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  • Broken Base: The Spinosaurus getting shredded by a pack of Velociraptors in the Jurassic Park III Chaos Theory mode, with the implication its skeleton was the one on display in mainstreet in the fourth film. One part of the fanbase took it as a clever Mythology Gag given that was the original planned ending for the third film and tying it in with the four film. The other side wasn't as pleased. Some felt sick and tired of the Spinosaurus being treated as The Scrappy compared to Creator's Pet Tyrannosaurus and the Velociraptor, while others didn't like a reminder of how unbalanced the pack hunting mechanic is currently. Others thought the idea was interesting, but dislike that there is no option to save the sailback like there is every other dinosaur in the game.
  • Breather Level: The Chaos Theory scenario for the third film is much shorter and easier than any other scenario. All you do is collect a few dinosaurs, make them happy in their habitats, ship them out, and repeat a few times with different species, which by now you’re likely more than experienced in doing. It comes after the more challenging scenarios for the first two films and the five-star scenario for the fourth film.
  • Creepy Cute:
    • Utahraptor, the largest dromaedosaurid ever discovered, happens to have one of the cutest social animations in game - one Utahraptor attempts to nuzzle into another, only for the second raptor to casually sidestep and walk off, causing the first one to comically flop over onto the ground. The fact that this dinosaur has feathers, makes Utahraptor not come off as a dangerous creature.
    • Tarbosaurus, the apex predator of Late Cretaceous Gobi Desert... who while laying on the ground, occasionally rolls like a dog.
  • Disappointing Last Level: After the challenging five-star Jurassic World Chaos Theory scenario, Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom Chaos Theory is a major dropoff in both difficulty and quality. The stage is essentially a rehash of the Jurassic Park III scenario, containing next to no building, no theme park operations, and is made up only of rounding up the remaining dinosaurs, making sure they stay healthy, and then destroying the entire park. For the last level of Chaos Theory (barring DLC purchase), the entire thing can be breezed by in less than 45 minutes.
  • Ensemble Dark Horse:
    • Among the creatures new to the sequel, the Tylosaurus has quickly cemented a place as one of the most popular new creatures, thanks to it being by and large the single best creature in the game in terms of financial investment to appeal ratio, and a small pod can single handedly carry a park over the 5 star finish line, a godsend in Challenge mode due to Tylosaurus being available in Challenge mode regardless of map, especially the maps where space is at a premium or the roster of dinosaurs is limited.
    • The Kronosaurus for not only being an accurate pliosaur especially compared to the Liopleurodon, but also being the first marine reptile to be able to take on the Mosasaurus and win. The Kronosaurus is also a great alternative to the Tylosaurus, especially if it is available in Challenge Mode, as it has similar appeal, cost and more importantly, it has slightly lower space requirement. This means that, coupled with the Humble trait, you can house two Kronosaurus in 5-section lagoons that are otherwise only big enough for one Tylosaurus.
    • The four new genera of the Feathered Species Pack have made a great first impression to fans, particularly with their realistic designs. Deinocheirus and Yutyrannus are praised for being Feathered Fiends, while Sinosauropteryx and Jeholopterus have received love for looking extremely adorable.
    • The Utahraptor from the Cretaceous Predator Pack for being the first dromaeosaurid to outright avert the Raptor Attack trope, not only sporting an up-to-date design but also being the first raptor to not hunt larger dinosaurs in packs.
  • Even Better Sequel: Consensus is that while still not perfect, the game improves upon its' predecessor with better, more streamlined mechanics and a much wider variety of animals with improved behavior and management.
  • Game-Breaker: Pack hunting carnivores can eviscerate any animal in the game in a pack of four. Even multi-ton carnivores and heavily armored herbivores are virtually helpless against them. This created a lot of backlash and lead to some of the earliest fan-made mods focusing on nerfing the small carnivores. Fortunately, pack hunting has since been nerfed significantly in future updates.
  • It's Short, So It Sucks!: In contrast to the fairly extensive campaign in the first Evolution, which took the player across five islands and featured several missions, the campaign in Evolution 2 is so short it's been unfavorably likened to a two-hour tutorial by some players. However, this is somewhat made up for by the greater number of scenarios in Chaos Theory mode (the base game of Evolution had no scenarios, later getting a total of three through DLC).
  • Just Here for Godzilla: Like with the previous game, many players are only playing the game for Sandbox mode in an effort to come as close to possible as the hailed "Site B" mode from Operation Genesis. Helps that unlike the previous game, Sandbox mode does not need to be unlocked through a series of lengthy campaign missions and is instead available to play right from the start, which better facilitates this style of gameplay.
  • Narm: Many players have pointed out how utterly absurd it looks to see small carnivores like Velociraptors (weighing a little over 300 lbs in the Jurassic Park canon) killing a sauropod like Dreadnoughtus (a little over 108,000 lbs) without the sauropod even fighting back at all. For reference, even the game's hadrosaurs have some capability of fighting back against small predators.
  • Play the Game, Skip the Story: Evolution 2's base campaign is a series of five very brief story missions that don't even require you to retrieve every species of dinosaur for completion, a decision possibly made in response to feedback from the more creative-focused players of the first game who cared more about the sandbox than first having to unlock everything through a protracted line of missions. Indeed, Sandbox mode in Evolution 2 is accessible from the beginning with a sizable starting roster of dinosaurs.
  • Questionable Casting: Even though obviously Irrfan Khan couldn't reprise his role as Simon Masrani due to passing away the previous year, Aaron Neill's take on the character hasn't been well-received for not even sounding close to Khan. Add in the character being portrayed as more prideful and boastful, and you would think it was a completely different character without seeing Masrani's name.
  • Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
    • Owen was disliked in the first game due to his actor A.J. Locascio sounding nothing like Chris Pratt and generally being uninteresting and dull compared to his movie counterpart. Here, Locascio gives a much better, more natural performance which made the character far more likable.
    • The three department heads - Dr. Kajal Dua, George Lambert, and Isaac Clement - were also poorly received in the first game due to weak voice acting and generally being self-centered prima donnas. This game dials back their presence significantly, and they get more fleshed out as nuanced characters, with improved voice acting to boot. Clement in particular got some appreciation from fans due to showing some Hidden Depths during the Dominion campaign.
  • Scrappy Mechanic:
    • The hurricane storms in Chaos Theory are your worst nightmare. You could be running the park smoothly with 4 stars, steady income, content guests and happy dinosaurs, and it just takes one long hurricane to send the park to near bankruptcy with damaged buildings, unhappy guests, plummeting attendance and worst of all, agitated dinosaurs breaking out of their enclosures or dying from poor health. And it happens frequently enough that your goal of cloning a T. rex for Hammond's park would take forever to complete. The worst case is a cyclone for the Jurassic World scenario, since it will guarantee fences being destoryed.
    • The scientist mechanic still being needed in Sandbox mode has frustrated players. While it's decently regarded in scenarios, it's seen as a limiting factor in what's supposed to be an all-inclusive game mode to unwind with since you quickly get limited on how many dinosaurs you can breed at a time. Luckily, the new egg batch feature allows you to still breed more than one dinosaur per hatchery bay. The second major update allows the Scientists to be turned off in Sandbox, in addition to having extra building upgrades to make up for no scientists and being able to directly reduce task time in the game settings.
    • The scientist mechanic makes selling junk fossils from excavation even more of pain. Unlike the previous game, where you could easily sell extra fossils on a whim, you need to assign a scientist to "extract" these junk fossils and it cost about $50,000 to even do so. If you're in the red, these fossils aren't gonna save you from bankruptcy thanks to this fee. Fortunately update 1.3 changes this so that you can instantly sell metals, minerals, and junk fossils like in the first game.
  • Take That, Scrappy!:
    • In the Chaos Theory scenario for Jurassic Park III, the Spinosaurus gets attacked and killed by the 2001 raptor pack. However, given the wider fandom has long since come to like the Spinosaurus, this has led to a divisive moment.
    • The three department heads, Isaac Clement, Dr. Kajal Dua, and George Lambert were disliked due to moments of Too Dumb to Live and generally weaker voice acting. The trio have a much reduced presence in the game, only prominently featuring in Challenge Mode which is not going to be completed by every player, as opposed to their omnipresence in the first game's campaign. That being said, them getting fleshed out as characters with addition of improved voice acting led to them getting redeemed in the eyes of fans.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: The fact that, upon its return to the game, Ankylodocus was still unable to defend itself from anything except pack hunters was met with significant annoyance by fans. While sauropods being absolutely defenseless has been a longstanding gripe among fans, it reached its zenith here, as Ankylodocus inherits Ankylosaurus' tail club and was redesigned from the original to be significantly bulkier and more heavily armored, yet this amounts to nothing against large predators.
  • The Scrappy: Pack hunting carnivores and ironically Velociraptor especially. While most of the fans like the pack hunting mechanic, pretty much no one has anything but negative things to say about how it was balanced. Seeing a trio of man-sized carnivores eviscerate gigantic carnivores or massive herbivores was not appreciated. Pack hunting carnivores can and will attack anything they are put into a paddock with, restricting park designs. Additionally they have a very high tendency attack fences and will escape by climbing over most fences the moment the power goes out. Frequent fight amongst themselves lead to many reoccurring, protracted veterinary trips; a micro-managing process players largely dislike (See They Changed It, Now It Sucks!), and succeeded to make them even more unpalatable. All for animals that are relatively low rated and don't attract many guests.
  • Signature Scene: The Isla Sorna raptor pack felling the Spinosaurus in what was clearly intended to be a Take That, Scrappy! moment became the most talked about narrative scene among players for better or worse.
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
    • Some players have bemoaned that the all-inclusive Ranger and ACU stations have had their functions split up, meaning players will have to devote even more building space to extra facilities. This comes after the previous game was already criticized for forcing players to devote building space to features that would simply be in a menu in other games (or indeed, in Operation Genesis). This is, however, somewhat offset by the fact that the maps themselves contain more building space to devote to facilities and that the overall size of all buildings is significantly reduced.
    • The new cohabitation mechanic is a mixed bag; while players roundly appreciated being able to have species combinations in exhibits that would've been unthinkable in the first game (particularly carnivore pairs like Allosaurus and Metriacanthosaurus), the somewhat arbitrary preferences of certain dinosaurs mean that certain combinations (even all-herbivore) available in the first game are now infeasible. Raptors and other small carnivores are particularly problematic; they used to cohabit just fine with armored dinosaurs like Ankylosaurus but now can't because all carnivores are in those species' list of "dislikes". Oh, and every pack-hunting raptor species will hunt and kill every larger species as a group, including giant carnivores and sauropods (both of which also used to be fine cohabit choices for them). Fortunately being able to turn off dinosaur combat was added back in with the first major patch accompanying the Early Cretaceous DLC, allowing players to mix and match animals as they please.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
    • Despite the game having past DLC creatures from the first game without pay, Stegoceratops, Ankylodocus, and Spinoraptor aren’t included nor are they mentioned at all.
    • Some players have expressed displeasure with the Early Cretaceous Pack DLC due to the DLC lacking any terrestrial carnivores, as many felt this was a chance to add at least one fan favorite carnivore (such as Utahraptor, though with the Dominion (which at that time hasn't been released) bringing in both Atrociraptor and Pyroraptor it's likely Frontier didn't wanted to swamp the roster with raptorids).
      • Luckily Utahraptor gets added in the Cretaceous Predator Pack.
  • Unexpected Character:
    • When the Prehistoric Marine Species DLC was announced, very few players expected Dunkleosteus to show up, as while it was a fan-favorite, it was generally assumed that the more popular Megalodon would get the slot instead. Additionally, the addition of Archelon and Nothosaurus were not unanticipated, but having them be semiaquatic (accommodated by adding a floating platform to the lagoon) was a surprise.
    • Fans were stunned when the Cretaceous Predators Pack revealed that two fan favorites, Concavenator and Gigantoraptor, would be added to the roster, due in part to how obscure those genera are. The latter was especially surprising because it was fully feathered.

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