortcuts for the building tools and play around with the path grid on/off system. i repeat, learn the grid on/off path system it's your biggest friend and the best way to make paths look normal. There are a bunch of guides online, which should be a part of the game tutorial but it isn't. You place a path on a grid first, and then connext and round out whatever is left after turning off the grid by placing and deleting corners. use -= and for adjusting the path without having to move your mouse, and use CTRL if your path keeps clipping somewhere you don't like. hold down SHIFT to adjust path height and you can hold and drag your mouse to create slopes. Lastly, do yourself a favor and try out some mods after you've learned to work with the game well enough. They're free, and extremely useful. Hope this helps
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