Big Ambitions appears initially like the ultimate business sim: a deep and dynamic sandbox where you can choose your own path to success. However, it falls short, instead feeling linear and repetitive as you're forced into a specific progression route.
For example, your first business can be a gift shop or gym, but not a clothing store. That requires business courses, a headquarters, warehouse, purchasing agent, and logistics manager... for no logical reason. These progression gates weren't in the earlier builds but were added later, probably just to force you to progress slower. It used to be you could start with a small clothing store and sell cheap clothes in it, adding the headquarters, warehouse, and supply chains later to grow your textile empire. Requiring all that corporate infrastructure first makes no sense. Theres less requirements to open a law firm then a small clothing shop.
They also added some weird systems like having to manage your hunger and energy, which detracts from the tycoon experience rather than adding to it. It feels like they tried to merge a tycoon game with a life-sim but gave up halfway through.
I think the developer had Big Ambitions when they made this game but the result feels lacking. I wish I could give it a neutral review. It's not terrible, and people who enjoy this genre can probably get their money's worth, but it just feels like they had a great idea and went off the rails somewhere along the way.
EDIT: I appreciate the developers response but it doesn't really address the issues that I raised. I know the game is still in early access and I'll revisit my review when the game fully launches but for now I can't give the game a full endorsement.
