Drug Dealer Simulator 2 is, well.. shockingly accurate to the title. This sequel places you in the shoes of an up-and-coming Cartel leader, taking you from hoofing around islands to distributing tiny baggies of weed to a big-time, legitimate narcotics enterprise. Played from the first person and giving you direct control over the entire process, Drug Dealer Simulator 2 is a surprisingly intricate tycoon simulating one of life’s darkest and most intriguing capitalist fantasies.
I immediately noticed that Drug Dealer Simulator 2 has an ambitious sense of style. The creators want the game to be more than just another simulator asset flip on Steam. You can tell from the game’s narrative direction, little cinematic choices, and popping soundtrack that they want to create something more akin to Saint’s Row than Eurotrucker with crime.
As much style as the game tries to have, I would say that it is graphically unimpressive. The character models and buildings all feel like reused assets, which is fine in itself. Still, they are not implemented in a visually interesting way, with underwhelming lighting and textures and just not a very interesting set design. The gameplay does the game’s heavy lifting, but I would say that better models and set design would carry this game far.
The first thing you do in Drug Dealer Simulator 2 is create your character. While not incredibly in-depth, I appreciate that we are more than a voiceless, faceless entity like in other such titles. Picking your character adds a face to look at and a personality and voice that will follow you on your adventure and narrate the story as it unfolds. The voice acting is surprisingly good, at least with the option I went with, and it does add a lot of feeling to the game as you go on.
I was watching Breaking Bad the whole time I played through Drug Dealer Simulator 2, so my choice of character felt pretty obvious to me.
The gameplay of Drug Dealer Simulator 2 is true to the fantasy the title sells you. Your job is to grow (or cook, depending on the drug of your choice), package, and distribute illicit substances in various sections of the map. On a larger scale, you will also be managing your drug business in more intricate ways, such as buying property, hiring workers, expanding into new territory, and building a customer base and reputation as an illicit vendor.
The actual manufacturing of drugs is really in-depth, which I appreciate. A game like this should serve to be as immersive as possible since it’s a fantasy I’m sure plenty of people have thought about and (hopefully) wouldn’t try to attain in real life.
Each drug has its own production chain and required equipment, but you’ll be starting with Cannabis Indica when you first enter the lab. The production chain goes as follows:
- Grow the plant from a seed.
- Dry the leaves.
- Package the goods and hand-deliver them to your customers.
You manage every resource, from the seeds and leaves themselves to the water you need to grow them and the baggies you package them in. You package it all into amounts of your choice to help with distribution to your customers.
I love the in-depth manufacturing process, but I wish everything wasn’t done through menus. The immersion is kind of broken when there are no real animations or product handling. The entire process is completed by dragging one HUD element to another.
You’ll probably never see me saying this again, but Drug Dealer Simulator 2 has too much story.
Drug Dealer Simulator 2 wants to sell you on the narrative of becoming a drug kingpin in a small archipelago nation, going from rags to riches as your small-time dope business grows into an all-drug-encompassing criminal empire. It’s an exciting fantasy, and it could easily be sold to a player through nothing more than the game’s basic tycoon-progression mechanics and a little imagination. Drug Dealer Simulator 2, however, has an almost campaign-like story alongside it.
Unfortunately, I don’t feel like this story works very well, and at worst, it kind of gets in the way of the fun gameplay loop. I could simply chalk it up to less-than-amazing dialogue. Still, this forced story (which also sort of acts as the game’s tutorial) tries and fails to hook you on characters you won’t really be interested in, especially when they’re carryovers from a past game that (I presume) you’re supposed to know.
The story isn’t super exciting, and the characters aren’t all that intriguing, so when you have to step away from actually playing the game to talk to a character or complete some task for them, it feels more like chores than an engaging narrative.
That being said, it does serve as a good way to teach you the game’s mechanics and introduce you to the many shopkeepers. At times, it can feel like a good break between growing, packing, and delivering drugs across the islands, especially the shorter objectives.
While the narrative can feel intrusive to how I want to be playing the game at times, and I certainly think that Drug Dealer Simulator 2 could have functioned as a straightforward tycoon game with no story, it isn’t a terrible inclusion in the game, and in its better moments adds some flavor and immersion.
Since I played a beta version of the game, I ran into some bugs, glitches, and unfinished features during my time with Drug Dealer Simulator 2. None were incredibly obstructive, save for one glitch where I was unable to dismount a ladder after climbing on it, locking me to the Y axis and gloating up and down in place, even after using the game’s “emergency teleport” feature to try and unstick myself. This glitch was solved by exiting the main menu and launching the game again, and because the game saves every time you enter your safehouse, I only lost about thirty seconds of progress.
Pros:
- A unique, interesting crime fantasy simulator
- In depth production and distribution mechanics
- Detailed economy management sim for building your drug empire
Cons:
- Graphically unimpressive, with boring sets
- Characters and writing aren’t very interesting
- Menu heavy, with nearly all aspects of the game taking place in inventory screens and interacting with HUD elements
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