Milk Empire 2

Start your first game of Milk Empire 2 and you're greeted by some fairly lavishly drawn images of a buxom milkmaid pondering her future. The topic might not be exactly thought provoking, but the clean lines and tasteful colouring prepare you for a game filled with good looks and crisp presentation.

Five minutes later, you'll be cursing at you phone and jabbing haplessly at buttons as untidy menus clutter the screen. Milk Empire 2 isn't a bad strategy game, but it seems completely devoid of any desire to introduce you gently.

Of course, you can't tug on udders wearing kid gloves, and that is the very purpose of Milk Empire 2. You star as the aforementioned maid, who has inherited a flailing dairy farm, a dwindling stock of cows, and debts as deep as a sea of the white stuff. Not content with just saving her family's bone-strengthening legacy, the erstwhile heroine decides she's going to become a milk producing legend, and sets out to take over numerous farms across the game's world map.

What this involves is managing a staggeringly wide range of considerations, and if you're looking for a thoroughly immersive and complex empire-building game this could be the one for you. Every last detail has to be monitored and managed, from research and farmyard facilities to staff morale and merchant relationships. First and foremost, however, comes milk production, and the subsequent processing into foodstuffs like butter and cheese.

To make lactose-rich liquid by the gallon, you'll need to simultaneously milk multiple cattle, send the produce to the factory, and process it into various by-products. This takes the form of a rhythm-based mini-game where the first six buttons of the number-pad handle individual cows, leaving the final four numbered buttons to processing. Well-timed presses are required at a dizzying rate, and more often than not you'll underperform as your fingers tangle with one another.

Sadly, this tends to feel rather ungainly and is always frustrating, meaning that success in the strategy elements of the game is often based on more than a little luck.

Fortunately, the rest of the game, while complex and perhaps a touch intimidating, is well-balanced, multifaceted and involving. It's certainly not for a mobile phone owner looking for an introduction to strategy games, but Milk Empire 2 offers an incredibly vast experience.

There are however, faults in the strategy elements that are painful to endure considering the potential Milk Empire 2 contains. The menus you have to navigate are both bland and unclear, and the interface is far from instinctive.

Milk Empire 2 is defined to a certain extent by unfulfilled promise, then, thanks to some questionable design and a lack of continuity in the control system. If you're not intimidated by pages of text and number, though, you might feel like the cat that got the cream if you do pick this up.