A good simulation game has the potential to make micromanagement fun rather than stressful. Watching your kingdom grow and see the fruits of your decision-making is what makes this experience, which makes the powerful feeling of pulling more strings. Planet Zoo captures much of this appeal, trying to capture its ratings elements in logical and complex directions. Unfortunately, it spends a lot of time on tedium.
From the creators of Planet Earth and billed as a spiritual success to the Zoo Tycoon, Planet Zoo is reluctant to throw you into lions. It is a difficult way to measure because of all the places you have to go through, and the biggest benefit is not the end of your worries. Angry protesters run if you don't give your animals proper care. Customers turn into animals when they are not having fun. Animals always need something, and they have enough intelligence to escape if you don't fix your obstacles often enough. All of these things force you to constantly measure the happiness of animals and humans against your pocket book. I have enjoyed the challenge of this delightful act, even though the animals sometimes show differences and behaviors that match their higher needs.
As animals are attracted, they take up more of your resources. You should research different genres and learn the basic qualities and tendencies in a comprehensive encyclopedia. You need to pay attention to things like temperatures and terrain type when designing your shows, and adding new toys to keep your animals interested. Even adopting the best-fitting pet available in the breed can change things drastically. For example, choosing a wood wolf for the highest breeding value is your favorite, even though the cost is high and prevents you from returning other animals for display.
Your level of care has a huge effect on your success, because high quality animal care means no protesters and a high chance of reproduction. I was impressed by the size of the animals, from the Komodo Dragons to the Macao of Japan, but learning about them quickly felt like taking an old open book test. You should always check the zoopedia for success, as research is constantly being updated and recording new information, allowing you to improve the animal welfare. The amount of detail and clarity of each genre is amazing, but it is presented in an unpleasant way; spending a lot of your time with your head in a book is definitely not a fun way to learn about different animals in an interactive format. At the very least, Planet Zoo talks about the conservation and importance of releasing animals into the wild to replicate places, giving you incentives, such as cash bonuses, and eventually releasing them.
Building my own zoo and managing the cash flow was very interesting. Zoo themes (such as India and Africa) help you create cool artwork, and enjoy creative tricks, such as setting up museums for popular exhibitions and putting animal food trays near glass windows for visitors to look at. Training staff, sales campaigns, and pricing choices are also exciting things to consider. Planet Zoo definitely presents a challenge, and having so many different things to keep me on my toes, but it also took a lot of experimentation to learn about everything. Planet Zoo does not provide enough guidance on its complexity, with many important issues misinterpreted or not at all. This is a shame because the game is full of so many different areas and features to look for. I learned a lot about the importance of display size, using a fence that does not climb on certain animals, and how animals struggle for dominance and location if you do not balance the number of males and females correctly.
Learning the failures and looking at the topics in the vocabulary is not the only way to master complex machinery, but it's much more fun than a frustrating work mode. That is basically a long tutorial on using different types of zoo to help teach the basics, but it's great to play with. In addition to listening to bad dad jokes, you get a checklist of boring tasks to complete, such as increasing animal welfare for an extremely high percentage, putting things and buildings in place, and accepting a certain number of different species. I started with work mode to learn how to play a game, and it left me with a bad first impression. The problem is that you need to play some of it to have a very small idea of how to play the game; with so many different programs to consider, this is a huge issue. I couldn't believe how wonderful our Planet Zoo was when I stepped into alternatives where I had the freedom to do things my way, because there is everything from economic challenges to a sandwich box to building the zoo of your dreams without limits.
While switching to other methods has alleviated my anxiety, it does not dampen the smooth menu interface. I always felt like I had to go through one hoop than necessary to get the details or perform an action. For example, when researching my pet's new enrichment, I had to go back to the zoopedia to see what it was all about, and then headed back over to another menu to find something said and put it in place. From time to time, I even write things down on paper so I don't forget them as a way to avoid the problem of going to extra menus.
Planet Zoo poses a lot of obstacles to my happiness, but then when I researched its mass, I found that the versatility and success that made simulation games so exciting. I've enjoyed trying to prioritize my last creation and pass on my previous income and years in business. Unfortunately, the Planet Zoo requires a ridiculous patience that builds a barrier around its good qualities.
