Frostpunk 2: The War on Humanity - Review in Progress

Frostpunk 2 Review
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[@FatalAlcatraz]

Ironic, running this game would generate enough heat to warm the city 😂

[@conq1273]

We can heat the mines!

[@MrParis215]

😂😂 Slowly turns off PC and Turns on P5

[@antonygriffith9048]

@@MrParis215 the generator has been turned on.

[@jwdell5]

0:00 “fra” video so nice, he started it twice :)

[@exclvsiv]

was just about to make this comment lol

[@potatoeOnRooftop]

Me too ❤

[@petersonfamily6223]

Thanks. I just started Frostpunk 1 with all the DLCs, and I think I should finish that before tackling this one.

[@colossusslayer1234]

You should. Its a phenominal game, and you should experience it. Also probably good practice for 2 lol

[@airaetaiel444]

I love the original dlc's, you have so much fun in store :) All of them build on the original system, but takes it in a new direction. It's a masterclass in what dlc's should be. But Frostpunk is also my favorite game ever, so don't buy my hype x)

[@airaetaiel444]

All of the dlc's excluding 'The Rifts' wich is just a different non story game mode. It's there and it's ok

[@JewTube001]

@@airaetaiel444 Rifts and endless were both pretty pointless. Very average DLCs.

[@colossusslayer1234]

@@airaetaiel444Nah youre 100% game was amazing😂 Last Autumn in particular was WILD

[@zachasaurus]

Sounds immensely challenging, building off the brutality of the 1st title. Great stuff.

[@jiiaga5017]

Sometimes, having a game where they give you a tough challenge that ultimately you gloriously fail at... is not a bad thing. We've been coddled in a lot of games the last decade. Losing but still having fun and feeling encouraged to try again is one of the lessons gaming should be teaching us.

[@nickochioneantony9288]

@@jiiaga5017 Agree, especially when you can solve problems optimally in the next run via trial and error. It really makes your few first run to be immersive, and on later run, to play efficiently. That is when Frostpunk become timeless for me, I replay it almost every 2 years when I forget some of it's mechanic to make it challenging again. Not to mention all of the brilliant scenarios.

[@jeffbergstrom]

My issue with Frostpunk was it just became a game of learning the right moves to get a bit further. I loved the idea and the aesthetic but it became a grind to learn the next "right" move. There was never many ways to tackle a problem. There was the efficient way and all other choices felt bad. Rinse and repeat. I have yet to see if Frostpunk 2 is any different. I want to like it, I really do. I have to wait and see though.

[@gazzy9136]

@@jeffbergstromExactly. The progression in the game is locked to very specific ways of doing things and if you don’t follow that very specific linear way, then your entire save fails. The game itself didn’t have much creativity, it was very linear in a sense

[@Shadowl]

There's a whole genre dedicated to that: roguelites.

[@jiiaga5017]

@@gazzy9136 I set goals to try for other than simply "Game continue". There was a complete good $ value game's worth of play in Frostpunk in itself, and then if you wanted to set personal challenges and play goals where you chose to set limits, there was at least the same amount of gameplay again.

[@tzoanast1061]

The problem imo is that it looks lifeless due to its bigger scale. You build districts all over the place that dont look that well connected, instead of seeing your people travel through the snow you just see random frostbreakers spawn and despawn out of nowhere. Hell, you cant even see your people with the exception of when you're buiilding something and even then you gotta zoom in. It lost a lot of its immersiveness and thats a big downside. Edit: Typos.

[@ThomasAndersonPhD]

I'm curious about the challenge-level and style of challenge. Playing through the first Frostpunk, I came to feel like this: First run: You are going to fail because the game will throw impossible-to-predict "gotcha" events at you. No matter how clever you are or how quickly you understand the mechanics, you literally cannot plan for the endgame without knowing what it will be. Second run: You can probably to win now because you know what endgame to actually prepare for (if you made it far enough to see the endgame in your first run). Third run: The game is trivially easy now that you know what to expect. You can quite easily reach a state of resource-abundance. In that way, the game felt more like a puzzle-game than anything else: once you figure out the puzzle, you move on. As such, I found that each scenario had very little replayability. And... I know it makes no sense, but boy do I wish there was a "dark-mode" hahaha

[@LeonardTavast]

There's a dark mode UI being developed but it's only in beta right now.

[@Foundprodigal]

I'm my opinion this game feels much more challenging than the first. There's more to juggle and stagnation will kill you. You have to keep moving things and shifting direction if you hope to win.

[@MisterK-YT]

What do you have a doctorate in?

[@eiadtarabulsi]

Three reviews in a day. You're an absolute madman. Stellar video once again! As always, I appreciate the unbiased, honest, and honest review! Keep it up! God bless and stay safe!

[@glowstickyyy]

40fps at it's lowest at 4k on a 4090.... damn. but on a 3090 at 1440p i feel like i'll get a solid 60fps the whole time. Stoked to play this weekend.

[@11bitstudios]

🥶

[@ewjiml]

I’m worried about FP2 because of the lack of humanity in the city. Workers aren’t trudging through the snow to chop wood and freeze to death. A thief isn’t hung for stealing food. We don’t see the PEOPLE as much. It’s become another city builder.

[@mazohyst1878]

Been waiting for this review, hell yeah.

[@SloMoMonday]

Been putting in hours in Chapter 1 and for now I'm content with the low/mid settings. The audio, UI and story do most of the heavy lifting and those little blurbs of everyone judging your every move is incredibly immersive. All those voices calling you out, the possibility of your fate already being sealed months ago, the constant risk of rebellion and the anxiety before a tense vote makes this the first political thriller game I've ever played. Regardless of that, its really not fair for the people who invested in a high fidelity experience so i hope they get the optimization nailed down.

[@andrewclear8905]

I am running it on an Alienware laptop from almost two years ago (a 3070ti in it), and using an ultra wide monitor--I am not having any performance issues. I’m loving the game. It is definitely different from Frostpunk 1 so I can’t say it is better or worse, but I can say, just like I did with Frostpunk 1, that I have never played a city builder / management game like this before.

[@vincentvega3093]

Three reviews. Busy day. Thank you

[@superbadisfunny]

So hype to play this. Ready to lose 20 times before i win lol

[@TOAOM123]

Might be funniest review (in progress) youve ever done 😅😅😅😅

[@truthseeker6532]

To this day, I am thankful to Epic Games Store for having Frostpunk 1 for free. I would not have known how good that game is and well, the series.

[@palmsun]

Dude - got it in a humble years ago and SAME ... it wasnt anywhere near my radar, but holey cow the first game was absolutely brilliant!

[@truthseeker6532]

@@palmsun PLUS!!!! When I found out, it is some nobody small staff of people from a small little country, I was like ...........DANG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! For there is another incredible game that you should look into that has similar status = Kingdom Come: Deliverance (KCD). Second game coming out Next Year. Long ago, small little nobodies, were not the go to but, now days? = They are taking command.

[@carlosm3616]

Excited for this

[@divinedragon88]

Same!

[@tahnadana5435]

they should've made it more personal but with more detail mechanics, let the player be a person living in the city of the frostpunk universe, this war of mine in frostpunk, with conflicts, problem solving, missions, management, assigning tasks, survival, etc

[@random_user98]

@@tahnadana5435 I'm sorry but this is the most horrendous idea I've ever read lol

[@Dermetsu]

As a fan of both, I'd play it.

[@Z_D697]

So hyped for this

[@verkpunk]

The one thing I hope they do this time around is build in more pathways to victory. Some of the games in the first one, felt like there was only one way to get through it.

[@SeanSmith66]

Always the review I count on. Thank you ACG.

[@madclown329]

Been waiting for this for a long time

[@hamishbryant8488]

40fps at 4K on a 1500£(min) GPU? What is happening in the industry that is insanity

[@NetNeelsie]

The industry is AI-maxxing.

[@Senayoshy]

I honestly think that most games nowadays are getting so lazy with optimization because they just think that players using upscaling to fix their bad performances is the solution

[@bryanclarke8107]

This alone made Frostpunk 2 go from a first day purchase to eventually getting it on a good sale. I have a 7900xtx so judging by the 4090 performance im just gonna get 20-30fps at 4k, that is fucking unacceptable.

[@PuppetMasterdaath144]

but there will be updates on this specifically

[@iKrazyyi]

Not to mention this a top down game. It should be getting 4k 300fps on a 2080. It's beyond ridiculous

[@77Arcturus]

Thanks for the highly detailed review pointing out all the incredible positives of FROSTPUNK 2. Have a great day and happy holidays ☕

[@ACGreviews]

www.patreon.com/AngryCentaurGaming Come on by!

[@mr.smellgood2794]

Appreciate all these reviews you putting out today really enjoying them thank you bro.

[@Gwavasig]

I am excited for this one. Thanks for the info and your thoughts. Never can go wrong with ACG

[@acefula6585]

We appreciate you ACG ✌🏾

[@appletuntrainer]

The devs literally says ultra high isn't intended for gameplay. You gonna tell the class that? Because when you select ultra high it says that.

[@jamessunderland4609]

Yeah, breaking news dude, native 4K is not really a thing with todays age of hardware....

[@AmbroseUK]

Damn, that performance is absolutely horrendous...

[@mdc123-v2v]

Performance issues will be fixed but I'm SO glad the core game is awesome. It sounds like they used the extra time wisely and improved on the linear progression of the first game. I don't have issue with the balancing as it's intended to feel unfair at times. Frostpunk 1 is one of my favorite games, so eagerly anticipating this.

[@vlad2144]

I still remember trying to run Diablo 2 on Pentium 1. It was a nightmare. I guess I can handle a little FPS drop in this game now

[@danilomatia]

Really sad to see how nowadays game devs depend on DLSS as a baby depends on Mother's milk.

[@dystopiawanderer]

I think we might have the wrong idea. Upscaling isn't a crutch, it's tech that allows for higher quality to be rendered at a lower cost. At least that's what it should be. It shouldn't replace proper optimization.

[@PHYLOgg]

@@dystopiawanderer Exactly this.

[@DeathComeInPeace]

@@dystopiawanderer But lazy devs

[@sermerlin1]

Why sad? DLSS is much better option to be using as upscaling then your monitor upscaling from any non native resolution. It's less about that devs depend on deep learning upscaling technologies and more about that the new generation of rendering technology is damn expensive. It will be quite quite some time before we will be capable of natively gaming on 4k resolution. 1440p will be here to stay for a while still.

[@DeathComeInPeace]

@@sermerlin1 Sorry? I used to game 4k native more than 5 years ago. GPUs are just lackluster in performance compared to before. We may be from different timelines.

[@Lion0fTheDesert]

Big drop today! Keep up the good hard work boss✊🏽

[@bestthingsinceslicedrice]

Citizens: This leader is absolute shiitee Me: guess what season it is? I know. Its the summer of discontent! Your complaints are music to my ears, so get going. Time to earn your place

[@simonhillancocacola]

I liked the first game but would have much preferred a This war of mine 2 still love that game

[@MrKamylow]

Mam those results are insane, it's all good to push graphics but i wasn't expecting Frostpunk 2 to be that hardcore on the hardware too. I'll see where it goes on releases but i wouldn't have expected this title to be in the might refund because performance issues this year. Thanks for the review by the way it was a pretty good one !

[@Melania815]

11 Bit Studios always delivers!

[@No-sr5fb]

Modern game with garbage optimization requiring upscaling to run how it should normally? Disappointing but par for the course these days. Great review as always

[@GoliathA3]

Great review, as usual. Just wanted to clarify, at 20:21 you say "It's good to wait out and see how everyone's performance is going to mete out.". I believe you said "mete.". However you pronounced it 'mett' instead of 'meat' multiple times in the video. Just wanted to correct that pronunciation for future videos. Other than that, keep up the good work!

[@TOM7952]

Thanks, performance is always a concern with these really good looking simulation games.

[@underlordd]

I like your videos ACG, no bull reviews and no sponsors.

[@Sweeetnesss34]

Pumped for this

[@EleaticStranger]

What a good summary. You make this game seem fun.

[@john9000]

Great review as always 👍

[@bcgames92]

human flavored ice cream cones lmfao!!

[@frags6940]

Just like the first game, it’s probably astounding for its genre but marred by performance issues. Probably should give it a few weeks for patches.

[@Mancer666]

08:49 Wouldn't overclocking be counterproductive?

[@SerpC]

Another great review!

[@carlcarter4084]

Well said!

[@bananasean5145]

I never beat the first game but I was blown away by what I experienced. Even when I lost, the ability to take what I learned and speed up time to not make failures feel to harsh was a nice time. ACG I have a 4070 a Ps5 and Series X. what platform will I get the smoothest experience? im very excited for this title.

[@nickochioneantony9288]

PS5 is your best bet right now... XSX will perform almost identical to PS5, but devs are generally just porting it like they did to PC because it is the part of Microsoft ecosystem. Meanwhile, PC don't have combined access to RAM & VRAM, which consoles do. As the result, you are prone to experience stutter & frame drop in large areas. Even a 4070 will utilize all it's vram. Modern games just consume every bit of vram whether or not your gpu has a small or large amount. Which is why Jedi Survivor can run with a 4gb & 12gb of vram, and use the maximum amount of your available vram. Console do have 16gb of ram and can be accessed directly as system ram & video output without any seperating bridge like PC do. That is why ROG Ally X & PS5 pro upgrade their respective RAM more than 16gb. Sorry, the answer is a little bit tech-nerd.

[@bananasean5145]

@@nickochioneantony9288 Yo thank you! that was awesome for you to take the time explaining all that.

[@TheMrEvs]

ACG the only reviewer with anything good to say about this game...i played it through game pass and its been horrible. Nothing like the first game. ive heard so many people call ACG paid and this basically confirms it for me.

[@chunkle_bunkle]

I want to like this game and tried frostpunk 1 a few times..just couldn't get into it. It looks so good but didn't grab me for some reason.

[@GenZareNPCs]

Audio mistake as soon as the video starts. Come on ACG, you're falling off. Jk lmao great content as usual! Anyways this game would be right up my alley if it didn't have performance issues. I'll maybe pick it up after some patches.

[@Cenot4ph]

Its hopeful they seem to have removed the puzzle game element and moved it to a ciry builder instead. This was the big flaw in the first game, it was a puzzle game imo

[@magz9816]

If you like and appreciate ACG Hit the like 👍🏻

[@DeadSpaceMartyr90]

Bro, does that make three reviews in a single day? feeling like a good day with all these reviews

[@LordRabbit06]

SO to ACG for being one of the only game reviewers that isn’t a fanboy.

[@Fenrir190]

Sounds like a wait till they optimize the game. Fine with me, the first game is $3 rn so I'm totally fine running through that for the first time

[@EstevanValladares]

Doing something some people asked you to do, and trying to enact some policy that another group want creating unmanageable levels of attrition..... tell that to a Government officer and that person will tell it: "Realistic game this one eh ?"

[@DraganAlves]

Thanks man.

[@xx-xo4gx]

Played through the story and had a "meh so thats it I guess" but the utopia builder really got its hooks into me and I enjoy that way more than endless from FP1 I guess you win some you lose some sums my expierence overall from FP1 to FP2

[@3choblast3r4]

I feel like a lot of developers have started to just stop optimizing all togehter and completely relying on upscaling. Bro, what do you mean 4090, 40fps. Am I the only one that thinks that's insane? Bro what, this game looks good. It doesn't look even remotely good enough to justify such a horrible performance on the strongest card available. I get that there is a lot that comes into how a game looks, runs, performs and what it requires. But I feel like this is unjustifyable. I also can't stand it when games require you to leave the game or worse, do a complete restart of the game to change a setting. It's such a massive time waster. I tend to take screen shots so I can compare the before and after in such cases

[@matsie3134]

Don't forget it will be on game pass on release, it's a good way to check out any performance issues.

[@steeldragon9041]

@matsie3134 no, it doesn't release to consoles until 2025, this is just the oc release

[@IamStempie]

@@steeldragon9041 game pass pc..

[@Foundprodigal]

My only complaint is that it's not as intimate as the first game. In the first, you were the sole leader and therefore directly responsible for what happened. Here you make calls, but there's a vote on it by the council and therefore you feel less responsible.

[@Konuvis]

"there's just no way for you to help all of these useless shits" too true!

[@danilobrrjni]

my old fx9370 would help those people with heat xD xD

[@Stefantius]

Why is this giving me best in genre GOTY competitor this developers big break out game vibes?

[@octotatted7910]

Love how you skipped the part where clicking on anything only works half the time ... the tool tips are complete trash .... FP1 was better in every aspect

[@ACGreviews]

...skipped it? What?

[@justimagine2403]

You talk so fast that I sometimes think I have it on 1.5 speed on youtube. Contrast this with like Harrison Ford who now talks so haltingly. I do like your breakdowns and intellectual thinking. I wish my brain operated at this wavelength. I would get twice as much stuff done. Also, why does youtube still show a spelling error when it is typed into comments. I am still playing Astrobot. Love Frostpunk look though!!

[@SeanSmith66]

Thanks!

[@ACGreviews]

No problem! aND THANKS

[@ThijsSchrijnemakers]

thanks

[@DarthDaddy-cg6ro]

Thanks.

[@dovahkiin3.14]

NGL I prefer the og to FP2 atm. A lot of the mechanics in 1 weren't brought over and they're what I emjoyed

[@simonphoenix3789]

You know one thing about this series that never made sense to me... is where the heck do they get the food to feed everyone? without summer and a land free of snow, food is almost impossible to create. sure you can keep pigs and fish and such, but what are they going to eat? fish in the winter rely on food they eat during the summer to survive, and pigs need grain, which again, grows in the warm seasons. you would run through stored supplies within a year or two and begin to starve unless there happened to be some massive bunker specially designed for this, and even then its just a matter of time till everyone dies. plus, if its so cold, why would you stay above ground? wouldn't it make more sense to move into mines and such where the temperature is much higher and you are protected from the elements?

[@artenstien7100]

@@simonphoenix3789 Lore wise the setting is pure fantasy. The fact that you can find survivors and abandoned kids in shacks on the surface with minus 70 degrees Celsius blizzards blowing is laughable.

[@AEGISDEFENSE]

Seems like players are split on this one. Some love it, some dislike the macro view and larger scale. I hear lots saying it has a loss of identity.

[@engagex1]

Do the text still smoll as always? FP1 unplayable for me because the text is too smol

[@CBGBBB]

DLSS is my friend!

[@primate90]

I am enjoying the game A LOT

[@somedude7595]

This commentary feels AI generated.

[@trinstonmichaels7062]

Yup the world is still cold.

[@MrZodiac9]

Waiting for the Enotria review fam 👀

[@NathanielRises606]

If I were to play this on game pass in the cloud, what sort of quality can I expect?

[@corey2232]

So is this one of those games where nothing ever goes well, and every choice is just picking between bad or less bad outcomes? Like is there ever a way to be successful & build up a functional society, or is it always terrible, and you're just trying to stay afloat as long as possible?

[@DenGleason]

Frostpunk 1, absolutely you can make everything perfect. FP2 makes it much harder.

[@bryandedon7459]

I'd love a rpg in this world.

[@MisterK-YT]

Idk jack about PC gaming; Will this game run crappy on my laptop? I’ve never played a game on it. I have a Lenovo Legion 7i Pro gen9, with an i9 14900HX, and an RTX 4080 Laptop GPU (16gb GPU ram). With 32GB system RAM. Will this game run choppy and crappy on it?? I usually game on PS5

[@joshuaramirez2409]

Cant wait to play this on ps5

[@vivsavagex]

damn thats what i was afraid of. the first game i loved but it didnt run that great and im on a 4080super. definitely playable but you would hope they would have prioritized that given people on top tier gpus are still not happy with performance...i think ill wait a little for this one now and see if they can patch it up a bit.

[@JeyKalda]

Would you optimize for the top 1-3% or the rest of the population ?

[@vivsavagex]

@@JeyKalda i dont think thats a choice. If the game isnt running well for the top 1-3% its not like it somehow runs better on lesser machines lol

[@Dianikes]

We know what decision Keir Starmer would make

[@hanswurst9866]

I really would've preferred some actual city building instead of all that management stuff. That was already the weakest part in the first game along with the nonsensical "difficult" choices.

[@amoooood]

I neeed this

[@7Haody]

Thanks for the review, informational as always.

[@kgeo2686]

They got lazy. It would have been really hard to retain the intimate depth of the first game while expanding on the building mechanics and overall scale... so they didn't. They chose scale and a more generic city builder approach, and forsook a lot of what made Frostpunk unique and intimate.

[@jothain]

I liked quite a bit the first game. Played it through on Gamepass. Not sure if I would've been happy paying much about the game, but definitely not a bad game. There's something in that desperate environment and decision where interesting, but it began to repeat itself quite fast. *edit* What is that _awful_ looking light line effect everywhere. Eww, it looks so distracting and unnecessary.

[@elcee3292]

Game feels like it was created by people much smarter than i could hope to be

[@tfonias]

I fear for the console performance..

[@AbstractHexagon]

This looks very different from the typical city builder. I am not sure about this one.