YMMV / Planet Zoo

• Author's Saving Throw:
  • This game could be interpreted as an attempt to Win Back the Crowd after Frontier's last attempt at a zoo simulation game, the 2013 Xbox-only installment of Zoo Tycoon. That game was largely panned by fans due to its complete lack of real creative freedom over the layout and design of one's zoos. Planet Zoo seems like a heavy attempt to rectify that by having Planet Coaster-levels of creative freedom.
  • A minor controversy started over the peacock when the first screenshot of it was shown because the model quality was lacking compared to the other animals. Word of God is the model was a work in progress like the rest of the game. The peacock was shown again later, and it looks absolutely beautiful and far better.
  • In the first gameplay screenshots and footage, hippos were erroneously shown swimming. In the final game proper, they sink to and walk along the bottom just like real hippos.
  • The free update giving the option of setting the animals aging rate was received very well.
  • Polar bears (from the Arctic DLC) initially required an absurdly large exhibit size, more so than an herd of elephants need, to the point people were speculating that there was a typo or other mistake in the coding. The size requirements, while intentional, were heavily reduced later in a patch to appease annoyed players. ^note  Word of God explained the reason for this was they are intended to be challenging, and also for the game's goal of supporting animal welfare; in real life, there is a controversy about just how much space real polar bears need to have in zoos to be happy; they have very large territories in the wild, and spend much of their time roaming over large distances, so they initially gave them a high size requirement to help support real polar bears.
  • In response to a common player complaint about water always looking too murky, they released a free update with greater water customization so that the player can make clearer water.
  • The update also reintroduced multi-select, a very useful feature that was removed temporarily because of technical issues.
  • This update also allows the player to place multiple zoo entrances, more billboard customization, the ability to save a franchise zoo as a sandbox zoo, a staff traversable area map, and other things. Basically addressing some player complaints and wishes.
  • Many players were unhappy with the DLC packs containing no more than five animals and a large amount of scenery items. Frontier addressed this by introducing a new type of DLC known as an "Animal Pack" that adds eight unique animals and no scenery items.
  • After a near-universally negative reaction to the binturong's appearance in the Southeast Asia DLC, Frontier dramatically improved the creature's model before the DLC was actually released.
  • After players complained about the American Alligator being restricted to two animals per enclosure (Alligators in zoos and in the wild are actually fairly social, and coexist in groups without much fuss), the very next update expanded the number of Alligators allowed in an enclosure to 6.
  • The 1.7 Update renames the game's African elephant as the African savannah elephant.
  • When the Wetlands Animal pack was released, platypuses were erroneously shown swimming underwater with their eyes open. The 1.9.1 Update fixes this so that they close their eyes when diving.
  • The Twilight Pack brings in the long-awaited flying animal to the game, the Egyptian fruit bat, complete with a new walkthrough exhibit that opens the door for more flying animals like birds and butterflies in the future. This feature was then expanded upon in the very next DLC pack, the Grasslands Animal Pack; adding five species of Butterflies that could all be added to a single walkthrough exhibit. The walkthrough exhibit also allowed for the also long-awaited sloths, starting with the brown-throated sloth from the Tropical Pack.
  • The Malayan tapir was criticized for being a blatant recolor of Baird's tapir, with many players asking Frontier to change its model to more accurate one, ever since the animal was announced in Southeast Asia Animal Pack teaser trailer. Thankfully, their models got enhanced in the 1.16 update, making them more distinct from Baird’s tapir.
• Awesome Music: The soundtrack is beautiful and calm: a perfect backdrop for planning out your exhibits. Parkie's Pieces is just one standout example, as is the theme song, "You, Me & Other Animals".
• Broken Base: The Southeast Asia Animal Pack. Some love it for its colorful roster of animals and for adding no less than eight new creatures to the game, as opposed to the just five players had come to expect, while some hate it due to the less than-stellar quality of the models of some of said animals, at least upon their initial reveal — namely the binturong, dhole, and Malayan tapir. This is particularly since while in response to widespread criticism, the binturong’s model was updated in time for the pack’s release, and the dhole got a remaster about a month later, the Malayan tapir, which initially looked like a blatant reskin of the Baird’s tapir, didn’t get its due until Update 1.16, over two and a half years after the pack was released.
• Difficulty Spike: Mission 10 in the campaign is the first mission where you have to build a zoo completely from scratch. Having no income at all and being forced to plow much of what little seed money you have into infrastructure leaves you with precious little room for error.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • Whenever at least one of your animals has a low welfare for a while, expect protestors to arrive at your zoo. They're not just visual decorations to tell the players that they treated the animals poorly, their presence contributes to the unhappiness of the guests around them, potentially enough to make them unhappy enough to vandalize your zoo and demand refunds as they leave. And to make them even more of an annoyance, you can't send the security guards there to remove them, and they won't even pay the ticket admissions for entering the zoo. You can, however, "release" animals by deleting their barriers and run the protesters off if they get bad enough.
  • "Stress" can take a perfectly happy animal content with its environment and tank its welfare rating. All stats contribute to an animal's welfare, including how recently it's been fed, environmental concerns, number of animals in the social group, and if it has enrichment items available. While a decrease in one of these usually is bad, it only takes a small portion out of the total welfare and can be remedied quickly. Stress is different; even if all other stats are high and taken care of, stress will lower the animal's welfare rating into the red if not to 0 (compared to other stats only taking off 5-15%). And since the most common cause of stress is the animal not having a place to hide, it may take a while before enough guests get to the exhibit and you'll ignore it long enough for the game to sound the alarm that the animal's welfare is poor. Thankfully that is fixed with bushes or building a walled shelter.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • Building underwater tunnels is glitchy and technically not officially intended, but it's still possible to do this and some people do it to great effect.
  • There is a glitchy trick to get visibly clearer water, at least in underground viewing galleries. If the player correctly puts a thin layer of terrain covering the top edge of a glass barrier, they can set the water line at the terrain instead of the barrier, causing the water to appear clearer. You can even freely delete the barrier afterwards and the water will glitch and still remain in place there, without disappearing or flooding underground.
    • This glitch is still possible to do for fun, but the water always being murky issue has since been fixed, so there isn't as much of a reason to do this anymore.
• Memetic Mutation: The phrase "piece by piece" used to describe the game's robust construction system has become one amongst the fanbase for just how much the phrase is consistently used in promotional materials.
• Mexicans Love Speedy Gonzales:
  • The inclusion of wisent in Eurasian Animal Pack resulted in many positive responses of Poles, who are happy that one of their national animals (second being white tailed eagle) get added to the game.
  • More generally, it is a noted trend in reactions to Scenery and Animal Packs, who tend to be more positive from their region of focus than outside it, with one example being how the Europe Pack is more popular in Europe than North America and the North American Animal Pack being more popular in North America than in Europe.
• Nightmare Fuel: Animals that die can rot into skeletons if left lying around too long. Fittingly, this is an in-universe example too, as animal bones can frighten away guests.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • The path system is probably the most criticized mechanic. While it can work ok for just a basic, simple path, it's surprisingly difficult and/or unintuitive to do anything more complex, like making a large, wide square section or a plaza. It's prone to creating what the game calls "malformed path parts," which are ugly gaps created where the paths failed to connect properly. It's often hard to run a path up or down a slope, often requiring careful fiddling with the terrain smoother before it will allow a path there. There are tutorials and guides just for placing paths on YouTube and other websites, with some recommending that if all else fails, just place the paths as best you can, and use separate objects on top, like the various flooring decorations in the architecture tab, to cover up the malformed path parts, and any other ugly bits, because sometimes it just can't be helped. ^note  Guests are only programed to be able to walk on paths; they can't technically actually truly walk on this flooring or anything else, but if it (or any other object) is placed correctly directly on top of a path, they will walk on the path under it, giving a believable illusion of them walking on top of the flooring or other object.
    • Because they need to be able to interact with the guests, benches cannot be placed without being on or next to a path. This can be minorly frustrating depending on what you're trying to do, like say, if you want a flower garden with a bench or two in the field in the middle of the open grass, something common in real life. You can't do that without there being a path right next to the bench. They also must be placed on flat ground, which isn't too bad of a problem except it is a little touchy, so you must remove the path and fiddle with the smoother if say, you try to place the bench on a slight slope.
  • A in-game day lasts bare minimum only three seconds with no option to slow it down further, making a year last 18 minutes. This isn't a big issue for most people, but some potential players refuse to buy the game unless an option to slow it down further is added. Developer's response is you are intended to pause the game frequently to build and do other things.
  • Baby habitat animals cannot be removed until they mature to adulthood^note Okay granted, you can put them into storage but there is only so much you can store and they won't even age there. While it doesn't seem problematic for animals that grew up rather quickly, it does prove to be one for animals that take a long time to mature or Explosive Breeders such as Giant Tortoises or Peafowls. As an added "bonus", these babies further contributes to the animal food expenses and makes your exhibit dirty rather quickly. The option can be overlooked, but you can easily put animals on contraceptives to prevent this issue.
  • Guests don't change clothes when visiting in cold environments. This is minor, but immersion breaking.
  • For a time, it was impossible to get anything but the bottom of the barrel animals without either a massive time investment or playing Sandbox mode.
  • Water used to appear very dark and cloudy behind glass, which was annoying for most players. In response, they released a free update that included more water customization options which resolved this issue.
• Spiritual Successor: To the Zoo Tycoon series, and arguably to the Wildlife Park series as well.
• Underused Game Mechanic: Before release, one of the teased features was that individual animals would have distinct personalities. Some players have questioned if this made it into the final game; if it did, it's so subtle it's difficult to notice.
  • How subtle is the implementation? You probably have to watch an exhibit for close to an hour to really catch the difference between two animals' personalities. Which, due to time as explained in Scrappy Mechanic, means doing almost 4 years in-game of nothing to the park.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: The graphics are nothing short of breathtaking, the cartoon-ish design of the guests notwithstanding. The animals are all incredibly photorealistic and the environments and foliage border on Scenery Porn. It's possible to build zoos that look just as good or even better than actual real zoos.
• The Scrappy: Himalayan Brown Bear. Many players don't like it for being a species not common in captivity, saying that it should have been replaced by Eurasian Brown Bear.
• Win Back the Crowd: In two ways for Frontier Developments:
  • Compared to the Zoo Tycoon version on Xbox which had limited capacity for customization, Planet Zoo takes a MASSIVE step forward with the ability to design both exhibits and buildings down to the last detail. Add to that the gorgeous styling of the animals and even the smaller details on exhibit and building textures and you have a fully-customizable and absolutely beautiful game by comparison.
  • A small one compared to Planet Coaster, the theme park version. Planet Coaster was released in November 2016, and expansion packs came out until April 2019, but there have been complaints of the game not being updated outside of the expansions even for small bug fixes and a few rides not having particular setups or car designs available. Planet Zoo was released November 2019 and has had consistent updates, and the team has taken great care to release both substantial free updates to fix bugs, introduce new species and scenery in expansion packs that have pleased current fans and newcomers alike, and diversify the amount and range of animals included in the expansions.