Industria II review for PC

I never played the first Industria game. It’s been in my ever-expanding backlog for awhile, but – probably because of its aforementioned ever-expanding-ness – I haven’t gotten around to it.

I mention that in the context of Industria II because, to an extent, it explains why I’ve had a lot of trouble getting into it. It’s clearly an extension of the first game’s story, but without that background, I don’t have the kind of investment in this sequel’s story or characters that might have helped me to enjoy it more. I’ll fully admit that’s on me.

However, when I look at the reasons why I don’t like the game, none of them have to do with the story. Rather, I don’t like Industria II because it’s simply not a very good game.

Some of this comes down to design choices. It’s a game that asks you to fight your way through enemies with limited ammo, only it makes crafting a bit of a chore. On top of that, even when you have your ammo, it takes painstakingly long to reload a weapon. None of the enemies are insanely difficult (and, truthfully, I quickly gave up on my firearms when I realized an axe was just as effective), but for a game that’s a shooter of sorts, it’s weird for shooting to be so not fun.

An even bigger part of why I don’t like Industria II is that it feels broken. Multiple times, I’d enter into an area and the game would be expecting for me to do something, but nothing ever jumped out at me. Each time, I’d reload my last save, and something – usually a dialogue option – would suddenly pop up that hadn’t popped up before I reloaded the previous checkpoint.

It also feels like the save system doesn’t work. A few times, I’d load up my last save, and the game had lost my progress. At one point, I fought through an area, obtained an item I was supposed to get, fought my way back to where I was supposed to go, and then saved. The next time I started the game up, I was back where I’d saved, but the game had simply forgotten I’d picked up the item and it was expecting me to do it again.

Was it hard to do that? No, not at all. But just because it was easy didn’t make it feel like any less of a waste of time. And it’s especially frustrating because Industria II has plenty of style. It looks like a lot of thought went into making its world – and I could see that even without having played the first Industria. But for all the care that went into world-building, it didn’t feel like any went into the rest of the game. I haven’t ruled out going back and playing the first game to see if I’ve missed something great, but Industria II certainly makes it hard to want to do that.

Headup provided us with an Industria II PC code for review purposes.