User Reviews (1 - 11 of 20)

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First time I returned a game!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 9 / 21
Date: July 14, 2004
Author: Amazon User

What a disappointment! I own tons of sim and adventure type games from when I started gaming 10 years ago and I must say, this is the first one I ever took back to the store. Can you say, L-A-M-E? Among other complaints with the game, there is a constant demand for more restaurants, entertainment, shops, etc, which was ridiculous because there wasn't enough room on the ship to place these items. Because you aren't 'filling the need' your reputation goes down constantly. It just plain old wasn't fun! This is just my short opinion given in hopes of saving someone else the the same misadventure that I experienced. HTH!

Ugh

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 8 / 9
Date: March 13, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Let me sum up this game in one sentence: this game is horrible. What a rip off. Don't believe anything on the product descrpition. "Carnival Cruise Tycoon is so close to the real thing--you'll think you are actually on-board," What a lie!! First of all, when you start sailing, you only fill in a few decks. The rest are all empty! It gets really annoying when the waiters at the resturants get stuck between tables and can't serve anyone. It's so hard to describe how bad this game is. It's just a badly made game. Please don't buy. It's for your own good. A waste of money.

What?

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 5 / 13
Date: October 11, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Stupid game is a big copy of CrShTycoon. I mean they waste alot of money using a name brand. (...)

Does Not Work

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 4 / 20
Date: January 07, 2005
Author: Amazon User

When I try to build a room on the ship, it crashes my Windows 2000 Computer. Looked at their site for maybe some updates or FAQs, but there are none. This is being returned.

More of a chore than a game...

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 4
Date: September 19, 2006
Author: Amazon User

The game isn't worth even $8 bucks used. If you are looking for a similar game, just better, look into Cruise Ship Tycoon.

This one is very, very limited and only includes out-dated graphcics and a "few" sound effects. I forced myself to play for more than 5 minutes.

Still got 98? This is probably for you.

Vast Potential, but Someone Dropped the Ball

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 28 / 29
Date: July 14, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Being a fan of simulation games, such as Theme Hospital and Age of Empires for instance, I saw this game and had to have it. I like traveling, I like vacationing on cruise ships, I thought the game would be awesome. Boy was I wrong.

Cruise Line Tycoon is a simple game. The player starts with a small ship. The player must design the ship from the ground up, set pricing, and make enough money to purchase the next larger ship. Once captaining the next ship, a captain for the smaller ship must be hired. This cycle occurs until the largest ship is obtained (about 6 ships total I think).

The problem is the game is overly simplistic. All the components of the ships are pre-designed. Nothing can be customized. Changes in the overall ship design can be made based on passenger feedback, but it seems that no matter what is done, the passengers would complain about the same things over and over again. As other reviewer's have complained, the screen seems eternally dark. Despite another reviewer's suggestion on how to fix the issue, I was never able to remedy this. Also, the game became even more annoying as it seemed to run as slow as molasses in January when it is run along with even a single other windows application. This was happening despite running the game on a 2.2 GHz PC with 128 MB of RAM (where only 64 MB of RAM and a 500MHz CPU are required)

The game could have definitely benefited from some additions. Disasters and obstacles such as hurricanes, a dockworker's union strike, maybe a case of Legionnaires disease on board, on board crime sprees, corrupt foreign governments, economic downturns, etc. The possibilities could have been endless, and I think it would have made the game awesome. At the very least, I think allowing the player to make their own cruise routes would have made the game tolerable.

I recommend staying away from this game. It is entertaining for only a short while. Save your $20 and go buy something else.

Way too simple...

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 19 / 23
Date: June 28, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This game is great fun for about three hours, until you realize that you have purchased every item available, bought every ship, and no longer have anything else to do except repeat the game. It seems more like a advertisement for carnival ships quickly thrown together into a video game. Don't get me wrong its fun for a little while, but just is way too simple and doesn't hold your attention once you've done everthing. Its the sort of game you play once then sell or put away for a year till you are interested in playing again.

Needs some work

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 6 / 8
Date: June 20, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This is a really good idea for a simulation game, but there are so many things that could be so much ebtter about it. It's very limited in the types of objects you can purchase and it would be better if you could choose your route. Anyway, it's a pretty easy game so it would be good for kids, but it doesn't take long to master it (like three hours or less.)

Why bother?

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 2 / 7
Date: December 10, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This game is an overal dumb idea, The model ship on the cover of this game is an illistration, and not something you can actually make. You can't customize anything, for example, there is one pool, and you can have one sized ship. I trully beleive that who ever made this game could have done better.

If You Own Cruise Ship Tycoon, You Own This Game

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 18 / 22
Date: July 19, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Originally this game was supposed to be named "Cruise Ship Tycoon 2". The original developer, Cat Daddy games was switched out for Artex software, which I imagine had something to do with the reason the name was changed to Cruise Line Tycoon: Island Hopping 2005. Isn't Carnival also a cruise company?
Name aside, this game looks and acts pretty much like its predecessor. Some bugs have been fixed and game play is a little ironed out, but it still suffers with some glaring omissions which should be standard tycoon fair by now (like staff and building management for example).

If you are unfamiliar with the aforementioned predecessor Cruise Ship Tycoon, here's a brief sum up. A 2 and a half to 3 star budget tycoon where you set up a ship in a zoo tycoon/sims manner, plopping down cabins for your customers and amenities etc for them to enjoy. You also had to set the course of the ship on a map, to avoid rocks and random weather occurrences. It could have been much better, but was entertaining for a while.
One of the biggest problems that plagued the first cruise ship tycoon were guests that were never pleased. You could plop down 10000 benches and they would still complain that there weren't enough. This has been toned down a bit in cruise line tycoon, although there are ALWAYS complaints. The important thing to remember is that the percentage of complaints does not represent, for example, that 25% of the people are complaining about the food. It means 25% of the complainers are. And thank god, benches only need to be placed outside on the deck now.

It's nice to not have set down 10 food places on a tiny ship and have them still complain, but control over these buildings has NOT improved. It would be awful nice if we could do something as simple as set the price, or see how much money it had made, or even how many visitors had been there. But no. You see the condition and the value when you sell it, any guests that are in there at the moment, and any staff that works there. You can't even cycle through the buildings, but have to find them one by one and click on them. The staff management isn't any better. No information can be gained on them individually from any screen unless you zoom all the way in and click on the constantly moving employee. And then you get barely any information, and can't manage salary or raises in any manner. Did I mention they also get stuck in the pre-designed buildings? You would think since they made the object, they would've made sure the little waiters etc wouldn't get caught in between the benches they placed!

Getting back on a positive track, the silly thing where you had to constantly sway around a rock every time you took a certain route and calculate how many supplies you needed then (risking running out and having to be towed in) has been removed. Now you just see your boat moving from place to place and can upgrade places where you have ports, so you have more routes available.
There are several other various improvements/changes. An upgrade button is now on cabins, so instead of deleting a cheap one to add an expensive, you now just click on a button. View rotation is also improved. People are a bit easier to please (especially the cheap classers).

Hitting a sour note however, is challenge mode. Exact same challenges as Cruise Ship Tycoon as far as I can see. Which takes a lot of the fun and meaning of "sequel" out of this game.

It's a fun game for a while, but ultimately has too many game play issues and too little management capabilities to be of long lasting value. Basically, even with the improvements, if you own Cruise Ship Tycoon, you own Carnival Lines Tycoon.

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