I remember staying up into the wee small hours, playing SimCity on the Amiga. I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for the city builder and business sim genres. From developer SomaSim and publisher Kasedo Games comes Rise of Industry 2. I’m going to safely assume that it’s the sequel to Rise of Industry.

“Navigate the competitive industrial landscape of vibrant 1980’s USA! Make strategic manufacturing decisions, optimize production chains, acquire technologies, and expand your global business network with key contacts. Opportunities await those savvy enough to capitalize on them!”

I’d never played the first Rise of Industry, so I’m going into this sequel blind and with no expectations. I did do a little research into the original game though… and there’s a bit of a murky history. Rise of Industry was developed by Dapper Penguin Studios, this sequel isn’t. There is this lengthy story of how the publishers “forced” the original devs to sell the IP. Anyway, this sequel seems to have come about via some questionable tactics and particularly unsavoury business dealings.

Rise of Industry 2 is deeply complex, much to the game’s detriment. I do need to make it clear that I played this on the Xbox, and optimisation for consoles is pretty terrible (probably much better on PC). Really awkward menu and sub-menu navigation, a very messy UI and a tutorial that needs an overhaul. There is so much to take in and learn with this game, and the tutorial does a pretty bad job of teaching you. There are bugs, lots of bugs. For instance, while doing the tutorial, the game tells you to press RS to advance a dialogue box. I pressed RS and nothing happened. I thought maybe I miss-pressed it, so I did it again and the dialogue box was still there. It turns out that you need to have one of the several sub-menus open, and then press RS. I’m pretty sure this is a bug.

Why do I assume that this is a bug? Because the dialogue boxes are placed over the top of the menus. So when the tutorial is teaching you what to do, what icons to select, etc, you can’t see because the dialogue box is on top of the menu and blocking what you need to be looking at. Anyway, I manged to fumble my way through the tutorial with a lot of trial and error. Then I was left to build my business empire of increasingly more complex supply chains and manufacturing plants. There is an inordinate level of detail here, the tutorial just does not cover it adequately enough and you end up in a swamp of micromanagement and a very dense, multi-sub-menued UI.

You don’t just place a building and some roads. You have to place a building in a specifically created land mass, ensure it is linked to the highway, then you have to have internal roads, because the structures that you build have to be linked to several sub-buildings. Water pumps, power outlets, factories, delivery depots and much more. Again what with the dialogue covering the menus in the tutorial, I got lost because I wasn’t 100% sure what I needed to do. Once you have a plant up and running (lets say a plastic refinery), you then need to cut a deal to sell your wares. Again, I had no idea how to do this because of the dialogue box bug in the tutorial.

Rise of Industry 2 has a lot to take in, I’d even suggest that it has too much to take in. Playing on the Xbox, the menu navigation is terrible, especially with the dense UI, the tutorial doesn’t teach you well enough, and the controls are awfully finicky. I have played my fair share of these types of games over the years on both PC and consoles, but none of them have been as frustrating as this. I think there could be a really good title under all the unnecessary fluff. But, I don’t blame the game directly, I blame the pretty terrible console optimisation. I did put about five hours into Rise of Industry 2 before the frustration took over. This is why I’ve labelled this as a failed review, because I could only play so much before I had to quit.

You know what? I’m willing to bet that Rise of Industry 2 is a more playable title on PC, I can see the menu navigation and such being so much better with mouse controls. Playing on Xbox though, it is pretty awful. I did like the 1980s setting though. I’m not sure that I can recommend this one with its £30 price tag. Available now for PC, PlayStation and Xbox. If you are tempted, don’t bother with the console ports, stick with the PC version.