Rise of Industry

It's a fun game that gets extremely tedious the longer you play. You have almost no control over your logistics other than "this goes from here to there". No way to sort by resource or destinations or anything. The windows are tiny and you have to scroll for forever to eventually find that one trade route you were looking for. It's not unfixable but for me the game still needs more work to be truly enjoyable. Very fun for the first few hours, when you only have a few trade routes to manage.

There's virtually no challenge, but everything in the game takes a long time. It takes forever for towns to grow, it takes a long time to research new stuff, and while you're spending that time fiddling with supply chains, you're constantly being interrupted by pointless optional task popups. There's also virtually no challenge in the game, certainly none from the entirely inconsequential AI opponents. But sure, good for one playthrough.

The aesthetics were attractive enough and the promised depth of strategic options were intriguing enough for me to get the game on Steam shortly after its release. I got about 60 hours of occasionally enjoyable and engaging game play before I moved on and never went back. My enduring impression is that this is the rail shooter of transportation and business simulations, short on options, short on choices and more disappointing than engaging. If you're looking for something to scratch your Transport Tycoon itch and don't need screensaver cute graphics, Industry Giant 2 is a better choice

ROI just doesn't work because the UI is so bad.trying to find information to base your decisions on is clunky. clicking on anything opens windows in random (and overlapping) places on screen. the only way to close them is to click on the small X. no hotkey or right click on the map. so you just spend your time managing the UI instead of the economy. I've played it for 10 hours which is more than a fair shot and my conclusion is to recommend Voxel Tycoon instead which is 10 bucks cheaper, way more fun and it still gets updates since it's still in early access.

This game lacks depth, and while the interfaces feel stylistic and polished, they fundamentally obscure the information that is useful to the player to meet their objectives. The tutorial assistant in game is welcome, but could/should have been made context sensitive. I'm less interested in dynamic events when I'm trying to figure out why Warehouse 1 is suddenly completely full of wheat. A simple display of goods coming in and out and at what rates is sadly missing - and are often displayed in obfuscate ways without added information.