Unlike the first game in the series, Metropolismania 2 doesn’t have any particular plot, you simply assume the roll of a Metropolis Maker and begin building your city. There are however, a few limitations which set the basis for the whole game. Firstly, you can’t just go ahead and build any structure you want to. Instead, you need to invite people who have registered their interest in setting up an establishment (house, shop, factory, etc). Once they move in, you can talk to them and form friendships, which encourage them to introduce you to new people. Unfortunately, this system can get very repetitive over a short period, as you often have sit through the same conversations over and over again. Also, conversations don’t really serve any particular purpose other than forming bonds, so after a while you’ll just keep tapping the X button to skip through it all. To mix things up a bit, you will occasionally be asked questions and given riddles to solve. Once again though, these become repetitive after a while and there’s no real reward given to you for getting them right.
Did you ever think about paying with cash instead of credit?
Arguably, your main task in the game is to keep residents happy by listening to their complaints and sorting out any problems. To verify which people have a complaint, the game automatically highlights their establishment in fluorescent colours, which is useful considering it can be difficult to keep track of individual families. Upon talking to the family, they’ll usually request that something is built in their area such as a school or a restaurant. Like we mentioned before, you can’t just go ahead and build the establishment, instead you need to ask current residences if they have any contacts in that particular field. As you can guess, going around to each household is both time consuming and painfully dull, but fortunately the developers have implemented an easier way to do this via little old ladies. Essentially, because elderly women are retired and supposedly sit around gossiping all day, they know everyone in the neighbourhood, so you can just go directly to them and ask if someone has a contact.
Unfortunately, more often than not, there won’t be anyone in town who can solve the problem, so you need to run about endlessly trying to invite more people. The thing is though, when someone makes a complaint, they expect it to be solved within a certain time frame, and if you take too long they will simply demolish their house and leave the city. Taking this into account, you can spend upwards of 30 minutes trying to accommodate their needs without any progress being made. All the while, more complaints will start piling up, so it can get very frustrating to the point where it feels more like a chore than a compelling part of gameplay.
This looks like a happy family. Wait a minute, what's that sound coming from the basement?
Another thing we found annoying was that residence seem to be really picky on where establishments are placed. For example, at times there will be multiple houses that want a hospital. If you were to place one near the edge of the town, residence on the other side would still be complaining. Fair enough, no wants to go travelling for hours just to get a minor check up done, but when the hospital is less than a 2 minute walk away, you really must ask yourself how lazy people can get.
If that’s not enough, the game gives no indication of some of the more advanced features available to players. One instance is utilising a phone book. Unless you happen to walk into a book store and purchase one, you’ll likely never know you can store the phone numbers of residence in it and call them when you need something, saving you the hassle of walking around the city. Apparently, there’s even a way you can stack buildings on top of each other so that shops and other necessities are close together, but we’re still trying to work out exactly how to do that. While we’re sure some people will appreciate that the game lets you discover these things for yourself, at the same time it could have been better implemented to minimise the repetitive gameplay and frustration.
Looks like the Pizza Shop owners aren't happy about something.
While Metropolismania 2 isn’t the worst game we’ve seen on the PlayStation 2, it only features simple cel-shaded visuals that don’t fully utilise the system’s power. There also isn’t a lot of variety between NPC models and as such, quite often the only thing that lets you distinguish people are the names floating above their heads. Speaking of floating, whenever you stop to talk to someone, their breathing animations make them look as if they’re hovering in the air. You will get used to it as you play the game, but it still looks odd and out of place. In terms of the game’s soundtrack, there are only minimal sound effects, no spoken dialogue and a single music track which is played on a continuous loop from the main title screen to the end credits.
Overall, while Metropolismania 2 has a interesting concept and tries to combine elements from both Sim City and Animal Crossing, it is poorly executed. Conversations with residents get repetitive over a short period, the game doesn’t thoroughly explain some of the more advanced features such as stacking buildings on top of each other, and solving problems feels like a complete chore. Unless you’re a big fan of other similar themed games, then there is little on offer here to keep you interested for long.
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