Planet Zoo 2 Brought Sharks to Your Zoo, and Steam Reviewers Are Split

What's actually new this time

Planet Zoo 2 came out on October 13 from Frontier Developments, the studio that made the original 2019 game plus Planet Coaster and Zoo Tycoon. It's $49.99 for the standard edition, or $64.99 for the Deluxe Edition if you want six extra animal species and some exclusive decorations thrown in.

The headline additions are the ones fans have been asking for since the first game: you can finally build proper aquariums and aviaries, so sharks, sea turtles and fish, plus free-flying birds like toco toucans, are all part of your zoo now. There's also a new Wildlife Reserves system where, instead of just keeping animals in enclosures, you can build out conservation land and actually release them back into the wild. Frontier also says terrain editing, plant placement and path building have all been smoothed out compared to the original, which was notorious for how fiddly its building tools could get.

Three things that changed

• Aquatic and flying habitats -- aquariums and aviaries are a first for the series.
• Wildlife Reserves, where you build conservation land and release animals into it.
• Smoother building tools for terrain, paths and scenery placement.

A bestseller before launch, a mixed reception after

The day before release, Planet Zoo 2 was already sitting at number two on Germany's Steam top-sellers chart and seventh worldwide, purely off pre-orders -- a decent sign of how much goodwill the original built up. That made the aftermath a bit of a gut check: as of this week Steam's own review data puts it at roughly 66% positive out of the reviews logged so far, which lands in "Mixed" territory rather than the "Very Positive" scores the first game eventually settled into.

That's not unusual for a big management-sim sequel in its first days -- performance complaints, balance tweaks and "it's basically DLC-priced like a new game" gripes tend to show up early and get sorted (or argued about) over the following weeks. Worth keeping an eye on if you're on the fence.

Who it's for

If you sank hours into the original Planet Zoo and have been waiting for sharks and birds to finally show up, this is clearly built for you, even with the rocky review start. If you've never played a zoo management game before, it might be worth waiting a patch or two to see where the "Mixed" rating settles.