Park Beyond Review (DiePferdReiter)
While I have played this a lot in the past few weeks, and I plan to continue playing it, I unfortunately really cannot recommend the game. There are a good amount of positive things I enjoy about this game, however, the negative both outweigh and outnumber the positives.
Lets start with the positives:
The Roller Coasters! Unlike in a lot of similar games (Roller Coaster Tycoon and Planet Coaster) you can build your coaster as intense as you like, and people will still flock to it! You don't need to worry about intensity, nausea or excitement ratings; you can build what you want with as many crazy extras you can think of. The price to build them is also very manageable (I played in "Visioneer mode, so I don't know if this is more challenging in the harder difficulties). While I'm talking about coaster building, I really appreciate them showing the cars as they move along the track. Helps point out problem areas before you build the rest of the coaster!
A lot of the rides are very fun and colorful, especially after the impossifications! They make the rides go from reality to something that could never be done in real life! This makes it more exciting to build and makes me want to keep creating!
Food/Drink stalls are creative and new! There are of course the standards for this type of game: water, soda, pizza, fries etc. But they have some very fun things as well, like bubble tea and tacos! Impossifing them also adds more fun with the extra animations available to them,
Themes: while they still could add more themes for variety, the ones they currently have are pretty fun. You can have several different costumes for your entertainers and the pre-made food/drink stalls are very extravagant and enjoyable to watch.
The unfortunate negatives:
Item and path placement!!! This is one of the most frustrating things about the game! Oh, there's a large, straight, uninterrupted section of path that you want to connect your queue line too? SORRY! too much overlap! (whatever that means!) Or the game will decide its invalid placement, and no matter how you try to correct it, it will never let you. Or if you are trying to place a trash can on your path, it will jump around and you can only really place them on select parts of the path. Super annoying and has made me quit out of frustration twice! Another thing about the paths, when making angles, a lot of times the path just has a large gap in the pathway!!! None of my guests have fallen through it, but aesthetically, it bothers me seeing those constantly.
While overall, coaster building is great, the camera and height angles are very finicky. I can't tell you how many times I have needed to delete tracks and redo them because I was looking at the height marker, thinking I was having a descending track, only to find out, it is somehow now ascending and my coaster looses too much speed to continue. Camera angles as well will randomly jump to extremes, making you lose you place and make you motion sick!
Another point of interest for coasters, please give the option for more than 1 train. Some of the more crazy features of certain coasters may make this difficult, but with the straightforward coasters, this would be nice to keep the queue lines moving.
Animations/cut scenes are lacking or bugged. The animations are pretty lousy for what we have available today. I would expect seeing these cut scenes from a game in 2001, not 2024. From characters mouths not syncing to their voice, to arms cutting through their backpack straps and "dangling" earrings being rigid and not obeying gravity... these errors really took me out of the scene and were all I could focus on.
Guests animations are garbage. Don't focus on your guests in the park too much or you will just keep finding more issues. From the guests not walking (just frozen character models hovering and gliding to their destination) to being stuck in paths, either just not being able to move and keep walking in place, or literally being cut in half by the path; people are constantly getting stuck in places, and you can't even pick them up to get them back on the right path.
Building scenery... I admittedly may just need more time working with this to get a better feeling for it, but it was the worst building features I have seen in these types of games. Camera angles, placement of items and the game constantly moving your placement location... it was very difficult and my end result was not a pretty building like I had in mind!
Overall, the game is fun, it allows you to be more creative with coaster building and creating the impossible. But the game felt rushed and incomplete. If they correct some larger bugs and spend the time making this game more fluid, it could be a smash hit. Until then, it just feels like they just wanted to give up on it and sell it in "as is" condition so they can work on pushing out another game too soon and not giving the ones they already have enough time and love to make it great.