A step forward for the city builder-survival game; a step back in the UI. FP2 is fundamentally a good game, but you have to learn the UI as much as learn how to lead your city to greatness.

The UI is bad. My main complaint is the lack of dedicated info summary screens; info are presented in tooltips, and when the city grows and the clutter increases it can be difficult or impossible to comprehend. For example the work force overlay is impossible to read; in one playthrough I have so many buildings consuming material that the tooltip is so long it goes off the screen and I cannot see my stockpile info. The ergonomics is also horrible, you have to hold a key and physically find the buildings in your city (which are only represented by their splash arts so you better remember what a hospital looks like), making activating building-specific abilities a chore. Although the main UI is good as it cleanly presents how your city is doing in everything, whether it's getting better or worse so you can tell how your city is doing at every category at a glance.

The city planning part of the game has gotten a rework and is deeper than in FP1. FP2 now uses a hex-grid, and proximity-based buildings like heaters and medical posts need 3 tiles to activate their ability, so you have to really think about how you place your buildings, e.g. "this heater's influence covers 10 tiles so I'll place a medical post next to it, and build 3 housing districts so each has exactly 3 tiles in the influence zone so all 3 receives the benefits of both". A lot of joy I get playing this game are from optimizations like this. The heating system is simplified though, in FP1 you need to heat each building individually; but in FP2 heat is represented by a number that's shared by the whole city so if some houses have no heating but the rest of the city is properly heated, those unheated houses would be fine to live in anyway. I do understand though the game has gotten more complicated, so FP1's system would've added too much management.

The main feature of FP2 is the faction/politics system, and it's a surprisingly realistic portrayal of being a politician (I think). The factions mostly exist on extremities of a spectrum: the group who want to survive via technology and the group who want to adapt and get SWOLE; the capitalist and the communist; people with moral and the menders. Their approval is fickle and can be changed at a moment's notice, and I never have a favorite but rather assess how each group benefits the city, but pleasing everyone when I can afford to.

The story continues to be lacklaster. Do not play this game for the narrative.