Ah, the ’80s. A time of big hair, bigger shoulder pads, and the unshakable belief that Gordon Gekko was the height of human achievement. Rise of Industry 2 attempts to bottle that “greed is good” spirit and pour it into an industrial builder. Sadly, what you actually get is less Wall Street swagger and more the feeling of being trapped in a boardroom PowerPoint presentation that refuses to end.
Gaming Heaven
Let’s give credit where it’s due: the interface is tidy and, for once, a management sim doesn’t feel like it’s actively trying to hide basic information from you. The scenarios are plentiful, the tutorials are functional, and the game does a decent job of highlighting your inevitable economic failures. The AI executives even take care of certain menial tasks, freeing you up to focus on designing road networks that will make you wish motorways had never been invented.
Gaming Hell
Unfortunately, the game mistakes complexity for depth. You’ll spend most of your time fixing logistics snarls that look like spaghetti dropped behind a radiator. The visuals are bland – 80s-themed, yes, but about as stylish as a beige fax machine. The narrative events try to inject drama but arrive so often and so divorced from context that they feel like spam emails from HR. Worst of all, success often demands tearing everything down and starting again, which is less “corporate strategy” and more “industrial Groundhog Day”. The soundtrack deserves a mention too, mostly because it sounds like it was composed by a Casio keyboard set to ‘mildly disappointing’.
Final Judgement
Rise of Industry 2 is a game for people who think “fun” means watching their supply chain collapse in real time. If your idea of entertainment is endlessly redesigning road layouts while a fictional investor sighs at you, then congratulations – your perfect game has arrived. For everyone else, I’d suggest just rewatching Wall Street. At least Michael Douglas looked like he was enjoying himself.
