Capitalism were the most extensive business simulation ever created, Trevor Chan set his sights high when developing the sequel, will all virtual capitalists be satisfied? Read on to find out.

The Capitalism series has had virtually no competition in the business simulation area. Most stuff in the first game was perfect even though it might have been a bit to hardcore for some. In Capitalism II a lot has changed, but much remain the same.

First of all the interface and graphics has been improved compared to the first game. The city view almost resembles games like Sim City 3000, using the same isometric perspective. Even though the interface has undergone much change players of previous game will feel at home.

Setting up parts of you empire such as factories and stores works the same way before. There are different squares for different parts (for example inventory, sales, purchasing and so on) of the chain within each factory or store.

A new part of the game is that you can build a company HQ and hire senior bosses to handle some of the company. For example they will automatically do pricing, advertising, training of personnel and so on. You can control them, for example if you want their pricing to be aggressive. This is actually a good new feature since it’s really hard to control everything when your company grows and have buildings and operations in several cities.

Another new feature is that you can acquire skyscrapers and residential buildings in major cities. You can also choose to build large commercial buildings and rent them. It’s a good way to extend your capital, but it takes some focus off the real game.

When your company starts to go bad there is no one to say that this and that is wrong as in other games. The developers have chosen not do so, perhaps to build a better simulator. It means that you have to investigate through different numbers and graphs what’s wrong. There are a couple of common problems such as demand is higher than the supply or the other way around, a competitor is keeping lower prices and you have low brand value and there are raw material shortages (often happens when using farms to produce fruit or grain).

Sometimes it can be very challenging to find the real problems, and it would have been good with some sort of help. However you do learn how to analyze financial data.

Capitalism II lacks a complete service sector. You can only start companies producing goods and selling them. As an example you cannot start the next FedEx. There is also no entertainment and software sector, no you can’t start the next Pixar or Microsoft. The software sector shouldn’t be that hard to integrate into the game, the entertainment and service sectors might be much more challenging.

Overall Capitalism II is the best business simulation on the market, you can really learn a lot from it and it has improved a lot since the last version of the game, definitely a must have if you are into business and money.