Following our initial impressions on PS5, we’ve played more of the game now and delighted to say it’s a gem.

There’s definitely some issues with control on PS5, though, admittedly, with more time spent they mostly went into the background and the camera feels incredibly weighted and occasionally has a mind of its own, but this game is super fun.

As mentioned, I adored Theme Park in the heyday and this just feels like the natural evolution of that game. Many of the things I wanted to do in 1993 are present in Park Beyond, like terraforming and sculpting, being able to suitably freshen things up over the course of the game and new environments.

These were dreams I had – and probably the developers did too – when I played the Bullfrog original. Even the ride cam has evolved from being a generic, one size fits all cutscene, to a more robust, versatile, immersive inside look at the present action.

Then there’s Impossification, which just transforms generic rides like Pirate Ships and Teacups into something thrilling, different and exciting. The ride creativity is actually one of the key selling points for me, like turning a simple robot bumper car affair into a live action Robot Wars with customers in opposing cars. Lovely stuff.

But you can even transform shops, giving those soda and fry outlets a new lease of life. And even your workers, so your entertainers can get fancier suits and your janitors can be a lot more proficient in their roles.

There’s the base campaign which is a glorified tutorial in disguise. However it’s a lot more elaborate as you’re introduced to characters and the possibilities are broken down into finite detail, requiring you to perform a list of key actions before you unlock the next thing and move onto another step.

The game really comes alive with the Sandbox mode which gives you a bunch of really beautiful environments, from deserts, to mountains and tranquil farmlands in order to turn them into your own bustling ventures.

You can tailor the options to suit you, switching up your starting budget, initial goals and difficulties and just dive right in. If you prefer, you can just have a standard sandbox mode with no conditions so you can build, create and develop as freely as you like.

Park Beyond is also a super beautiful game with its rich colour palettes, varied character models and striking style of environments. No matter where you go, everywhere feels different and it allows your park to take on a whole other look and meaning.

Of course, with certain environments, building rides and shops around them is tricky, but that’s all part of the challenge while you look for entry and exit points, whether you’re going to expand your coaster in certain ways to try and make it more exciting for visitors and even build them on high up ledges and have the pathways slope back down.

Park Beyond makes use of all of its available space, if you see it, for the most part, you can build on it. And that’s super important as you strive to build out your park level, keep profitability high, ensure you’re meeting the needs of everyone coming in, while trying to latch onto fads that emerge and fulfil team goals.

There’s even a day and night, weather cycle in the game and for some rides in particular, their effects and lighting just dazzle in the dark. It’s wonderful to see.

Park Beyond just surprises with its small details too, like being able to change the music on your rides, charging for individual items and even delisting items that aren’t selling well, the aforementioned fads which see certain beverages or perishables become popular, and even statistical breakdowns of visitor behaviours.

You can look at bar charts on happiness, the demographics that visit your park and even look at heatmaps to see where people are happiest, neutral and even unhappy so you can react in game.

But that also extends to shops, looking at their profit margins, looking at visitor’s thinking process while visiting these shops, what their preferences are and seeing if what you currently have in park is working for you.

Unfortunately, this is where I found limitations on the PS5 did come in a little bit. Most of these menus are just naturally, more easily navigated using a mouse. On console, using the controller is a lot more clunky. Having the DualSense’s touch pad working would have probably helped a little bit here, but currently that’s just reserved for a one button press to get into your Impossifications.

You can, of course, plug and play some mouse and keyboard combinations into a PS5, so this might be the way to go for you. DualSense, unfortunately, does present its challenges.

I mentioned the weighted camera, being able to zoom does sometimes get you stuck on land or sometimes you’ll get land locked and even disappear into some of the environment. But navigating menus on screen doesn’t always feel particularly intuitive and while for the most part I got used to getting around, there were some things that still boggled me at times.

I found some buttons got locked when using other menus, like moving time forward sometimes just didn’t work if I’d pulled another menu out. And generally flicking through options and prefabs, adding filters, just got a bit cluttered and messy.

For the most part, using a controller is servicable, though and you will eventually get the hang of it, but it’s not without some frustration.

There are a few other issues with the game, minor things like pathing textures sometimes just corrupt after being placed, people sometimes cluster around in one area and can’t move, their pathing seemingly broken, and some environments get a bit glitchy. Text visibility is also a little strained on menu screens.

But these are minor things and some avoidable, as for the most part this is a very well designed, fun-filled, game. One might bemoan a lack of anything to do beyond a glorified Tutorial esque campaign and a variety of Sandbox modes. I guess I would have loved to have seen some form of uploader where people can put up their custom rollercoasters for others to download.

There’s hours of play and content here for you to enjoy, I also can’t get its little jingle out of my head, which just makes me want to play it all the more. Whether you really want to tax and challenge yourself to make the ultimate Theme Park or you just want to casually dot around, placing rides and switching off for an hour or two, Park Beyond’s great and is the Theme Park successor I’ve been waiting years for.

Verdict

Park Beyond is one of the most satisfying, enjoyable management sims I’ve played in years and is the spiritual successor to Theme Park I’ve waited over twenty years for. On PS5, there’s definitely controller frustrations with the DualSense, as well as weighted cameras, in-game pathing issues and texture breakdowns, so playing on PC may be the way forward. But issues aside, if you’re looking for a game to play to relax or to really test your skills, this one does it all.

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Pros

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Park Beyond is out now on PC, PlayStation, and Xbox 

Code Kindly Provided by Bandai Namco for review purposes

Played on PS5

Further earlier impressions can be found here