The story of Road to Riches 2 begins with the main character John leaving the army and trying to find a way to earn money. His brother-in-law lends him a truck to help him get started, and John decides to try turning this into a profitable trucking business. And this is where you come in; your job is to help John manage his business efficiently in order to expand and turn his one-truck home business into a huge trucking empire.
The game starts out pretty slow, as you spend the first two levels learning the game controls and how to pick up and deliver goods (which isn’t difficult; almost everything involves clicking a button). You will spend this first part of the game watching John drive his single truck from customer to customer as he slowly earns enough cash to expand his business. Thankfully, there is a fast-forward button to speed up this boring “tutorial” phase.
The basic trucking jobs involve you picking up goods from one location and delivering them to another. You could visit a potential customer throughout the city, or you could wait for a plane, train or boat to come in with a fresh load. You can even get trucking jobs via phone. Things become even more interesting once you have more trucks and you need to allocate trucks to delivery orders in order to maximize your efficiency.
Other lessons learnt during this early phase include deciding which delivery jobs to accept and which ones to reject. It’s not very efficient to accept a job that requires you to go all the way across town, especially when your next jobs are nowhere near that location. You also learn other basics such as maintaining your truck before it breaks down, and giving your driver a coffee break before he passes out.
The gameplay becomes more interesting and more complex once you earn enough money to buy a truck depot. Once you get your depot, you have a proper business and many more options are available to you. Don’t worry though; the new features won’t all come into play at once. Each feature will be introduced as you progress through the levels. But from this point on, you will be able to manages your company’s finances, management, human resources and customers.
Under finances, you will be able to manage your expenditures including your advertising budget. The management category involves deciding what type of goods are more profitable to truck, and also lets you see what your competitors are doing. Human resources involve controlling your truck drivers and making sure they have enough trucks of a variety of makes that can transport the goods. You also manage your clients and long-term delivery contracts via the customer category.
The atmosphere in Road to Riches 2 is reasonably well presented, though it does feel a bit dated for a game that is launched in the year 2010. The graphics aren’t spectacular, but they do convey the feel and atmosphere of the trucking and small town business pretty well. The soundtrack doesn’t stand out too much, but doesn’t seem boring or monotonous either.
As it will quickly become apparent as you try the game, you will fing that Road to Riches 2 isn’t a basic time management game. The various economic and business options available to you turns this game into more of a business simulation game with fast-paced time and resource management elements thrown in. If you like business simulations and don’t mind the slightly dated graphics, then this game will be worth your while.
Rating: 3.5/5.0
You can read more about Road to Riches 2 at http://www.game-tycoon.com/road-to-riches-2.html.
Steven maintains Game Tycoon at http://www.game-tycoon.com – a website devoted to strategy, simulation and time management games. You can read game reviews, download games and play them online.
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