Rise of Industry 2 Review Summary

Addictive Management Gameplay: Players find the game highly enjoyable and addictive, particularly appreciating its depth as a business simulation. It offers significant replayability and long-term engagement, making it a satisfying time sink.

Deep & Challenging Gameplay: The game offers surprising depth and a significant challenge, requiring players to use their brains and optimize complex systems. It provides a rewarding experience for those who enjoy intricate economic strategies and detailed management.

Effective Campaign Mode: The scenario-driven campaign mode is well-received, providing structure and an enjoyable learning experience. Players appreciate the freedom within map confines and the engaging video cutscenes.

Diverse Production Chains: The game stands out for its extensive and diverse range of manufacturing options and factories. Players appreciate the variety of what can be built and the depth of the production chains.

Rewarding System Mastery: Players find significant satisfaction and reward in understanding and optimizing the game's complex interconnected systems, such as complexes, storage, and routing. The feeling of getting a complex setup running is highly gratifying.

Disappointing Sequel Experience: Many players found the game to be a significant downgrade from its predecessor, lacking the fun and core mechanics that made the first game enjoyable. This led to a general sense of disappointment and a feeling that the game was a chore rather than an engaging experience.

Overpriced for Quality: Reviewers frequently mentioned that the game's price tag felt too high given the numerous issues, lack of polish, and overall disappointing experience. They felt the game did not offer enough value for its cost.

Unfinished & Buggy Release: The game was released with numerous bugs, including critical game-breaking issues that halted progression, and a general lack of polish. Many players felt the game was not ready for release and would have benefited from an Early Access period.

Clunky UI & Poor Visuals: The user interface was frequently criticized for being janky, complex, and visually unappealing, making it tedious to navigate and understand information. Additionally, the overall visual style and graphics were not considered a strong point, with some finding them ugly.

Overpowered Import Mechanics: The import system was criticized for being too powerful and easy to exploit, allowing players to bypass core gameplay loops like resource discovery and production. This made local production and logistics largely unnecessary, trivializing the game's economic challenges.

Deep Business Simulation: The game offers a complex business management simulation, focusing on designing and managing industrial chains, production, logistics, finance, and personnel. It involves intricate systems like resource extraction, manufacturing, and contract-based sales, requiring precise decision-making to avoid bankruptcy.

Scenario-Driven Gameplay: The game features a core campaign structured around scenarios with predefined industry focuses and resources, offering semi-guided progression. A sandbox mode is also available, using the same maps but without investor goals, allowing for free play.

Corporate Contract Trading: All trading, including sales and purchases, is exclusively conducted through contracts with other companies, not directly with cities. This system includes contract gradations, penalties for non-fulfillment, and demand fluctuations, emphasizing a corporate-level interaction. Transportation within the factory is managed, but external transportation is simplified and automatic.

Detailed Manager System: Players must hire various managers and VPs who provide buffs, perform tasks, and gain skills upon upgrading. Staff are essential for negotiating land, utility, raw material, and waste removal contracts, and for finding specific resources.

Conveyor Belt Logistics: Conveyor belts are a key logistical tool for transporting solid products, offering a cheaper alternative to other methods. However, they consume significant energy, requiring careful resource management.

Smooth performance, stable gameplay: Many players report the game runs smoothly with consistent frame rates and no significant performance issues or critical bugs, even on older hardware. Some also noted a lack of recent crashes, indicating general stability.

Inefficient hardware utilization: Despite running without noticeable lag, the game reportedly causes graphics cards to run at high temperatures and fans to roar abnormally. This indicates inefficient hardware utilization and potential optimization issues.

Day-one patch fixed bugs: The game initially had minor technical problems, such as a bug preventing new contracts, which hindered campaign progression. However, a day-one patch was released that successfully resolved these issues.

Overall positive reception: Many players express general enjoyment and recommend the game, indicating a positive overall experience. Some are confident in their recommendation and plan to continue playing, despite acknowledging minor issues.

Needs significant fixes/updates: A substantial number of players advise waiting for future patches and updates, citing current issues that hinder enjoyment or make the game unplayable for them. Some even requested refunds due to the game's current state, indicating a strong need for significant improvements.

Appeals to specific sim genres: The game is highly recommended for fans of complex economic simulations, factory builders, resource management, and 'old school' business sims. It caters to players who enjoy deep optimization, logistics, and predefined building puzzles, though some note the first game might be better for a simpler experience.

Limited scenario replayability: One reviewer noted a lack of desire to play additional scenarios, suggesting potential for content fatigue or limited replay value after initial playthroughs.

Not for sensitive players: A vague warning for 'sensitive souls' to abstain, which could imply high difficulty, frustration, or a steep learning curve. This point lacks specific details.

Rapid Bug Resolution: The game initially had significant bugs, including a critical contract issue, but developers were very quick to release patches and hotfixes, resolving these problems promptly.

Divisive Visual Style: The game's graphics, characterized by fast-moving, similar-looking trucks and bright neon colors, are not universally appealing and may require players to adjust, with some preferring more realistic visuals.

UI/Complexity Management: The game is a management simulation, specifically production chain, and its UI handles complexity decently, though some reviewers note it doesn't reach the level of top-tier games like Factorio or Anno.

Chinese Manual Text Overlap: The Chinese version of the game's manual suffers from overlapping text in certain sections, which can be resolved by switching the game language to English.

Good Language Localization: The game offers support for multiple languages, including Chinese and Japanese, with the Japanese localization specifically noted for its clarity and readability.