Sid Meier's Railroads

[Faille]

I've been a fan of the early Tycoon games since they first came out, though I haven't keep up with the countless knockoffs that are released since. Railroad tycoon and transport tycoon were 2 of my favourites, and god knows how many hours I spent playing them.

I was looking forward to this new version but sadly, I must say that overall it's very disappointing. It seems like all they've done is implement Railroad Tycoon2 into the civ4 engine. I'm torn between what this means for the interface and subsequent track building. On one hand, its so much easier to build, with buildings and stuff molding around where you want to lay track.

The first downside to this is that you end up with some view tracks, since all the bridge and stuff are auto done, so it takes away the skill and choice about where to place that track or bridge, weighing up between cost, grade, etc.

The major negative is when you play with opponites. Because you can't cross tracks, or use other people's tracks easily like you could back in RR1, you and up with crazy rollercoaster like train tracks, with huge bridges used to cross over other tracks.

Also, the maps seem way too small, with 4 players on a map, they fill up super fast, and you have no room to move. This also results in huge bottlenecks later on that you can't do anything about. I end up with huge number of trains going into a station, which seem limited to 3 platforms, but you can't build more track to alleviate the problem, or anything.

The game seems to be effectlive sandbox mode, without much connection. All the maps have specific goals, which are nice enough to achieve, but the don't lead on from one to another, no real campaign, or anything.

The last thing, is the over emphasis on the historical era. I get the whole golden era of railroads, but it's been done to death imo. I would like to see more stuff on the modern era stuff. Like trying to build the newyork subway, or an elevated train system in a city, or having both options open and competing against each other, with extra ratings like attractiveness and pollution etc. And stuff like the bullet train, and mag trains, and monorails.

I can't really say this game is worth getting, since it's really just an visually upgraded copy of Railroad tycoon 2, with smoother interface, but nothing really new of substance, and quite a few things missing.

[CnCGOD]

I too dislike the smaller maps because its like an inch between cities and the track is 1/3 the size of a city. Havent gotten as much playtime as I'd want because of Gothic3 however.

[McCheese]

Thanks for the review, I've actually been pondering this game for the past few days.

I've been a HUGE fan of the Railroad Tycoon games since the original. I used to sit and play it for hours on my dad's Tandy 2000 computer. I read a couple reviews of this latest installment and they all seem to feel the same way about it as you. As far as I'm concerned the series died after Railroad Tycoon 2 (which really wasn't even all that great).

Personally I think Locomotion (sequel to Transport Tycoon) is THE BEST railroad game out right now. It has all the train features of Railroad Tycoon, but also adds in planes, ships, road vehicles, and trams. It's one of the few games that never leaves my harddrive.

[CnCGOD]

I loved TT way way back when.

[Kato Danzo]

Just thought I'd add a few points:

First off, saying this game is similar to RRT2 is a bit of a misnomer. RRT2 Platinum puts this game to shame, and has a lot more content. The Platinum version added quite a bit of stuff, including more maps (including some interesting user made ones) and a lot of modern (and post modern) trains. Do yourself a favor and pick up RRT2 Platinum; the graphics are looking a bit dated, but the gameplay is sound and delivers a much better railroad transportation sim.

P.S. If you can't find a copy of RRT2 Platinum just buy a copy of Dominions 3: The Awakening. You'll thank me later.

[Faille]

I played the platinum RRT2 but they all kinda suffer from that sandbox mode mentality, which has its pros and cons. I'm playing Caesar4 atm, which is in the similar vein, but has good structure in terms of campaigns and goals to work towards. I'd love to see this in the RRT games.

Also, I loved TT the most of any of them I think. The ability to switch between styles kept it a lot more fresh. Once you get bored with trains, you can play with planes, then trucks and bus' etc. Also, I loved some of the exploits you could do in it. Like when cities got so huge, you could build a string of small things like bus depots, from the centre of the city, out to the outskirts, so they keep the same terminal and catchment, but then you can delete the intermediate stuff, if you know what I mean. Also, creating long islands on the outskirts of the maps, with super long super straight tracks for the super fast bullet trains to rocket from one end of the map to the other. And sinking holes into the ground, and running huge tunnels to create a sort of subway system. well, you get the idea, I had a lot of fun 8)

I've heard of locomotion and might check that out, but looking at transport giant first, which is same sort of deal, but different company.

[Eggplant999]

Just bought this earlier tonight and played over the internet with my friend for a few hours. It seems a bit dumbed down from RRT2 and even RRT3. The interface was a big improvement though, and we didn't have a crash the whole time.

There are a few bugs in track building however, you have to build very carefully and leave plenty of room for the turns in the track and connections or else the game won't read them properly which messes up the train routes.

The stock market seems halfway gone from the few hours I played... . The whole industry section of the game seems to have been revamped, it adds a a pretty cool feature in the form of auctions that end in 30 seconds in multiplayer.