Planet Coaster is in a way building off the RollerCoaster Tycoon series, not just in the "it's the closest thing to it" like how players of SimCity (or would-be players of SimCity) latched onto Cities: Skylines but that the original developer of the third game in the series, RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 was developed by Frontier Developments, which is the developer of Planet Coaster.

I picked up Planet Coaster at a dirt-cheap price during a Steam sale but I still don't feel like it's for me. There's a lot of things that fundamentally annoyed me about Planet Coaster as a concept, namely its over-reliance on DLC, using Denuvo years after the original release, and holding onto a lot of the original concepts of RollerCoaster Tycoon series without doing new things for it.

The core idea is that the game still holds onto the idea of each attraction having its own admission fee. It's a concept to try to make individual rides better, but at the same time it's not done by any "real" theme park, only cheap carnivals. The two exceptions are the way it was formerly done (Disneyland's ticket system, for example) or perhaps some extra-admission attraction like bungee jumping.

Sure there are going to be nice aspects that only a modern system can provide—ride cameras and each attraction having ambient music, but it's the other aspects of theme parks that RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 (still seen as the "gold standard" in many aspects, much like SimCity 4) ignored that Planet Coaster still does—food stands, shops, and the like are treated like after-thoughts. Permanent stage shows don't exist, which is another feature of real theme parks I've been to (Fiesta Texas, Busch Gardens, both the late Cypress Gardens and its replacement Legoland Florida, Magic Kingdom in Walt Disney World Resort, along with a few others).

From what I've seen, due to the limitations of the program you're very limited in what you can build so I don't think you can mod your way into a recreation of Epcot circa 2003 (for instance). You can tweak certain rides and their textures and put them up under whatever beady-eyed avatar you create (you are forced to make this when you first start the game). Frontier Developments also created Planet Zoo but it's not cross-compatible with Planet Coaster despite looking like it's from the engine with the same aesthetics...and Planet Coaster 2 doesn't seem to address many of the issues of the first game. It adds waterslides back...and creates a host of new problems along the way.

I mentioned interoperable games in my review for The Sims and various half-hearted attempts to integrate their games together. This is why I like the concept so much. Would I personally enjoy recreating Six Flags Astroworld as it existed in 2004? Probably not. Would I enjoy a pre-made Six Flags Astroworld to drop into my city? Absolutely yes! 100%! But the way Planet Coaster is set up it's too limited if you wanted to recreate your favorite defunct theme parks (or living theme parks, before they got ruined with renovations, ahem, Disney), and it's not much fun as a game, either. Maybe Parkitect is more my speed but it's not exactly on my wishlist.

FINAL RATING:   

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