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Good Game

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 10 / 13
Date: June 28, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This game is fun, dont expect a highly detailed take months to figure out game, it is challenging at times but all in all it is pretty easy. But for the money it is good fun. I recommend it!!!!

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!

Nice Budget Game

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 15 / 15
Date: July 15, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Nice game! It's quite easy to master but gives some real cruise feeling. There are many options and different ships, and they are built after real Carnival ships. You can build guest rooms, bars, shops, theaters, pools, and more. You can cruise the Caribbean, travel to Alaska or Hawaii. The game comes without a manual but with a tutorial that teaches you the basic functionality. Once you have found out how to generate some money, it's fun to advance on your way and become a mighty tycoon. If you don't expect a hardcore tycoon game for genre experts, you'll have lots of fun with Carnival Cruise Line Tycoon.

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.

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. (...)

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.

Okay

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 6 / 7
Date: December 27, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I really, really wanted this game for Christmas. When I saw it at the store, I got excited because the cover photo looked like a fun cruise ship with all kinds of amenities. I wanted to make a ship like that. However, there's no sunshine in the actual game and it looks like it's always night. On the main menu, you can select INSTANT ACTION which brings you straight to the larger ships and you can choose which one you want to build on. If you click on START CAREER, you are given a pathetic four-deck ferry to show the people at Carnival that you can actually handle a ship. Forty thousand dollars (twice as much as I started with), twenty booked guestrooms and seven days later, Carnival had still not handed me a real ship. I finally got bored and went to INSTANT ACTION and chose the biggest ship possible. Although there are many negatives to this game, there are just as many positives. I like how you can design your route and also think that the amenities, which include a swimming pool, shuffleboard and basketball courts, shops, bars, restaurants, a spa and a fitness center are really awesome. Another thing I like is that there are three levels of guest rooms: blue, yellow and red. (These colors are the main decoration in the guest rooms) Inside these levels there are three different kinds of rooms, (for example, in the blue level there is an Economy Stateroom, a Superior Stateroom and a Standard Suite.) I have not had this game for long and am still working on cheats and stuff like that, but I think it's pretty much worth it.

I have to contradict my earlier review of this game...

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 5 / 7
Date: December 27, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I reviewed this game earlier. I gave it three stars and named two negatives, one I fixed just now after a little experimenting with the options menu. I complained that the front cover of this game shows a sunny ship filled with amenities and that, in the actual game, it seemed like it was always nighttime. However, in the left panel (NOT THE RIGHT!) of the OPTIONS menu, there should be a bar that is smaller than the others, that says something about lighting. Keep pressing the plus button and the bar will become much longer. Then play your game. Although there still isn't really the brilliant sunshine shown on the cover, I'm sure there's a way to do that too. (Possibly CTRL, SHIFT, K) Because the lighting is much better, it became much more enjoyable to play. Definitely worth the money:)

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.

Fun

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: January 21, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This game is alot of fun. It could use some more features for food, drink, entertainment and such, but it is still great. I also wish it had a staff/building management feature beyond what it does have, like why the staff is not happy, or directing repair men to fix certain things. Overall, this game is alot of fun, especially if you are a cruiser. It is a great concept and hopefully upgrades will follow to fix these few small details

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