Bounty Train

The game is in short a game where you drive your train around the early USA and you can do a mix of thigs, from simply buying cheap and selling high or take people to where they need to go(timed quests...) or find and deliver specific cargo to a town (timed quests...) or just go all out and fight bandits (who are all better than you, have cover, doesn't have a train that spontaneously combusts because someone drowned the walls in gasoline) and the latter three are something the game has to be better at. Most combat I have played in the game is as good as unbeatable, and it all depends on how everyone are bullet sponges, your train breaks, catches fire, destroys your cargo, explodes, and pretty much screws you over. The combat is played a little bit like FTL where you can move crew members to varying places, but it is unlike FTL in how the place doesn't really matter much, and the train isn't a space craft with weapons and shields, but a trashy old death trap, and this is the main reason why I refuse to even bother with the game after about ten or so restarts. However, what does make the game neater is the management skills, you have to buy your own fuel, and you can even choose how much fuel to use (you travel faster that way) and the fuel can even end up making the train so heavy your machine can't run it (Which is really bad, it would be better if it would move slower after certain weights) but buying and selling is mostly just smallwork, and there are quests to pick up, some to deliver cargo, sometimes you have to get the cargo yourself, and get it back in the specified time (as if the town would suddenly not longer need the medicine i brought? fine) or trasnport people, here you need a special cart for them, and possibly more space for their goods, also here, time sensitive and you can get a quest you cannot finish in time. So, in short the game is okay at what makes it its own game, but it sucks at combat and quest design.

Bounty Train was on my wishlist for some time. The concept of shooting from a moving train held my attention, but poor reviews held me back from actually buying it. Until a huge discount convinced me to at least try it. BT is a collection of ideas: exploring the dangerous Wild West where there are bandits and Native Americans, shoot-outs, train raids with mounted Gatling guns, disturbing businessmen, and history. BT tries its best to immerse you into this world with a charming GUI, nicely drawn faces and old train and gunshot sounds, and bringing Lincoln to his Inauguration. However, many bugs draw you away from the experience, such as frozen enemies during shoot-outs, or a huge info message about the use of the train horn that does not disappear until you restart the game. Bugs may not necessarily be game-breaking, but there is another, bigger, issue with BT. They forgot to put in an interesting and lasting game experience. At some point in the Wild West expansion, a huge fetch quest DLC, you think you are almost done. Then a new mission appears “bring 10 jeans”, “bring 30 crates of denim to make 10 jeans”, “bring 150 crates of cotton to Mr. Levi to make 30 crates of denim”. While you mindlessly train around the East Coast scavenge every station for a tuft of cotton, you are constantly interrupted by raiders. Fights that drag on, and have become so extremely boring: stop the train, sit behind a Gatling gun and wait till all enemies are dead, that I really didn’t care anymore about the historical figure of Mr. Levi. BT sometimes cannot refrain from putting some moral label on things. Killing Natives is clearly not very nice. Stories about an escaped black man and cruel businessmen have clear good and evil characters. Yet, for some reason Natives are all depicted as in the Tintin novels. And how many slaves were at work in the cotton fields to make Mr. Levi a famous man? BT is not a bad game. It is a boring game.

This is a great mix of RPG, financial sim, and train lore. It's not hard to learn to make money, but it's also not hard to be caught off guard by unexpected expenses. My best advice is to use self control, take your time, and save your money. Save more than you think you need before beginning the next part of your mission. I lost a game because I thought I had enough saved to complete one of the more complex missions, but fell a few bucks short. You're always balancing train weight with train space and coal use - it's tricky, but not onerous, with a little practice. You can make money pretty quickly, but a couple of ill-planned loads can also doom your game. Perfect! The game is pretty, and the UI is pretty intuitive. Screens flow quickly and smoothly. Overall, a pleasure to play!

Wild west spin off for Jagged Alliance + Uncharted Waters lovers.. with trains! Agreed and I could not understand the negative reviews. Being a fan of trading games (Uncharted Waters) and also unit and team tactical Jagged Alliance; Bounty train came as a surprise to be the marriage of both in a wild west setting. Love the learnings on history and geography (US). The game is not rushed, i.e. real time, but has the tactical mode to make it feel so. There are quite alot of elements of it such as trains, citys, random events. I have played worse games that scored a 4 (bad story line etc), and if those can score a 4, this is a firm 5. I would ignore some of the negative reviews because I have seen a 1 star given because they cant save properly, or some other very small issues for such a big game. Wish the DLCs keep coming to give more side quests; or jumping off the train for more tactical play. or improvements to visuals for lower machine requirements (some elements can be reduced). I am playing with a lower spec laptop, and it was not happy at all, expecting a high performance machine. Well done

The game uses a really nice idea, but unfortunately, fails badly at delivery. At start, it goes really nice, but then the requirements for new quests become ridiculously high (extreme amounts of money, way more than you can make in the alotted time, or demand to haul more cargo than the best available engine can pull) and the story becomes unplayable.