Industria 2 Review (PC)

Back in 2022, the original Industria crossed my desk, and I found it to be a short, but promising title. Invoking the likes of Half Life 2 and Bioshock, there was a lot to like about it, even if it fell short in other aspects. So when the sequel was up for checking out, I was keen to see what lessons may have been learned and implemented. Unfortunately, Industria 2 feels like a step backwards, or at the very least perhaps like it is standing still while the world moves around it.

Industria set up a world of intrigue, with time travel and world ending consequences in among the grand speeches. Industria 2 feels flat in comparison, with a plot that relies on the player having memory of the original game (although we get a short opening explainer), and is one that is about as by the numbers as it can be; an obvious betrayal that takes a while to come, a commupance, and not much in the way of intrigue or interest. I certainly remember being more invested in the original, but here it was just not engaging much at all.

The same can be said of the moment to moment gameplay. Returning protagonist Nora gets access to a limited arsenal of standard weapons such as a shotgun or submachine gun, all of which can be upgraded with resources dropped from downed Atlas enemies. These then go into our backpack, with two equippable at a time, along with up to three items such as bandages or pipe bombs.

Combat is weak though, with just a couple of enemy types through the whole game that are not fun to fight as they shamble towards us slowly. At least one of them has a shogun of their own, while the other relies on melee attacks, but once we suss out the bare minimum movement required to stay out of danger, each combat area becomes more of a chore than an exciting fight. There are only a few times where the challenge ups a little, and that’s more to do with having half a dozen come at us at once than anything else. We do get to fight human enemies later in the game, but these are only barely more interesting, mainly because they seem to have superhuman senses to detect us and are a bit more accurate with their shots. 

Finally, there are a couple of boss fights across the campaign; the first of these is tricky at points but ultimately simple enough, while the final boss fight is one of the most underwhelming I’ve played in a long time. Each of these feel forced into existence, seemingly acknowledged by there being a drop chute in each that replenishes ammo constantly, as outside of these fights ammo is pretty scarce. 

The guns don’t make combat feel any better, with weak impact and slooowwwww animations and reloads. The inventory also makes life more awkward than anything else too. Nora’s holster is a physical item which must be unfurled every time we want to change the guns in our quick access slots, move items, or craft ammo or healing supplies. In theory this is a nice way to present a menu, and it does look pretty good initially. However, with the limited ammo, bullet sponge enemies, and handful of slots to quick access things, we often need to open it up mid-fight. 

Not only is this slow and cumbersome, it also requires us to be standing, not crouched, and away from any walls or objects that’ll block Nora opening it. Trying to crouch behind a box but needing to open the holster to get out our silenced weapon then is impossible, for example. I wrote in my original review that I found myself overloaded with weapons and ammo by the end of the game, but Industria 2 goes too far the other way, with stingy ammo counts and an awkward UI that makes quickly getting out of danger a pain. 

Industria 2 is a fairly linear game, which is fine by me, but one of the things I liked about the original was the open environments and brightness to it. We spend far too long in dingy corridors or generic looking metallic structures here, made worse by an all too brief stint outside to get our hopes up before going back underground again. It’s not the most technically proficient game, and the repetition and blandness of the environments do not help, only hidden by a terrible flashlight that refuses to illuminate much of anything.

Conclusion

There is still a spark of what made Industria intriguing in some of the settings and lore we can find, but the package as a whole just misses the mark for me. It is technically average at best, with slow, plodding, and uninteresting gunplay and a story that feels like a step backwards from the original in almost every regard.

This game was tested and reviewed on PC (via Steam). All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by the publisher.