Frostpunk 2 Review | The King of the North

Frostpunk 2 is the long-awaited sequel to the indie base-building survival hit game Frostpunk by 11 Bit Studios. The game promises to build on the essence of the first title, which revolves around survival in the grueling horrors of a winter apocalypse. Being the leader of a civilization shows a lot of challenges, and the game brings countless possibilities that will test your decision-making skills.

Will you risk surviving the night or force children to work in the mines in hopes of increasing survival? These are the numerous tough dilemmas you will be facing throughout your playthroughs, and that’s what made Frostpunk so great. So, how will Frostpunk 2 fare?

A Heart-Wrenching Prologue

If you never played the first Frostpunk title, you are in for a ride. When you start playing Frostpunk 2, you’ll start off with the grueling prologue that introduces new players to a new level of RTS difficulty and reminds veteran players what they’ve been missing since the last time they played Frostpunk.

The game really encourages you to start with the prologue and continue the campaign or story mode before trying the Utopia Builder mode. The prologue teaches you around 20% of what you need to know, and you continue to sprinkle more information or mechanics throughout the next chapters.

The prologue explains the basics of Frostpunk 2’s extremely complicated city-builder without overwhelming the player. Even then, the prologue is already a challenge for casual RTS fans and aims to break you down carefully with gut-wrenching decisions such as sacrificing the elderly or murdering the seals to at least give the city a chance to survive the upcoming whiteout.

Of course, you can deny these decisions, but it’ll make the prologue extremely hard to finish without making any sacrifices. While these might be a slight spoiler to new players, these kinds of decisions are littered throughout the game, making it an emotional rollercoaster as the leader of the civilization.

A Small Step for Players, A Giant Leap for Humankind

While making these difficult decisions is part of the game, it adds to the immersion that, as a leader, you must do everything to ensure your civilization’s survival. As these decisions come left and right, the next chapters start to add more mechanics really fast.

You get bombarded with needing “X” resources, several new factions, a research tree, a law and order system, more buildings, expansions, upgrades, and more. Even players who aren’t new to the RTS genre might feel some sense of information overload at the very first chapter, but in a good way.

You’ll encounter numerous problems, and each of these new features will either solve them or give you the opportunity to “find out” clever ways to indirectly solve them. This feeling of being deeply absorbed with all the little things you want to tweak around with and find out if they could work out is what makes Frostpunk in a league of its own.

Will you aim to produce goods to reduce crime and keep an active economy or invest in more heat sources to never think about having heat problems in the unforgiving winter? Each decision boils down to the essence of Frostpunk 2, which is Heatstamps, a currency to regulate who gets heat. The population fights for their share of Heatstamps by contributing to the city. These Heatstamps can be treated as “action points,” and you’ll have to use or allocate them properly to ensure the city’s survival and even flourish as a budding metropolis.

Unlimited Replayability

While the campaign’s length should already give players upwards of 50 hours of playtime, depending on their learning curve, the Utopia Builder mode gives players unlimited replayability. The Utopia Builder, or the game’s sandbox mode, allows players to tweak several settings, play through several different areas, experience other difficulties, and add and customize different factions in the game.

There are limitless possibilities that can happen on each playthrough, and you can even hone your management skills or experiment with mechanics when you feel like you are hitting a brick wall in the campaign.

Like most city-builder RTS games, the sandbox mode is what keeps everyone playing longer and having that one long playthrough building the best city possible. Frostpunk 2 delivers on that while maintaining the essence of the game, providing a rogue-like element each time you play. A single mistake can ruin your whole civilization and might put you back to square one. There’s that constant fear and frustration of failing, but also a joy in starting back over and learning from your mistakes.

A Fitting Sequel

As someone who played the first Frostpunk game, 11 Bit Studios did an amazing job introducing new fun and innovative ideas in base-building without reverting straying away from what made the first game so successful.

While more could’ve been added, you know the game is already in a good place with hundreds of hours of fun for a game that costs barely half an AAA-priced game. After finishing Frostpunk 2, you’ll know there is something more in store in the form of DLCs, and we are all here for it.

9

Frostpunk 2

The best post-apocalyptic RTS city-builder is back with a brilliant sequel. Play the role as the leader of the new order and lead your civilization to a budding metropolis. Frostpunk 2 easily immerses the player by putting them in the center of the turmoil of a never-ending battle against the winter. You'll constantly be hit with difficult decisions all while trying to build structures for the betterment of your people.

Pros

• Unlimited replayability
• Deep customizations and settings give more freedom for players to have fun
• The constant pressure and tension is always there
• Looks visually stunning

Cons

• Can be intimidating for players who never touched an RTS game
• There are some aspects that are not too intuitive

A copy of this game was provided by the publisher for review. Reviewed on PC.