FULL PLANET ZOO REVIEW! Is Planet Zoo Worth Your Time?

My greatest suggestions for newbies is just find a building palette in steam workshop if they are overwhelmed the game can be both simple or complicated

Thank you for this great review! Very balanced and fair!

Can you play it passively? Like a virtual pet or something that runs on its own and you just check it every now and then? I have a lot to do even at home, so I don't have time to sit in front of computer in a long time.

interesting review, but i would suggest that if you say your going to talk about gameplay please talk about the actual gameplay, how is building an enclosure, how is managing your zoo actually like if it comes to macro and micro. You just continued talking about the graphics and animations.

While the earlier animals are less realistic than now, they still look beautiful and pretty accurate, just not as accuratw

late but I got this game for like 10 quid as a steam key + the aquatic dlc and its so much fun! Personally I'm not into building games and I struggle with the building aspect in this game but I only really play for the animals so its worth it imo

As someone who was very exited to play a good upgraded version of Zoo Tycoon 2, I am very disapointed by the gameplay aspact and it's enough for me to not enjoy the game, yes it looks good and there is a lot of freedom and content, but the learning curve is so high already that it's painful to get started, and the fact that I can't learn by just thowing a bunch of money at things in a sandbox mode is making me go back to Zoo Tycoon 2

That's the problem I have with this game and others similar to it.
I'm not the creative person that meticulously places every road, tree and fence. I don't enjoy building all these antricate buildings and creations.

I want to play a game for it's GAMEPLAY, and there's nearly none of it in here.. It feels like any fun to be had that isn't related to "Make this pretty" is entirely secondary, and well the fun evaporates quite quickly that way. I wanted to manage a Zoo, but other than the micromanagement of breeding and aging there's barely any of it there.

Besides loving animals and building all kind of zoos, this game is my dream game for worldbuilding. Just terraforming, adjusting the landscape and building cozy villages for my characters and stories. Before Planet Zoo I tried Sims 3, but it was a bit meh and I even tried to get into Unreal Engine and Unity but they were too difficult for me. So Planet Zoo is one of my absolute favourite games on many levels and 100% worth my time and money.

My biggest complaint is how the cheetah is getting beaten in a race by many animals in the game, which I think should be fixed 🐆

how can this game be purchased without needing steam?

and did this game make an expansion pack with dinosaurs yet? like Zoo Tycoon did? the game isn't complete until it does.

Yes the creativity might be a 11/10 but for new players to this system (like i was) is very, very overwhelming and not as easy to get a handle of the building system (specially with the scale of the objects in my case) so you can get 1000 great ideas in your head but if you are not used to the Planet games then and you don't have hours on end to spend learning and getting better at it with practice, it can be quite frustrating. So i don't think the system is as intuitive to the average player and that is the main issue i have with it.

Other than that i love this game. I love how the animals look and the animations (although i think more social interaction between animals would be nice and will give a lot more of a lifelike feeling to them).

Hey! I’m about to buy planet zoo (its currently on sale on steam), but I would like to buy 3 dlc’s. Which dlc’s should I buy? Can you also why those dlcs?

ich würde sagen PZ ist nur wirklich empfehlenswert für Leute, die hauptsächlich Bock auf bauen haben.


Es ist ja eigentlich ein Zoo-Simulator, wo auch unteranderem mit dem Managementaspekt geworben wird.
Die Tiere benehmen sich nicht sonderlich natürlich, weder Zoo-Natürlich noch Wildnis-Natürlich und wirklich Managen muss man auch nicht. Selbst die Gäste sind nicht sonderlich realistisch was die AI angeht.


Am Ende bleibt also nur der Bauaspekt, der wirklich viele Möglichkeiten bringt.

Would personally love to see either an update or a pack focused on the weather and impact on the game. Like you said, it doesnt seem to affect much. I do believe they prefer hot drinks in a cold environment and vice versa but other than that nothing I noticed. I was thinking how they could do this though because if your zoo is large, the visitors stay for so long it can go from hot to cold and then I'm guessing best solution is for them to sort of 'change clothes' - perhaps a toilet could be considered a changing room. Ah well, it would just make it a lot more realistic and engaging for me to not have visitors in shorts when its freezing.

Thank you for the 3-year summary.

100% agree, always buy every single dlc because the game is just too good!
The only thing keeping me from playing a lot is my own creativity and inspiration.
~Sprinkels

I love Planet Zoo, there is little I would change, but I would love if they added egg laying in the game, we have so much focus on all kinds of animals, but birds and reptiles dont lay eggs.. pls egg updates when.. 😢

I'll give it a 7,5/10. Planet Zoo is indeed very beautiful and immensely creative. However, it's still too complex for a casual gamer like me, not to mention that some stuff are still missing.

What are the missing elements? Birds with free flying, aquariums, as well as foliage brush. I hate having to place those plants individually.

I personally don't play Planet Zoo. I have to admit that I'm attracted to it, but the negatives I see so far outweigh why to buy this game. I play zoo tycoon 2 and I grew up on this game. I have downloaded mods such as remake or placehacks, so I have similar options (buildings, graphics...) as planet zoo (it's still not comparable and the building options in planet zoo are better), but what annoys me the most about planet zoo is that they are constantly coming out small DLC, there were 4 released in zoo tycoon 2 and each one had a lot of animals. For the zoo planets, each one only has a few animals, personally I know that only those animals from the DLCs would be enough for me, I don't need a lot of different objects. It kind of reminds me of the much criticized EA and the sims. In addition, so far I have much more mods for zoo tycoon 2 with animals that I adore than for zoo planets. Maybe when the game "dies" and they stop releasing new DLCs, I'll buy planet zoo as some sort of bundled edition with all the DLCs, but until then I'll probably give up on this game and stick to my zoo tycoon 2.

I agree! Planet Zoo is honestly an amazing game. I'm constantly blown away by the graphics, and the things the game lets me do. It can be overwhelming at times, because the game gives you almost absolute creative freedom, but it still manages to be accessible to most playstyles, with a sandbox mode, and a career mode. The scenery pieces, plants and animals are so well done, I can literally just watch the animals go about their day, or make botanical gardens if I wanted to with the sheer variety of plants. Also the roadmap for the way the game works, with a sturdy, fleshed out and already very solid basegame, with not very in depth, mostly thematic DLC that are actually fairly inexpensive, feels very considerate to the player base. Yes, the DLC comes with many animals and things to add, but as someone who played for a long time with the base game only before adding the DLC, I can honestly say I never felt like I absolutely needed to get DLC to make the game interesting. Nothing about the game feels sloppy, rushed or cash-grabby, each pack comes with a well thought out, cohesive theme. Trailers are not unrealistic, and usually show things you can 100% do or recreate, and the game actually does have some educational value, which is incredible. Quality of Life updates also show thoughtfulness for the user experience and as a player, and there's just a lot of goodwill amongst the community to the devs. Which is also incredible and so refreshing. Thanks for the video, Rudi, you are spot on, more people should really get into this game!

If you have beefy pc I don't I wasted 50 dollars on it and can't play😢.

Ingenuity; 8, they hyped up the 'uniqueness' so much pre-launch that when the game finally came out with all the bugs and glitches, and the missing "every animal will have it's own individual personality" it was just a little disappointing.
Graphics; 7.5 the base game animals and guests are far too cartoonish for the semi-realistic build items, not to mention that with every new DLC the cartoonishness of the OG animals and guests get even more out of place.
Gameplay; 6, it's a bit basic and unbalanced, but it's functional enough.
Replayability; 8.5, you can replay the game as much as you want in any mode as long as you have an idea, with the exception of career mode. And timed scenarios.....they just don't exist to me.
Content; 6; the base game is good, but with all the DLCs it's better. I can't go higher because the walkthrough exhibit and the underwater herbivore feeder are base game items, but they require DLC animals to have a function. Also no brachiation behaviors in base game either.
Creativity; 10; you're basically only limited by your imagination and your skills to bring your idea to life.

Thanks for the honest review. I haven’t truly played the game, so I love this information ❤

I had a friend who didn’t like Jurassic world evolution because it was too complex, so he tried planet zoo because he knew I played it… he refunded it pretty quickly😂 Planet Zoo is not a game for everyone. That being said, if you enjoy any type of creative building, be it video games, legos, whatever, this is the game for you. I would’ve given replayability 10/10 because I’m never gonna quit this game❤️

Honestly I'd love to play this game, but the path system is to frustrating to make it worth it. It's too finicky for no reason and despite watching all the tutorials, I feel like I'm fighting the game every time I try to use it. There's no reason why they can't fix the path system. There's already a mod that fixes most of the issues (which I can't use since my computer seems to hate mods). IMO if you need a mod to make a key mechanic workable, the developers need to address it.

I also wish they'd have better UI organization. Right now it's just okay, but with the ever increasing object count it gets a little hard to keep track of all the pieces you want to use. I wish you could save pieces to different project folders so I'm not spending a lot of the time unfavoriting and refavoriting things. I also wish you can scale objects like walls and rocks (not scaling trees I get), but I get if the current system might be too baked in the game for them to change it easily. Prehistoric Kingdom seems to have learned from all this and implemented a much better organization system.

I still think it's a great game from the limited hours I've played it, but I just can't play in-depth building games like this for hours. But when I do have an hour to spare, I'd rather be spending that hour building exhibits than fighting the path tool. And I know I'm not the only one frustrated by it lol.

I agree with the cc and buying certain animals. I think a zoo/franchise should have to achieve a certain rating or something before they can buy high rated animals like monkeys, lions and tigers ect that would add a little more challenge to the franchise mode. It doesn't matter in sandbox mode obviously

Great review and video! My problem with the game is that I cannot play it enough 😂There's so much to do and I still feel like I have not accomplished much anything and I have so many ideas. I have had the game for 18 months and played 200 hours. That's about 2,5 hours a week, which is like a nice time to spend weekly on a good hobby. In reality though, I sometimes spend like one week playing way too much and neglecting the rest of my life. Then I gotta catch up with studies and people etc, and if I am not playing for a while, the bar to continue playing my previous project somehow rises. So the fault is definitely mostly in me. But maybe also coz the game is not so great for casual players. I think you've talked about that earlier too. I think this video made me realize, that the gameplay and management should be more "addictive" so I would always want to come back for those, instead of wanting to play only when I can build a barn or garden of my dreams. (Never gonna get a zoo of my dreams built. :D)

i personally don't buy the dlcs in steam, i prefer buying them in instant gaming or eneba cause it's way cheaper and i haven't had any issue with the codes, and i also bought the deluxe version base game there as well, so i don't consider it to be expensive at all tho, i truly love this game and wish i had more time to play with it

Will you review the new game "Terra nil"? :)

I still love the idea of the game, but I did stop playing it. To me, it was not beginner friendly/casual friendly. Making ANYTHING half decent takes hours.

But I love watching other people play ;)

Dieser man ist der beste Spiele-Kritiker auf diesem Planeten: er beschäftigt sich aus purer Selbstlosigkeit und selbstverständlich nur für uns, Jahre lang mit einem Spiel um im Endeffekt bewerten u können, ob sich ein Kauf lohnt. Wahrlich ein Gentlemen :D

This man is the best game critic on this planet: he deals out of pure selflessness and of course only for us, for years with a game to be able to evaluate in the end whether a purchase is worthwhile. Truly a gentleman!

god planet zoo is an amazing game

For me its a 9/10

10/10 for me.

Planet Zoo is everything I want in a management game, but it's been sat in my Steam library for over a year because content creators and my ADHD ruin it for me. When I see the types of enclosures you guys can create, I just end up feeling bad about my own designs and exiting. It's definitely a game that people with 9-5's and families struggle with. You really need to dedicate hours to each build.

Absolutely tons of replay in this game. The free updates are really generous! My favorite games are usually "Sims" types (I have been a Simmer since 2000). But we know how bad EA has become so when Frontier gives people free stuff I just can't believe it. I bought the base game on Steam on sale (be patient). I have several DLC packs but only highly rated ones. I don't do franchise mode AT ALL. I just make my poor pathing and square, boring exhibits but it's still so fun. I appreciate all you wonderful builders and reviewers out there--I've learned a lot from you all. I actually HATE the idea of zoos and keeping captive wild animals (I know I'm a contradiction) but this game is amazing. Thanks for the review. It was spot on.

I couldn't have summed it up better😊
Just a fenomenal Game. I can only recommend it to everyone😇

For me the game hasn't gotten any deepness regarding its gameplay. The gameplay experience is not meaningfully different/diverse/better then 3 years ago. Just adding more objects and animals does not change the game per si. It just gives you a bigger and bigger IKEA tour. I believe the only game changing moment were the addition of diving animals. but just that.

For me, it wasn't worth it...
I played 1 hour in total, until I freezed. I restarted my PC, it freezed once again after 5 minutes. I tried to fix it, wasn't able to.
I changed computer, still the same issue.
And I'm using a RTX 3060.
Instead I resorted to Prehistoric Planet, quite enjoyable to be able to play it!
But there goes 60€...

Oh man, i just love planet zoo!! Just the only thing i want is birds or aquactic!

Short answer: YES!!!

I bought the base game on sale and several of the dlcs so far. It was so worth it. Such a fun and creative game, I love animals so this was a shoe-in! I just need a better computer so it runs better!

It would be awesome if the final Planet Zoo DLC was a sort of Bird animal pack, with a a vulture, an owl species or two, couple more birds..

But I don't want to think about Planet Zoo DLC ending yet! :P As far as I know no announcements have been made regarding DLC development ending.. so let's hope it stays that way for a long while yet!

Well 150h in and still loving all the cute animals in franchise and sandbox modus thanx to the amazing sharing community that offers beautiful blue prints so I havent to spent that much time.

From where you get this making videos ?? Any documentary there

Great video Rudi! I stand by everything you've said 🙏

My biggest complain would be that we still dont have flying birds and aquariums in the game.. ugh! 😂

I've been wanting to play it, but it is very time consuming. It's hard to just sit down and play for 20 minutes lol. Love this game, though