PC Building Simulator 2 Review – A Practically Perfect Sequel

Getting Started

The initial presentation for PC Building Simulator 2 is nice and clean with a straightforward interface getting you right into the action. – Of course, though, I think it goes without saying that should you choose to start with the career mode, you’re going to have a tutorial to go through which, for those of you familiar with the original, will feel like a bit of a slog when you just want to get into, you know, actually playing the game.

The initial tutorial covers the first few days of you running your office and essentially introduces you to the basics of some of the jobs you’ll have to complete. This ranges from overclocking, to custom loops, to replacing damaged parts, and even things as basic as configuring RGB lights and cleaning PCs.

As a tutorial, it does have its problems. – It tends to too often hold your hand too tightly, but then, when you actually need help in knowing what it wants you to do, it’ll disappear without a trace! – You’ll be scratching your head more than once wondering, through your impatience of skipping the really basic stuff, what important thing you accidentally missed!

Like the original PC Building Simulator, your own in-game system represents the central hub of your operation, and, somewhat amusingly, represents your first actual job by you having to install an Nvidia 3080 into it to, you know, actually get some graphics on the display. From this, you can check your email for jobs, claim your money for the successful completion of tasks, as well as purchase the parts necessary to keep your business going.

You also have the option here to control the in-game music and at this point, I do hit only a personal complaint. The tracks in the game aren’t very good. Well, more accurately, they’re not very good for a musical dinosaur like me who thinks 90% of anything released after 1999 is terrible. Fortunately, though, you can access a pretty solid number of internet radio stations or even music from your actual PC’s storage drive.

Having chosen to peruse the internet stations on offer, this vastly improved my experience of the game. Albeit, I do wish that you were able to control this from outside of the PC which you can do via tablet, but not until later in the career mode when you’ve unlocked it (and subsequently purchased it).

For the moment though, Absolute 70’s will do nicely thank you!

What Kind of Jobs Will I Do?

PC Building Simulator 2 hasn’t necessarily extended the tasks you will be required to do to maintain your repair shop. PCs do, after all, tend to have the exact same requirements, requests, and problems that they did when the original title launched.

The overall interface, however, is certainly nicer and slicker and with the tutorials, your hand is very tightly held through the initial jobs.

A very basic task (and one you can expect to see often) is fixing PCs whose owners have clearly decided to download some extra RAM. – It’s an easy job, but it doesn’t pay well. – There is, however, sometimes an element of oversimplification. Removing viruses from a PC isn’t always as simple as having a good program ready to run from a USB stick and PC Building Simulator 2 does tend to make the overall process of diagnosis and repair a bit more streamlined than the reality usually is.

Custom loop cooling is also on show here and while the very light basics are covered in regard to how it is done, PC Building Simulator 2 does lack the detail necessary to allay the (quite right) fears of those doing it for the first time in the real world. – Put simply, for this particular task, PC Building Simulator 2 is not a particularly good representation in terms of learning how to do it. It’s more a case of being shown how the overall concept works (which still isn’t bad).

In this universe though, everything just works if you click on point A and then point B. I wish actual custom loop setups were that easy!

You can also get into the remits of case customisation. – In the image below, the owner of this case wanted it painted red. I somehow suspect though that the job I did below wasn’t quite good enough to satisfy their needs. – They didn’t get on my particularly good side though when they asked for the tempered glass to be painted as well (what heresy is this?!?!).

Upon completion of your first day though, you get to name your company and, although a bit more handholding is seen over the next few days, you’re pretty much on your own to start growing your PC-building empire which, quite honestly, is a lot easier said than done.

A key mechanic in this title is being smart when it comes to buying components. You’re in an office that requires the rent to be paid. And, quite frankly, you’re not going to make much profit if you keep getting every customer the components you would like rather than those cheaper ones that do the job well enough.

Although the economy in PC Building Simulator 2 is a lot more forgiving in terms of the money you make for doing your job, I daresay that a few players are going to fall foul of having a huge inventory of stock they can’t use and no one wants!

Keep progressing though and you’ll start to unlock access to better hardware and even the ability to make your office fancier (and more attractive to potential customers who, during my playthrough at least, always seemed to just post their systems rather than walking through the door).

Gameplay Thoughts

Overall, PC Building Simulator 2 plays a lot like the original, but with general improvements to the overall mechanics, feel, and general level of detail. While this might, in some respects, sound like a complaint, it really isn’t. Yes, this sequel is essentially just a fresh coat of paint, but it’s quite a thick one which (unlike Overwatch 2) genuinely makes you feel like you’re doing something new.

As noted above, the level of attention to detail has certainly been improved. – You can, for example, now manually apply the thermal paste as you can see below. I was clearly inspired by a video I remember seeing on YouTube a couple of years ago which showcased a similar methodology (I’m pretty sure it was briefly sponsored by Capital One until it was removed).

Overall, I like how PC Building Simulator 2 plays. It’s both (somehow) both familiar, yet new. And for a game like this, it’s a smart choice. I do, however, think it would be nice if you could choose to skip the initial tutorial as, if you’ve played the original, there are really only about half a dozen new things you need to learn.

In terms of the graphics and detail, well, look at that image below. Tell me that, at a glance, you might not fail to notice that it isn’t actually the real thing!