The perfect game without donations in 2023! Review of Pocket City 2 in the App Store, which is worth every ruble

Closer to the weekend I was reading The Verge and came across a big rarity: they made a review of the game for a smartphone.

This genre almost died out as soon as mobile gaming moved to the free-to-play model. Others don’t make them, and we don’t, simply because there aren’t many games in the App Store that are worth the time spent writing text. People download for free, try it themselves, sit down on the next “milking” or check in 5 minutes. Why write a review for this?

So, yes, I was very surprised. Read and download. The first five minutes were not delayed, I decided to give another chance for 5 minutes. And then it began…

Today is Monday, two days have passed and I left in Pocket City 2 16 hours of real time over the weekend. So far, this is the best 450 rubles that I will receive in the App Store in 2023.

What is Pocket City 2

This is a city builder in simple 3D and isometric perspective by default. Or, rather, a city-building arcade simulator.

You build a city from scratch on a limited area (up to 72×72 squares). Zoning it on commercial, industrial and residential blocks. Plans roads, traffic. Solving the problems of residents and employees.

In addition, he builds relationships with important people who can influence the atmosphere. Balances recruitment and expenses. Research and implement new technologies. Tourists are invited and compete with other cities. And further Very A lot of everything.

At any time, you can switch to first-person mode and walk, drive, fly around the built city. Although the graphics are simple, the cities have charm – many buildings can be enteredfind some goodies like points for leveling up the tech tree, a new quest, clothes for your mayor avatar, and so on.

By the way, there are quests here in the style of games with the selection of the world, like GTA: you had to find such and such an object in the city, send the car to the impound lot. There is nothing complicated in them, it takes about 30 seconds to complete. This was done here only for the sake of a variety of gameplay.

Pocket City 2 is not Sim City, and certainly not Cities: Skylines (those who played understood everything here). But the gameplay is still deep enough to be interesting and at least it was little head. True, even at the expert level, the complexity does not reach the point where you have to make Excel spreadsheets for at least some success.

If you do not go very deep, then this is all you need to know about the gameplay. The logical question is why the game caused both The Verge and me to have such delight?

An exciting game without donations, ads and timers that you don’t want to turn off

Pocket City 2 is made with love, attention to detail, respect for the player with a small device and a complete lack of monetization. There are only a few such projects on iOS and Android in modern times.

Buildings are built in a matter of minutes second. Decisions and changes from the city are almost returned. You can pause, speed up time. The game gently hints at what to do next, but never forces anything. In fact, you set the goals, and it will take you a maximum of 30 seconds to solve each one. But the targets for each hour are several hundred, if not more. There won’t even be a millisecond when you have “nothing to do”.

One task to obtain others, new technologies or large construction projects are forced to turn to the changed in the city. Even after 10 o’clock I went to cool mechanics and chips, I didn’t speak before. At the same time, there is no stress, the goal can always be adapted to pause or close the game, which then continues with the same place.

It will take at least 12 hours of real game time before you look at your city and decide: that’s it, there’s nothing else to do. True, for a couple of hours they will sit and distribute everything in the world, correcting the mistakes of building and planning made in the first hours. On a different level of difficulty, with a different terrain. And so on up to 16 times (only cities can be built in one account).

No one forbids you to create everything that is required within the framework of the implementation of the possibilities of the current version of Pocket City 2. After all, developers do not need to sell you all sorts of “crystals” for each case.

Here you can even find your cities on the Internet to play them. You can share the city with another player so that you can solve problems together for the public online. You can develop progress and order it (5 autosaves per city, plus up to 15 manual saves).

Pocket City 2 is worth every ruble out of 449

Pocket City 2 is a breath of fresh air and a reminder that mobile games can be great without frantic monetization strategies crammed into the gameplay.

The last time I fell for a mobile game like this was 12 years ago. japanese studio Kyrosoft came out for iOS a number of cool “sims” – Mega Mall Story, Hot Springs Story, Game Dev Story and so on. They happened with the same love and attention to detail as Pocket City 2 did in 2023.

The developers promise to evaluate the game in the coming months, fixing bugs (there are not many of them, but they still exist) and optimizing performance. The latter is especially important because I drained the iPhone 13 Pro Max in aggregate 6 times for the past weekend. I can’t break away. As a result, the cable stretched.

PS Sometimes you readers ask us to review cool games without internal monetization. We would love to, but there are few of them in the store, and everyone has to look with a magnifying glass, littering around and to the left. Plus, people are buying less and less in the Russian App Store due to difficulties with replenishing their account. But if you buy something yourself and also be impressed, as I am with this game, do not be greedy! Send me a tip to the mail indicated just below and to the main page of the site.