Mega Mall Story 2

Genre: Management Simulation

Players: 1

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Review:

Without a doubt the most prolific developer and publisher of Management Simulation games on Nintendo Switch is Kairosoft, who specializes in games with a retro-style isometric pixel art style, often with the word “Story” in the title. As of this writing, Kairosoft has released 61 games on Nintendo Switch, most of them Management Simulations.

After their earlier games, Kairosoft had established a few templates for their Simulation games that later games would largely follow. Game Dev Story established a Simulation-style game more focused on managing employee time and focus, Hot Springs Story established a Simulation style in line with Theme Park Simulators where you try to cater to guests’ tastes to maximize attendance and income, and Epic Astro Story established a Simulation style akin to games like Sim City, where you’re building out a town or settlement. And then there’s a template that has you managing not employees but members of a sports team, something we first saw in Grand Prix Story.

Mega Mall Story 2 originally released on mobile devices in 2019, then received a port to Nintendo Switch in 2021, then to PC and PlayStation 4 in 2023, then to Xbox One in 2025. And much like the original Mega Mall Story, this is a game that’s probably closest to the Hot Springs Story template, arranging and managing a locale to attract guests and make larger and larger profits through sales, though due to its side-scrolling perspective the closest points of comparison are going to be games like Sim Tower and Project Highrise.

The original Mega Mall Story remains to this day one of my favorite games from Kairosoft, so I was curious to see how this sequel followed up its predecessor. As it turns out, it’s mostly pretty similar, and while there’s no major change here to truly shake things up, there are a lot of smaller ones.

For a few examples, there are now specific goals you can complete to attract more customers, different shops can now get a few different type of upgrades players need to choose between after spending the points to get them, and in addition to up and out, you can now also build down, constructing a part of your mall underground.

However, overall this is very similar to the first game, which is to say that it’s a fantastic entry into the genre. It’s not without its issues – prices are still automatically raised as you raise a store’s level and cannot be independently manipulated. There’s still not much employee management outside of employing floor managers. It’s not clear what the best way to earn non-cash resources is. And it’s also not clear what criteria you need to reach to access specific shop types you need to complete beneficial “combos”. Still, despite all of these issues, this is a really delightful game.

As I mentioned above, this game makes use of Kairosoft’s signature presentation style using simple retro-styled pixel art visuals (in this game with a side-scrolling view), paired with chiptune music that’s pretty repetitive and gets annoying quickly, along with simple sound effects. For the most part, except the music everything about this presentation is really endearing, though by this point we’ve seen more or less the same thing in numerous other Kairosoft games.

Overall, I think Mega Mall Story 2 is a solid follow-up to the first game, and an overall excellent Management Simulation that’s not just one of the better games on offer from Kairosoft, but one of the better games in the genre on Nintendo Switch. If you’re a fan of this genre and don’t mind the simple presentation or a bit of “Kairosoft jank”, you should definitely check this one out.

tl;dr – Mega Mall Story 2 is a Management Simulation where players build and manage a growing shopping mall. This is a solid follow-up to one of the best Kairosoft games in the genre, one that doesn’t dramatically change the formula, but adds enough to that formula to make for a good successor. If you’re a fan of Management Simulation titles who isn’t put off by some of Kairosoft’s eccentricities, you should definitely check this one out.

Grade: B+

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