Endangered Species is the first expansion game for Zoo Tycoon 2, and as you can probably guess it adds new creatures to your zoo’s menagerie from the ranks of the world’s endangered animals. Other new zoo features are included such as jeep tours, sky trams, and elevated walkways, but overall the gameplay remains virtually unchanged from that of the original game. Whether or not this is a good or bad thing will depend on what you thought of the original.

The new animals come with the items you’ll need to keep them happy, so you just need to follow the same formula that you did with the game’s original creatures. Fence off an area, add the right biome, provide shelter and food, add a male and female of the species, and then assign enough zookeepers to keep things running smoothly. The endangered species do not breed as readily as the other species, but other than that there’s not much difference between endangered species and the others. Since there’s not much more work involved with the endangered species ,Zoo Tycoon 2 remains a game that you can leave alone to play itself for large stretches of time. An opportunity to involve the player more directly in the animal management was completely missed here.

The game’s new jeep tours, sky trams, and elevated walkways all support the new conservation area park feature. The conservation areas are basically fenced off areas of your zoo ala a wild animal park. Add animals, food areas, and some features and you’ve got yourself a conservation area. To let your zoo visitors enjoy your new feature, you can send a sky tram over the area or give them a view from the ground through the window of a jeep. The jeep tours, sky trams, and elevated pathways can be placed in other areas of your zoo as well, helping your guests to get around more quickly or to give them some new views into the animal exhibits.

Endangered Species also includes a new campaign with 9 new scenarios and 11 additional challenges. If you enjoyed the scenarios and challenges in the original game then you’ll appreciate the new ones included with the expansion. If you’re the sandbox, freeform builder than the new animals and features are nice, but there’s not really enough here or anything that radical that will change the nature of your zoos or give you the chance to build anything substantially different. At its release this expansion is priced at the same point as many new compete games. This means that it’s pricey for what you get, and is therefore only a “must buy” for the most ardent of Zoo Tycoon 2 fans.

In The End, This Game Hath Been Rated: 65%.  This expansion does not add enough to the game to make it recommendable to those who are no already diehard fans of Zoo Tycoon 2.