I was highly positive about Jurassic World Evolution 3 at launch. After two fun but half-baked park management sims based on Universal Pictures’ enduring dinosaur movie series, it felt like Frontier Developments finally delivering everything the most diehard fans had been asking for and then some. After one minor DLC pack (on top of the bonus ones available at launch), the movie-inspired Rebirth Expansion arrives with one of the series’ biggest premium content drops, but does it justify its price?
As per tradition, Jurassic World Evolution 3 arrived close to the movie series’ latest instalment. In this case, it was 2025’s Jurassic World Rebirth, another soft reboot of sorts that didn’t rewrite the franchise’s continuity, but established a new scenario that landed closer to the Park entries despite the fact dinosaurs and other animal species from Earth’s distant past were part of natural ecosystems across the globe now.
Therefore, Île Saint-Hubert - yet another previously unknown tropical island where InGen played God - provided a reset and a new opportunity to tell a self-contained Jurassic adventure with an old-school flavour. In Jurassic World Evolution 3, it’s not much of a departure, but the setting’s three new maps (also available in the Sandbox mode) have interesting layouts which often reminded me of the original game’s more puzzle-like areas thanks to an abundance of small valleys and high mountains.
The geothermal power network also adds a fun (or at least refreshing) layer of planning that pushes park managers to make each building count and build in clusters early on to make the most of each supply station and generator, as the amount of power you can extract and number of pipes you can build are greatly limited until you access later upgrades. While I think Frontier missed the chance to explore new difficult tasks through this system, it shakes things up enough.
Perhaps more divisive is Jurassic World Evolution 3: Rebirth Expansion’s campaign structure. As usual, there isn’t much of an actual story to speak of, but with so much untapped potential left on the table by the latest movie, the few plot beats here and the buildup towards the finale feel rushed. Instead, players will spend most of their time working with overly chatty InGen peers and cracking assignments that largely amount to juiced-up contracts tied to story progression. While I appreciated Rebirth Expansion’s not-so-linear nature, assignments aren’t very different from Evolution 3’s other tasks at the end of the day.
Ultimately, this DLC’s value comes down to how much you want the new paid mutant and natural species - Distortus Rex, Mutadon, Titanosaurus, and Aquilops - plus the new maps, buildings, skins, and scenery pieces (which are in the hundreds). Even if you weren’t the biggest fan of Jurassic World Rebirth’s more messed-up beasts, the DLC feels loaded overall despite the campaign not sticking the landing. Sandbox is Jurassic World Evolution 3’s main attraction, especially when you factor in custom content shared through the in-game Workshop, and on that front, this expansion is among the series’ best. Having some of Alexandre Desplat’s original score for the movie included also adds to the authenticity of the whole endeavour.
The new species are beautifully brought to life, too. The Titanosaurus and Aquilops are like the two extremes of size in the game’s massive roster of dinos, and both the Distortus Rex and Mutadon have some of the best animation work done by Frontier so far. Moreover, model-transforming skins (not just recolours) like the new T-Rex and the more accurate Spinosaurus are gorgeous. And yes, the Velociraptors are getting to show off their new look too after a disappointing cameo in Rebirth.
Longtime fans of the Jurassic World Evolution series and Frontier’s other park sims knew what to expect going into the Rebirth Expansion, and if you’re looking to greatly beef up the game’s already vast selection of animals, buildings, and decoration, there’s plenty of gold to be found here. If you, instead, were hoping for something with a mysterious narrative and transformative gameplay twists, you might be better off waiting for a discount.
In any case, free updates continue to emerge too, and the 1.3 patch reintroduced another species, the Cearadactylus, allowed the Tyrannosaurus Rex to swim, and gave veteran park managers more tools and customisation options to play with. I don’t think post-launch support for this dino-sized hit will be slowing down anytime soon. Let’s just hope that future DLC drops can surprise and not only iterate on the winning formula.
Jurassic World Evolution 3: Rebirth Expansion is now available on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S for a suggested price of £19.99 / $24.99 / €24.99. A code was provided by the publisher.
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