Railway Empire

I want to keep this short. If you like Trains, developing optimal Railroad-Tracks and managing Economy then this is for You. It makes a lot of Fun to me (don't look at my Playtime here on GOG/PC, i play this mainly on my Xbox One). The Reason, why i had to write this Review is because here are many reviews criticizing the Game for AI playing in Easy-Mode. Meanwhile this is not true anymore, because they fixed this with an Update. The AI follows now exactly the same Rules like the Player. These People should update their Reviews because it damages the Reputation of this Game. It's a great Game. Fun to play, fun to look at.

Graphically excellent but not what I had hoped it could be for a train sim. The scaling is way out. Has some good parts nonetheless, if you are after a good looking _game_ rather than a management sim. Not one for people who like to lay out tracks and design convoluted city connections.

I feel compelled to write this because of all the reviews that are saying how 'trains have bad AI' and that they 'just stand there waiting for each other to move'. They don't if you actually do your routing and/or signals properly! I imagine that those reviewers have not given the tutorial enough of a listen... With that said - onto the review :) I loved Sid meiers railroads back in the day because of the flexibility and simplicity it offered to make a beautiful rail empire and to watch them all chuff along haha! This game takes much from SMR and in my opinion - adds to it. Graphics and sound and cut scenes are great, level design and interactions between AI players are good too. You can ride along in your train ffs! Routing can be easy or hard dependant on your parameters but if you choose realistic, it can be hard! Which is great! A game should not be a walk in the park IMO - challenging but fun! I love the way I need to think in advance about routing in this game cos as my tracks grow, so space is reduced and options limited...Do I run parallel tracks for almost double the cost and more space? or do I hope that a web of tracks will work better? Do I put a warehouse in or direct tracks? Do I make this train solo passengers or solo freight or auto??? Ahhhh decisions. There are some bad points too though: Its a definite DLC pay pony - WTF are you doing Kalypso???!!! I paid full price for a game, I get 7 senarios and then gotta pay for the rest! Screw you!!!! But its so good so im proper tempted haha! The computer opponants are utter shit, you are essentially against the task list but that's ok. Overall: If you want a train sim like SMR (fun and challenging) get this when its on special. If you want a train sim like Railroad tycoon etc - don't get this cos its way different. Also - if you get it: Do the firkin tutorial AND read ALL the tips to play! :) All the best

This game is very nice, but there are so many quirks in it that I cant bear to play much of it. Such as having two large stations and having parallel tracks running along side each other, but cant put multiple trains on the same schedule because it keeps putting each train you schedule on only one of the rails. So they just sit there waiting for each other instead of having their own separate rail line.....sigh! I really wanted to dive into this but things like this drive me batty.