Planet Zoo 2 Launches: 9/10 on PS5, Rough Edges on PC and PLN 214.99 on Steam

Planet Zoo 2 launches today, 13 October, on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. Frontier Developments adds three things the first game never had: fully aquatic species, birds that fly inside aviaries, and wildlife reserves where you can release animals. The first reviews pull in different directions. Push Square gives the PS5 version 9/10, while GameWatcher, reviewing the PC build, talks about rough edges at launch. On Steam the game costs PLN 214.99 and runs on Windows only. Here is what is new, what the early reviews say and what the PC version asks for.

What is new compared with the first game

The headline change is the animals you could not keep before. According to Push Square the game now has aquariums with fish, turtles and sharks, plus aviaries with birds that genuinely fly instead of perching on branches. Next to the classic zoo there is a new kind of zone, the wildlife reserve, where you can release animals, explore on foot or by buggy, photograph the residents and edit the terrain and vegetation. Frontier's gameplay trailer focused on habitat building and the Scottish Highland Wildlife Reserve, showing among others red deer, a Masai giraffe, a blackspotted puffer, a white-tailed eagle, a great hornbill and a Eurasian beaver.

Management has changed too: a Hub mode that links the campaign zoos, an online Franchise mode, object resizing and a terrain brush. The author of a pre-release hands-on at altchar praised the fur above all, and the ability to scale scenery pieces freely, which he says was borrowed from Jurassic World Evolution.

First reviews: 9/10 on PS5, more cautious on PC

James Watson of Push Square scored the PS5 version 9/10 and liked the many new features and the animal animation. His complaints were a steep learning curve with a busy interface and nested menus, fiddly gamepad controls, some animals from the first game still missing and no first-person photography in regular zoos. The price of performance on consoles is a park complexity meter.

GameWatcher, which reviewed the PC version, is more cautious. It describes a deeper, richer simulation that rewards the time you put in but asks you to tolerate rough edges, and says that in its launch form the game unfortunately lands closer to Planet Coaster 2. It praises the career mode for a clear sense of progression. With such different tones it is worth remembering that we have two reviews from two platforms, that Metacritic and OpenCritic had no score yet and that when we checked, the Steam page was still in pre-release status with no user reviews.

The PC version: requirements and price

Steam lists minimum requirements of an Intel i7-8700K or AMD Ryzen 5 3600, 16 GB of RAM, an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 (6 GB), AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT (6 GB) or Intel Arc A750 (8 GB), DirectX 12 and 40 GB of free space. An SSD is recommended. The publisher adds that Microsoft has ended support for Windows 10, so it cannot guarantee compatibility there, even though the requirements list both Windows 10 and 11. If you are staying on Windows 10, read what changes on 14 October in our piece on FACEIT's requirements and ESU, and if you play on Windows 11 24H2, see our article on the end of updates for that version and the AC-3 bug.

For Polish players the useful detail is that the game has a Polish language option but no full voice-over: full audio is provided for English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, Brazilian Portuguese, Simplified and Traditional Chinese and Latin American Spanish. Steam lists achievements, trading cards and full controller support, and among the accessibility options adjustable text size, alternative colour settings and custom volume controls.

The Polish Steam price is PLN 214.99 and the US price is 49.99 dollars. The game is Windows only, with no Mac or Linux version.

In our view Planet Zoo 2 has two strong arguments and one doubt. The arguments are the new animals and the reserves: aquariums and aviaries widen what you can build, and a reserve gives you a reason to leave the zoo after construction and look at the result from ground level. The doubt is the launch state of the game: the PC review talks about rough edges, and the 9/10 on PS5 comes from a reviewer who himself admits that gamepad controls can be a chore.

We have not played this version and will not pretend otherwise. We rely on reviews, Steam data and Frontier's material, so we treat statements about stability on PC as preliminary. If you liked the first game and your hardware meets the requirements, buying on day one looks reasonable, but anyone who dislikes launches patched after the fact can wait for the first updates and the first user reviews on Steam.

One thing needs checking before you buy: some animals from the first game have not returned yet, so if you have a favourite from the old zoo, look at the species list. The new features do not remove the steep learning curve that reviewers of both versions mention.