Frostpunk 2 review: Chilling new features keep sequel feeling fresh

Complete with an unending deadly winter beating down the city walls and a civilization that seems hellbent on destroying their home from the inside, Frostpunk 2 is an increasingly challenging and moody city-builder that pulls none of its punches.

Unlike other city-builders, the Frostpunk franchise thrives on grit, seemingly impossible choices, and consequences that will have you questioning if you were ever a good person. It perfectly showcases how ruthless humanity can get when the chips are down and the only edict is to survive.

As a direct sequel to a popular game, Frostpunk 2 came with expectations attached. After all, we’ve had over six years to enjoy the first Frostpunk, where many managed to perfect the craft of creating a city in such harsh cold conditions.

However, with the promise of bigger cities, the addition of districts, and a much longer timeline, 11 Bit Studios had an interesting gamble on their hands. Would the changes bring the franchise into a whole new twisted light, or would it fall into the shadow of its predecessor?

Frostpunk 2 details

• Price: $44.99 / £37.99
• Developer: 11 Bit Studios
• Release date: September 20, 2024
• Platforms: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PC
• Reviewed on PC

Bigger, better, and more beautiful

While Frostpunk 2 should definitely be judged as its own game, comparisons with its predecessor are inevitable. 

The immediately noticeable one is in the visuals department where Frostpunk 2 excels with a powerful upgrade. Given it’s been six years, the sequel has massively improved in this area. Each loading screen, cutscene, and even city design is brought to life in immense color, which is relatively unusual given the dark nature of its gameplay. 

The city pulsates with the mesmerizing district colors, the snow is only made more dangerous by the game’s visuals, and your mistakes are brought to you through some stunning yet tough-to-watch cutscenes and stills.

While it’s received a visual glowup, the gameplay and story are much the same. During the storyline, you’re tasked with keeping the city of New London alive and thriving, all while dealing with the unforgiving weather and politics of different factions.

Moral challenges are also heavily present. Players must navigate through the harsh winters while making game-changing choices on brutal laws like child slavery, forced reproduction, and how far you’re willing to bend the knee to enact peace.

Frostpunk 2 has managed to take all the best aspects of the first game and improve upon them, adding new factions and plenty more difficult decisions that up the stakes. All this is combined with a larger city to manage, making the sequel feel like a stellar upgrade.

It’s easy to be intimidated by Frostpunk 2 if you’ve spent tens of hours with the first. Managing a city with 2,000 was hard enough in the first one, so how could you possibly manage 20,000? There’s also the new district system. Does that make crafting an optimized colony easier, or take up far too much space? Lastly, what impact would the faster passing of time have on the gameplay?

In some of those areas, the sequel feels like a massive improvement. A larger population naturally means a larger city, which is balanced smartly by the districts.

Adding in districts that house more citizens rather than singular buildings offsets the increased population size. There isn’t a need to overfill the city with homes to account for 20,000 people, as districts already make that easier. It also makes it much simpler to organize an efficient layout.

With the wider space, the stakes feel higher, without the size of the city ever being too unwieldy.

Anything you can do I can do…slower?

The issue of time is ever-present in Frostpunk 2. In the original, a day took around 10 minutes at normal speed. In the sequel, this takes around 3 seconds. As such, your adventure is measured in weeks or even months. In theory, this should massively speed up your experience; in practice, it ends up doing the opposite.

Districts take around a week to build and the likes of hubs, buildings, and even Frostbreaking take a while. Time and its passage are a big part of any city-builder like Frostpunk, but Frostpunk 2 can feel slow, especially at the beginning of the story and in the earlier aspects of the game’s Utopia Builder. Thankfully, you do get the ability to easily speed this up through the game’s time controls, but the pacing sometimes takes away from the urgency of a situation.

Interestingly, one element that suffers due to the inconsistent pacing is Whiteouts. In the first game, these were deadly markers that had the capability to destroy even the best build city. They were a horrifying impending doom that you had to be ready for or perish, meaning you couldn’t just live in the present. You needed to use some of your precious resources for something in the future too.

However, with the increase in speed, 11 Bit Studios have greatly decreased the number of Whiteouts you experience. During the story, we only really went through two of these deadly events, and at the beginning, they felt minimal.

We survived the end of the world… Now what?

The adventure and gameplay aspects of Frostpunk 2 make up for those slower occasions.

Whether you’re passing questionable laws to dabbling into child slavery, planning public executions, researching ways to improve your city, or just preparing for the next major event, it’s hard to deny just how oddly cozy the city-builder is when everything’s going right.

Sure, there’s nothing particularly cozy about making decisions that lead to your foreman being killed, cannibalism, forced marriage, harvesting bodies, or massive diseases being spread around New London, but there comes a time after the prologue when you find your element.

One of the most satisfying aspects of Frostpunk 2’s gameplay is that once you understand it, you’re able to thrive – at least for a little bit. In those fleeting moments where everything is working, food is plentiful, the generator is keeping people warm, and the bodies you’re harvesting are keeping the diseases at bay, you can simply sit back and watch the city run itself. This gives you ample time for expeditions, or even managing other cities.

And that’s right around when you will take your eye off the ball, blindsided by a catastrophe you missed.

That’s what Frostpunk 2 has mastered. It lulls you into a false sense of ‘Oh this isn’t too bad, maybe I should up the difficulty in my next run.’ It then sucker punches you all at once with favor dropping from your factions, too many research promises, a lack of food, a weak Generator, an upcoming Whiteout, or a nearly exploding city that you really should have focused on more. 

Frostpunk 2 feels like a constant push and pull of messing around, before finding out. And that tension is where the compelling qualities of this grim city-builder live.

Our Verdict: 4/5

Frostpunk 2 takes the best elements of its predecessor and creates a thrilling, albeit stressful experience kitted out with stunning visuals and audio that perfectly offsets the absolutely terrible decisions you’re forced to make, in a world that’s awfully grim – but that’s what makes it so compelling.

While it doesn’t always nail pacing, it makes up for it with false security, tricky choices, and enough elements to keep you fully invested in the storyline or the well-being of the city’s patrons.

Ultimately, whether you’re a Frostpunk veteran or new to the chilly city-builder, this sequel will prove how ill-equipped we actually are if a winter like this one comes along.