Alright, I've finished my break. Who's ready for Zoo Tycoon 2?
This time, our goal is to achieve a 5-star zoo rating. Like the Best Zoo award we earned last time, this requires a successful zoo, well cared for and diverse animals, and happy guests. We'll also be doing various side challenges the game gives us for the prizes, which include boosts to rating, money, and free animals. We can also boost our fame by releasing animals to the wild, to a point.
Gameplay in the sequel is largely similar to the original, but there have been a few important changes I should let you know about. Exhibits are far simpler and cheaper than they used to be, but the animals themselves are now the primary expense. Awards are much less important now, since challenges have replaced them. However, easily the biggest change is that we can now go into 1st person mode and take care of the zoo ourselves. This will save us a lot of money, although we will eventually need employees so I'm not constantly stuck raking poo instead of building.
Along with the normal animals of the vanilla game, Zoo Tycoon 2 has four expansions. The first two were Endangered Animals and African Adventure. As you probably guessed, these add more endangered and African wildlife to the game. Endangered Animals also adds structures that allow us to build elevated paths and vehicle tours with jeeps and sky trams. Those two were followed up by Marine Mania and Extinct Animals. Returning from the original game, these add Sea World and Jurassic Park-inspired content to the game. Marine Mania brings back the aquatic shows from the original game, while Extinct Animals adds the ability to build an Extinct Research Lab and clone animals ourselves for free. That'll be a major help once we can afford it, given the high cost of animals in this game. There were also a few bits of free DLC, adding Christmas themed content and a few new animals and items. Finally, I've added two mods. The first is Z-studio's popular
Paranoia mod. This mod adds cryptids, mythical creatures, and a few outright fictional animals to the game. It also adds various objects that allow us to build museum-themed indoor exhibits. Despite having "official" biomes, anything from Paranoia is actually fine in any biome, aside from the ones that require water to live. The other is
Crocodylia, a small pack of crocodilians.
Before we begin, we need to choose a map. Sadly, the Moon is no longer available. In exchange, we'll be playing on a large map this time.
The OP's been updated for the new game.
(Unfortunately, I never did get around to making that Spongebob mod I mentioned before. I started it, but I got distracted reading
Worm.)