Bounty Train

pros: uncommon and decently presented historical scenario, good characters (meaning: at least some cheesy ones instead of none) and story lines for a business sim and rather unusual gameplay. con: rather shitty implementation of said gameplay BT consists of two elements: Business (which includes almost all the story) and random events. For business you either transport cargo on profitable routes (which are completely static within one run of the game and usually offer a handful combinations with such a high difference between buy and sell that unlimited funds are only a matter of some boring repetitions) or accept missions which require to either again transport cargo or passengers, just with more profit. And with time limits between hard and impossible (in "hard" difficulty). The random events come in "be faster than indians" and "shoot more than robbers" style with the first one beeing pure annoyance (due to track limitations and dynamic balancing of pursuers speed you will never outrun them due to speed. its more "survive to the fixed end of the always identical outrun-level") and the latter one being a mini-tactic game where your units can only move within the train and shoot at repeating volleys of a large number of enemys. A few settings require just as few strategies; rinse and repeat. In between all this you can uplevel, characters, weapons and train, But contracts are leveled up according to your train, so the game does continue mostly unchanged with higher numbers (rng-danger tops out somewhere halfway through the game). Personalised train setups are a hollow promise as well: You need a carboose (for gards), a cargo and a passenger carriage almost always and you almost never have capacity for more than three, depending on cargo more than two carriages. tl;dr: While wasting a lot of potential in inner repetitiveness, BT itself is so different from most games, that I had a couple of fun hours.

What makes this game great : - very nice graphics - mixed modes : trade, goals to achieve, gun fights - progression in time (money, territory, skills, strength, equipment) - clear interface, with a panel that reminds you of the current goals to achieve (eg: bring 20 steel to Cleveland, talk to the mayor) - you can save and load games almost anytime - related to US history - good tutorial for beginners What does not interest me but could interest other players : - you can play on the other side of law, as a bandit - details about locomotives - reports about historical events (eg: secession of West Virginia)

This is a really well balanced game. Action packed and easy to learn from the start.

It's a strategy game. It's more complex than it appears. You have to consider everything as you pick your next move. Like real trains, everything has a deadline. You have to carefully choose passengers, cargo, missions, routes, train configuration, train upgrades, etc. Trains go slower with heavier cargo so a deadline you thought you could meet can fail if you load up with steel. Minus 1 star becasue the healing skill does not work.

I love train games and had been wanting to try this for a while. Unfortunately the game has extremely repetitive "quests" and feels like a grind. I lost interest very quickly and quit.