Planet Zoo 2 launched on PC and console on October 13, 2026, bringing with it a host of new features, improvements, and some long-awaited additions. Anyone familiar with the original Planet Zoo will immediately recognize the core mechanics, but Frontier has built on them with new layers of gameplay, improved building tools, and a much more detailed world. My day-one review would have looked quite different, but a week and 76 hours of playtime later, I feel like I have a much better sense of the game, even though I still haven’t explored everything.

Planet Zoo 2 offers three main game modes: Career, Franchise, and Sandbox. Sandbox Mode gives you complete creative freedom to design and manage your zoo, with as many challenges and restrictions as you choose. You can explore the game’s animals, habitats, scenery, and facilities without worrying about budgets or research requirements if you’d rather concentrate on building.

Franchise Mode offers a similar experience, but instead of managing one standalone zoo, you’re building an interconnected network of zoos starting with a limited budget and animal pool and growing it as you progress. Career Mode, particularly in its early stages, acts as an introduction to the game’s mechanics, which is where I decided to begin.

Our VerdictGame Review

Planet Zoo 2

Reviewed on

Xbox Series X|S

Time played

76 Hours

Version / build

1.0.6

• Graphics9
• Audio8
• Gameplay7
• Replayability8

The Good

• Impressive base animal selection
• Stunning visuals
• Improved path tools
• New exhibit features

The Bad (& Ugly)

• Horrible menu (especially on console)
• Awkward controls on console
• Tons of bugs on release

8/ 10

Unboxed Reviews Score

Reviewed byLaura KellyEdited byKegan Mooney

Wildlife Reserves: A Beautiful New Addition

The first tutorial introduces one of Planet Zoo 2’s biggest additions: Wildlife Reserves. Instead of dropping you straight into a traditional zoo, you’re greeted by a beautiful natural landscape stretching as far as you can see. There are no barriers, staff, or visitors, just open land filled with animals roaming freely and undisturbed.

You can even jump into a vehicle and explore the reserve yourself, getting closer to the animals and using the new Photo Mode to capture some beautiful shots. Your photographs are rated on their composition, adding another little activity to the experience. And, in case you were wondering, yes, you can drive along the bottom of deep water in a completely open-sided vehicle without any problems whatsoever. Apparently, that’s perfectly normal.

Wildlife Reserves aren’t simply decorative areas where your released animals disappear, either. They’re playable environments that require their own management and maintenance. Each reserve has biodiversity, ecosystem, and research ratings to consider. You need to maintain suitable conditions for the animals you intend to release, manage the local plant life, and ensure the environment remains healthy and properly restored. Animals released into the reserve can also be monitored for research purposes.

Animals from your zoos can be grouped together and released into appropriate areas of the reserve, giving the conservation side of the game a more tangible purpose. Overall, I think Wildlife Reserves are a nice addition. I’m not entirely convinced they add a huge amount to the experience, but it’s always nice to have a few extra goals to work toward. More importantly, releasing animals into the wild finally feels like you’re sending them somewhere rather than simply deleting them from existence.

Building a Zoo Has Never Looked Better

Once you’re back in a traditional zoo, everything feels immediately familiar. You’re still building paths, creating habitats, placing facilities, and making sure your animals, guests, and staff have everything they need. The biggest difference is how you go about doing it.

Even when starting with an otherwise empty zoo, the environment already feels more beautiful than it did in the original game. The entrance areas are detailed and different across each map, with lakes, bridges, paths, trees, and landscaping that make the surroundings feel much more natural. The attention to detail is absolutely stunning, and that’s before you’ve even started building anything yourself.

Finally, Paths That Don’t Fight You

Paths are now considerably more flexible, easier to manipulate, and far less determined to ruin your day. You can place objects directly on paths, including everything from keeper huts to exhibits. Paths can also be removed that sneak into the habitats and manipulated in ways that I could only have dreamed of in Planet Zoo. Perhaps my favorite improvement is that paths and barriers no longer seem determined to go to war with each other.

It’s a relatively simple change, but anyone who has spent hours fighting the original game’s pathing system will appreciate just how much easier this makes building. I haven’t got to grips with every element of paths yet, even 76 hours in, but with area fill and the system not having a panic attack every time there’s a slight dip in the terrain, I could genuinely go on all day about how much I love the new paths. I won’t. But I could.

New Buildings, Scenery, and Themes

Building and decorating remain familiar, but there’s a beautiful collection of new blueprints and scenery to work with. The new plazas and bridges are particularly lovely, and the buildings, sculptures, and decorative pieces all feel much more detailed.

There are four new regional themes, alongside the returning Planet theme. North has a more modern, sleek appearance, while South features thatched roofs and exposed wooden beams. East makes extensive use of bamboo, with many buildings raised on stilts. My personal favorite is West, which has a cozy lodge-like appearance. The returning Planet theme is reminiscent of the conservation buildings from the original Planet Zoo, with plenty of wood and glass. In fact, many of the buildings remind me of the original game’s Conservation Pack. There are more natural materials, sloping roofs, and plants incorporated into the designs, giving everything a more organic appearance.

Another welcome improvement is the ability to scale a lot of items. You can now create a field of mushrooms in all different sizes, for example. And yes, there are mushrooms, and they’re absolutely adorable. Unfortunately, scaling isn’t working properly for me, despite the flurry of updates Frontier has put out since launch, and instead of growing, many of my items simply move further apart.

Improved Landscaping and Terrain Tools

The landscaping tools have also received a substantial upgrade. You can paint entire areas with flowers and trees, create waterlogged grass, and manipulate the landscape in a much wider variety of ways. These improvements make it easier to create natural-looking environments without spending hours manually placing every individual plant. I’m particularly excited to explore the terrain-altering tools in more detail, as there’s clearly a lot more creative freedom available.

Barriers and Habitat Construction

The barriers themselves haven’t changed quite as dramatically as the paths, although, to be fair, they already did what they needed to do.

There are a few additional material options, and you can now add roofs to enclosures, although these aren’t solid roofs in the traditional sense. Combined with the improved pathing and terrain tools, habitat construction feels much more flexible, even if the actual barriers remain relatively familiar.

Facilities, Shops, and Zoo Management

There have also been some interesting changes to the way facilities work. One of the most noticeable is that staff facilities no longer upset your guests. Instead of hiding them away behind scenery or placing them far from busy areas, you can now have them front and center without guests being upset that people actually work at your zoo.

Security guards, however, appear to have disappeared entirely. Apparently, they’re no longer employed, so hopefully that means there aren’t any pickpockets wandering around either. The mechanic workshop also did not survive the move from Planet Zoo to Planet Zoo 2.

Shops Have Had a Makeover

The shops have received a makeover, too, with some familiar faces returning alongside new additions. Trunk of Trinkets is Planet Zoo 2’s gift shop, selling the familiar T-shirts, plushies, and hats. It’s available as a larger, fully stocked shop or a smaller stand, which also sells socks and key rings. I thought that was a particularly cute detail.

Guests who have visited your shops now walk around carrying shopping bags, which is another lovely little touch that makes the zoo feel more alive. Nature’s Keepers is another new addition, selling animal adoption packs that were previously available through information stands.

Information stands are still there, but they now concentrate on selling audio guides and umbrellas. These aren’t enormous changes individually, but together they make the shopping experience feel more detailed and give the different facilities clearer purposes.

I had hoped there might be a multiple-item selection tool to change prices in shops, as reducing the prices of every drink takes a while. It’s not a big issue, though. Amusingly, the option to apply prices to all shops currently says “Apply to all restaurants” on everything. I’m sure that’ll be fixed soon enough, and it doesn’t cause any issues.

Animals Look and Behave Better Than Ever

We’ve known about the new animals and behaviors for a while, but actually seeing them in action is something else entirely. The animals are absolutely beautiful. Even familiar species have received substantial visual and behavioral improvements. Their movements feel more natural, and their reactions to people, other animals, and their surroundings are noticeably more realistic. Watching animals interact with their environments is one of the most enjoyable parts of Planet Zoo, and the improvements make that experience even better.

Seasons, Breeding, and Thriving

The in-game year is now considerably longer, with visible seasonal changes affecting the environment. You might place a beautiful pink tree in your zoo, only to discover that you’ve planted what looks like a collection of sticks because it’s autumn. Some animals now have specific breeding seasons, meaning they can only reproduce during certain times of the year.

There’s also a new goal beyond simply meeting an animal’s basic welfare requirements. Animals can now achieve Thriving status, encouraging players to provide more than the minimum conditions needed to keep them healthy and happy. Together, these changes add another layer of realism to animal management, making the passage of time and the changing environment more significant.

Aquariums: The Biggest New Building Opportunity

Two of Planet Zoo 2’s most anticipated additions are aquariums and aviaries. Both introduce entirely new possibilities for animal habitats, although they’re not quite as substantial as I had expected.

Aquariums are easily the more involved addition. They have their own section on the main menu, although the options are essentially the same as those found in the Habitat menu, so I’m not entirely sure why these needed to be separated rather than combined into one menu.

The selection of animals is an entire rainbow of options, with some tiny ones being adopted in shoals rather than individually, all the way through to turtles and sharks. Some of the smaller fish can also be put into exhibits.

Building an Aquarium

Aquariums can be placed using blueprints or built from scratch in much the same way as any other habitat. Once you’ve constructed the enclosure and added an aquarium staff door, it automatically fills with water. You can also add a guest gate and build tunnels through the aquarium, using a system just like the normal path-building tool. You can even place education items, bins, benches, and even shops inside them.

Aquarium Water Management

Much like any other habitat, you need to maintain appropriate temperatures and cleanliness levels. However, aquariums also introduce salt levels and a connected filtration network. Water in terrestrial habitats also needs to be connected to a filtration network. If you connect it to a saltwater system, your animals can still swim in it, but they’ll need a separate source of drinking water.

One thing worth remembering is that salt levels are adjusted by editing the network itself, rather than the filter or aquarium. I’ve already forgotten how to do that three times, so clearly it’s something I need to get used to. Aside from the additional water-management requirements, building and running an aquarium is surprisingly similar to managing a traditional habitat,

Aviaries: Exciting Animals, Familiar Construction

Aviaries were one of the additions I was most excited about, largely because we’ve waited so long to have proper flying animals in Planet Zoo. The animals themselves are absolutely stunning. From tiny parakeets that are a riot of noise and color as they dart around their enclosures to the slower, majestic, dinosaur-looking shoebill, the range is incredible. Simply lumping them all together as birds doesn’t do them justice.

Actually constructing an aviary doesn’t feel particularly different from building a normal habitat. You create an enclosure using the familiar building tools, add a roof, and make sure you’ve considered the height of the habitat as well as its overall size. While flying animals themselves are a truly exciting addition, the actual aviary building and maintenance process is much more familiar than aquariums.

Exhibits

At first glance, exhibits have had an upgrade. There are different sizes and shapes, and you can choose different levels of sand, water, and plants within them. But the more you play with them, the more you realize they can do. You can change the color, add any props or nature you like, you can drop the walls halfway, you can drop the walls completely. You can put fish in them. You can drop the walls and put fish in them. Yeah, it looks weird. But it allows you to create the most unique and natural, or not, exhibits. They’re no longer glass boxes; now they can be a pond or a fountain. They don’t need to be connected to the filtration system or have a door, making them incredibly flexible and my favorite addition to the game overall.

A Redesigned Interface

The in-game menu has undergone a major redesign, and somehow it manages to feel like there’s both more and less on the screen at the same time, and some features have been moved into different categories, which takes a little getting used to.

There is still a menu across the bottom of the screen, as there was in Planet Zoo. Although some options have been shuffled around, it remains largely the same.

The biggest change is the additional menu along the side of your screen, with tools like paths and terrain. I have a lot of thoughts on that, and I’ll come back to it.

Accreditation

Both Career and Franchise Modes have accreditation tiers that you must work through to access most of the animals. Each mode has its own accreditation system, so progressing in Career Mode won’t unlock animals in Franchise Mode. Combined with the animal market offering an unbalanced selection of animals, this means your options at the start are extremely limited, something Frontier has announced plans to adjust.

Conservation Projects

I tried to find a positive spin on Conservation Projects, but honestly, I just can’t. You allocate the requested resources to complete a project and receive a reward. It’s essentially a resource transaction dressed up as conservation work. You’re contributing money and staff to support research, but there’s no actual research activity for you to carry out or gameplay involved at all. Crucially, Conservation Projects aren’t optional if you want to progress through accreditation and unlock more animals. They just aren’t meaningful gameplay; they’re simply another expense you have to pay to progress.

Playing Planet Zoo 2 on Xbox

I’ve spent more than 1,000 hours playing the original Planet Zoo on console, so I expected the controls to feel fairly natural. For the most part, they do, but there are a few changes that have taken some getting used to.

The function of the View button has changed. The number of times I’ve pressed it and accidentally found myself back on the home screen is astounding. You’d think I’d be used to it a week in, but muscle memory is proving difficult to overcome.

Pressing B now takes you completely out of a menu rather than returning to the previous submenu. To navigate back through the menu, you need to use the left stick instead.

I often find that the pointer dot disappears after closing a menu, and the game doesn’t seem to know which menu I’m in or trying to open. I imagine this is easier on PC, which is disappointing considering the game was designed with both console and PC in mind.

My Biggest Frustrations After a Week of Planet Zoo 2

I absolutely adore a lot of Planet Zoo 2, but I would be lying if I said there aren’t several things that have frustrated me. There are an astounding number of glitches. Some are probably just changes I’ll eventually get used to, while others feel like unnecessary extra steps.

A lot of them can be boiled down to one main issue.

The Menus and Controls.

Accidentally navigating to the right within the tools opens the demolition tool in a whole other section of the menu. It’s especially irritating because you can end up there without even selecting it, leaving you with extra steps to get back to the menu you were using. Similarly, barriers are in the Habitat/Aquarium tab, but selecting them takes you into the normal Barrier menu, making it a pain to return to the aquarium options afterward.

Options like width, size, and snap within the tools are tucked away in a subsection. However, opening it prevents you from continuing until you’ve backed out of that section, making adjustments while building a far less streamlined process than they need to be.

Individually, these aren’t enormous problems. However, constantly having to navigate between different menus and submenus is laborious, irritating, and far more time-consuming than it needs to be.

There don’t need to be two menus. Habitats and aquariums can share a menu, and barriers shouldn’t be in it. They’re a tool. Exhibits don’t need their own section, either. They can also sit alongside habitats and aquariums. That alone would free up space for one main menu instead of two. To push it further, the Management menu could easily include research.

Too Many Extra Steps

Buying and selling animals now involves considerably more steps than it needs to. It might become less noticeable once you’ve established a zoo and aren’t constantly adopting new animals, but when you’re starting from scratch, those additional steps quickly become time-consuming. Something as fundamental as purchasing animals shouldn’t feel this cumbersome.

Changing an animal’s food quality is another unnecessarily complicated process. Changing it from the animal’s information panel opens the management menu. Even there, you can’t simply change the food quality and move on to the next animal without being taken back through that animal’s full set of options.

All your animals are no longer in one place. Your animals in storage don’t show up in your animal list, meaning checking which animals you have is spread over multiple menus. They also no longer show you where the animal was born.

I know I’ve mentioned this one, but where has the population management automation gone? One birth of offspring is now enough to overpopulate an exhibit, and the constant monitoring of them makes them not feel particularly worth it.

Launch-Week Bugs and Glitches

I’ve encountered a fair few glitches in launch week; on one hand, this is to be expected, but it does feel excessive, considering we’ve paid to play the game, not test it.

Scaling anything made of multiple parts just moves the parts further apart. My animal choices have been all girls or all boys, making breeding impossible. My game skipped back, and I lost a whole day’s worth of progress. My avatar got stuck in a “could not load” loop, which forced me to restart. My animals have been doing some strange things: bears becoming one with trees, fish swimming out of the water, and whole packs of zebras spinning like they’re on a massive turntable.

The most frustrating problem I encountered was during an early conservation Career scenario. Where I Quick Release’d my giraffes, which apparently wasn’t the correct way to complete the task, leaving me with no giraffes and no way to continue. Frontier has addressed this one, though, so hopefully that won’t hamper anyone else.

Still a Genuinely Impressive Upgrade

All that being said, I don’t feel like any of it is bad enough to take away from the huge upgrade that this clearly is from Planet Zoo. Planet Zoo is the ultimate comfort game that I can lose entire days to, so any change will take some getting used to. The glitches are likely to get rectified quickly enough; Frontier has a wonderful history of listening to its audience and releasing entire gameplay-changing additions entirely free of charge, so maybe some additional changes to the menus and controls will follow soon, if I’m not alone in my frustrations.

I have always preferred to build rather than manage my zoos, sometimes playing for hours on a pause screen, and I am so excited to lose entire days trying out every new building tool and prop; however, I genuinely feel like this might change with Planet Zoo 2. The animals are stunning and fascinating to watch, their use of the entire space, environment, and equipment is so genuinely fascinating. I can tell an incredible amount of care, research, and time has gone into creating and animating the animals, and I can’t fault them. I just hope the menus and controls get a bit more attention ahead of any updates. And that my zoo doesn’t get any pickpockets.