The reviews for this game are unnecessarily harsh. This is a fantastic management simulator, and a really great dinosaur game. I have played without any of the DLCs, and there are dozens of dinosaur species, lots of buildings types, maybe 50 research items, and some definite challenges. I've beaten the campaign, and I do recommend the game and I would pay full price for it again.

Other reviews I have read call the game shallow due to formulaic dinosaur interactions, but it isn't. Dinosaurs have comfort levels, and if they are too low, the dinosaurs will attack each other and the enclosures. The factors that cause each dinosaur are different. Some dinosaurs, especially large carnivores, don't want competition from their own species. The herbivores all want company, and some of them are happy with many different species, which results in dinosaur enclosures with 10 different species of dinosaurs living in harmony. All the dinosaurs have different requirements in terms of space and biomes, simplified down to the area of forest, plain, and water they require. A brontosaurus requires a massive enclosure, while the small guys are okay with something akin to a zoo enclosure.

To complicate things, the dinosaurs can be genetically modified which can change their base stats, but also make them more (or less) social, more violent, more or less disease resistant, even increase their lifespan. To further complicate things, dinosaurs start to lose comfort in randomly occuring tropical storms, and the dangerous predators (think velociraptors, tyrannosaurus rex, and especially the genetic hybrids from the two Jurassic World films- the indominus rex and the indoraptor) have super high thresholds for comfort before they attack their enclosure and murder your guests.

The other complain I've seen is a lack of space constraining the player's creativity. This is the big challenge on the campaign maps, of which there are 5. They have crazy shapes, some are very small, all are designed to give environmental challenges and force the player to have different dinosaur species interacting to meet the mission goals. If you had an infinite canvas, players would put each dinosaur type in its own pen and the game would be easy but boring. Instead, through trial and error, the player discovers that velociraptors play well with armored herbivores like the ankylosaurus, but they will eat parasaurs, and carnotaurus eats them. I appreciate that after the fourth campaign map, which is a long, thin island, my knowledge of dinosaur interaction increased the the point where I knew MUCH more about dinosaur interactions in the game than before. Take that to the sandbox mode (which there is one, Isla Nublar), and you will be able to pack more dinosaurs into smaller areas for more money and guest enjoyment. The campaign maps train the player.

Definitely play this game if you like management simulators. This game is the best zoo management game I've played, and also a great dinosaur-themed game. Highly recommended.