Economic strategy with a twist. When top-tier pizza wasn't enough, Pizza Connection 2 let us use force
Pizza Connection 2 is an economic strategy in which we went full gangsta, inventing new kinds of pizza and planning the restaurant's decor. All of this to keep the customers full.
Economic strategy games used to be super popular, but their heyday is way behind us. However, this doesn't mean that the genre failed to find a niche in the market, which is decently thriving even now. Every year, more or less successful titles are being released, among which fans of these games will always find something fun to play.
But this is Retro Gaming, so let's stop digressing about the present and instead travel to the year 2001. Our main guest today is Pizza Connection 3 in 2018. So let's revisit this piece of code.
Restaurant management
The moment I fired up Pizza Connection 2 after years, I decided that no one needs tutorials. After all, I used to play this, and I was doing fine. So I chose a free game. However, it quickly struck me how unintuitive this game can be. So I just packed up my dignity and went to play a campaign, where in the first mission, they basically told me where to find everything. I won't lie, it took a moment to get used to the arrangement of the icons (city hall, I'm looking especially at you).
Fortunately, the rest of the UI didn't age as much. We start by creating a character and defining its statistics. We can determine whether our alter ego will be a better merchant or gangster. Of course, you can't create a super-powerful character - if you want to improve one trait, it has to come at the expense of another. The point balance must match.
As befits an economic strategy, our goal in Pizza Connection 2 is to expand our own business. In this case, we are essentially building a restaurant empire from scratch. We need to rent a place, equip it, hire employees, and choose a menu. Of course, it's not easy.
The location choice affects, for instance, which age groups will visit the restaurant and when. That's why it's necessary to prepare an appropriate menu that suits the tastes of the people. In this case, we have quite a lot of leeway, as the devs provided us with a complete pizza-making tool, equipped with a wide range of ingredients. As if that wasn't enough, we can choose the level of their fragmentation, which allows our imagination to run wild.
Furthermore, it's necessary to take care of the morale and qualifications of employees. For this purpose, we send them for training and give them bonuses. If we implement everything properly, the cash will start to flow, and we will soon become wealthy. Of course, in a game from this series, there must be some "shady mechanics."
Stereotypes everywhere
German strategies from the turn of the century have their own specific charm. In some, we could come across heavy and even unacceptable humor. I still how in Airline Tycoon I could hire a Middle Eastern-looking terrorist to... over-salt the food on competitor's planes. Of course, the thug was sitting in the back of the aviation fuel store.
Pizza Connection 2 is no exception and also resorts to stereotypes. Although I have to it, not as much as its predecessor, Pizza Syndicate. The logo itself is as subtle as a right hook aimed straight at the face. In the title dish, we see a knife, a gun, and a grenade. It's immediately clear that causing trouble for others will be important and probably won't be confined to simple vandalism.
As is often the case with pizza chains, in the back, we have a few "friends" whom we can use against competitors. Of course, there's nothing stopping us from having a blast - there's nothing like a good old shootout in a restaurant or a run-in with the cops. Gangsta life is, after all, an essential element of running an Italian food restaurant.
Slow pace
After coming back to the game, I don't see the graphic design or the unintuitive interface as major flaws of Pizza Connection 2. The real drama, in my opinion, is the pace of the game. Time flows mercilessly slowly, and there is no way to speed it up. When we accomplish everything we have planned, all that remains is to watch life unfold slowly. Alternatively, you can also start another game to kill time.
This is especially tricky when we're just starting to build our pizza empire. At that time, we oversee an entire restaurant, and we actually don't have much to do. Only when our business picks up and we start supervising more facilities does the game start to gain a good pace. But first, you have to get to that point.
How to play Pizza Connection 2 today?
Pizza Connection 2 can be purchased without major problems on Steam or GOG.com. The full game's price is $5.99, and it is currently on sale for about $0.59 (available in both stores).
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