Jane's Realty 2 Review
Realty Gone Easy - Jane’s Realty 2 Review
It’s extremely rare to find a realty game. I mean, who wants to play a realtor and go through the pangs of buying and selling property, moving in tenants, keeping up the appearances of a house and taking developmental steps to upkeep the property and raise its value? Well, if Jane’s Realty 2 is anything to go by, a lot of people might actually want to play as a realtor, because Realore Studios has done a darn fine job of making the game extremely accessible and yet conveniently fun enough for a majority of casual gamers to pick up and play without any confusing menus or overly complicated gameplay. keep reading to find out how the rest of the game’s features breakdown in this Jane’s Realty 2 review.
Concept (5 out of 5)
If Sim City was combined with Diner Dash you would probably get something close to Jane’s Realty 2. It’s a mixture of time management, home decoration and city management. I can readily say that the concept is a unique blend of multiple genres and it works really well.
What’s more is that gamers who have been craving something similar to, yet not as complex as some of the later Sim City games, then Jane’s Realty sort of fits into that bill. Players micromanage the upkeep of homes, ensuring that tenants are always occupying the space while at the same time using the funds and manpower to acquire more resources to make bigger and better homes and buildings.
The concept is simple yet effective and will manage to hold the interest of just about any gamer looking for a mildly strategic element to the whole time management gameplay model.
Gameplay (4 out of 5)
It’s hard to say that there’s anything wrong with the gameplay. There’s no obvious, faltering glitches; no cumbersome controls to master; no GUI that ruins the experience or any sort of overly complicated methods for achieving any of the goals in the game. I did, however, have to restart a stage or two because I couldn’t find or acquire a required mission item and I wasn’t sure if I had messed up or what, but other than that the game is extremely streamlined to offer a seamless gameplay experience.
Primarily, players will start off with the task of building simple things like homes and getting tenants in the homes. This eventually evolves into adding parking garages that require close monitoring in order to retrieve cash and resource buildings for mining or managing railroad resources. It’s nice that the game slowly evolves with bigger and more engaging tasks that include repairing roads, building neighborhoods and managing disasters and repairs all while trying to keep tenants happy.
Realore did a fantastic job of keeping things accessible while maintaining a high level of fun-factors and that’s one of the shining points for the gameplay of Jane’s Realty 2.
Graphics And Sound (3 out of 5)
The score isn’t 3 out of 5 because the visuals or animations are an eye-sore or just not up to par. In fact, the graphics for this game are quite adequate to be a budget-priced title, similar to Serpent of Isis or Ricochet Infinity. And visually, most gamers who enjoy these kind of strategy-oriented management games won’t have much to fuss or complain about with the graphical aesthetics. Instead, the reason this game receives a 3 is because the graphics carry the game more than the music and the load should have been equally balanced.
The sound effects are quite good and the ambient effects from performing a single (or multiple) tasks are all handled well. The problem, however, comes in with the simplistic…and possibly, overly simplistic soundtrack. While the game obviously isn’t geared toward winning any sort of musical awards, the soundtrack could have used a slightly deeper variety of instrumental tracks to help keep the pace moving and gamers interested. Otherwise, the graphics and audio are fairly decent.
Replay Factor (4 out of 5)
What makes a game like this re-playable and is a game like this worth replaying? For time management fans there’s an additional expert mode to raise the difficulty and there are more than 30 levels to conquer, so I can’t imagine anyone getting bored too quickly with Jane’s Realty 2. While it doesn’t sport all the fancy-schmancy modes and options found in most of Will Wright’s titles like Spore or The Sims, this civil-management strategy game still manages to offer enough variety in its gameplay and just high enough stress factors to keep most casual gamers glued to their seats.
In other words, this isn’t a short walk through the park like the unspeakably short campaign offered in games like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 or the original Assassin’s Creed.
Overall (4 out of 5)
This game will be popular in the casual community for a reason and it’s well deserved of the praise that it will undoubtedly receive amongst most critics. Nevertheless, Jane’s Realty isn’t necessarily a groundbreaking experience and isn’t a DirectX 11 contender for best visual/audio experience, but it will keep most casual gamers and fans of time management very well entertained, and probably up until the third installment of the game arrives.
All in all, anyone who remotely enjoyed the first game or wanted a less hardware-dependent version of Sim City might find some decent enjoyment in Jane’s Realty 2, and it’s definitely worth checking out.
This post is part of the series: Top Time-Management PC Games
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