Railway Empire

This is the best train company management game I've played in a long time. I was a big fan of the Transport Tycoon (DOS) and TTD games and Sid Meiers Trains was a favourite also. In my opinion, this game takes what was great about those games and expands on it. The controls take a little to get used to, but once you do they are fine. The graphic quality is a decent compromise between scenic and lean enough to run on a slow PC (I can run it on my old laptop with Intel graphics on Linux with settings down which is nice) yet when turned up on my desktop, it is nice to look at. I bought on sale for around $22 AUD and at that price, it is a bargain. I have bought a couple of DLC's and will eventually buy them all as I can appreciate the attention to detail in this game. The other reviewers claiming that you can't specify train routes or choose different ways for a train to arrive are either reviewing an outdated version or didn't know how to do it. You can create waypoints on sections of track to tell trains which track to take on their route, you can specify which track in each station that each train should use, you can specify what cargo is preferred or blocked, you can set up signalling so that tracks can only go in one direction and much more. It is definitely worth buying if you love train games and a big bonus is that it works on Linux out of the box.

This is the first game that I've ever felt a need to review. The AI is incredibly bad. Your trains will park themselves and wait even if nothing is in their way and nothing will be in their way for the conceivable future. The game insists on making you lay parallel track as a separate track and then go through the process of creating your own stoplight system, only to watch your trains come to a full stop because of the bad AI. Computer trains do NOT have to lay parallel track and their trains pass right through one another. I'll give the game designers a hint: there should probably be a simple highlight setting to make a single track into a double track, and the game itself should handle nonsense like stoplights. A tycoon game that makes you worry about stoplights is missing the point of being a tycoon game. Just terrible design, and worse implementation.

I bought this game before it released and the first iteration I got was not good. Since then they have updated a few times and now things are starting to click, so if you are looking for a good train game, here it is. There are a few problems yet, but I do believe they are working on this game regularly and adding new material as well as fixing minor issues of which I still have a few--but they don't keep me from playing it all the time. Some Pros: Linux from the get go!!! Easy to lay track and set buildings (which is something you do a lot). Riding along on a train is a riot. There are a ton of different scenarios to play without buying DLC. The graphics are very good, but could be improved, yet this is what makes a ride along so much fun--it's pretty. Some Cons (aka things I hope they fix): (1) When laying track across water or through a mountain, bridges and tunnels allow only a two rail path to lay touching each other. This is a MAJOR headache in most cases and needs to be addressed. (2) When viewing a town I can not see what industries can be built unless the city needs a new industry. This is a Very Minor thing as you can usually find a city that needs one to look at. (3) When looking at a train in the research window, you don't see price. Knowing this would be very helpful. (4) When you build a 2nd station in a city the two stations rename themselves 1 and 2 and this gets a little confusing. I rename mine A and B. Another Very Minor thing. (5) And finally, the trains seem to lose their route if you change it while they are traveling. For example: I had a route from Atlanta to Washington that went through Charlotte. One train was nearly at Wash when I paused the game and added Charlotte as a stop to all trains on that route. The train that was almost at Wash. lost it's route and returned to Atlanta with all the goods before returning to Wash to deliver and including Charlotte in the route.

I like to lay tracks. I like the challenge of snaking them through difficult terrain, and figuring out the most effective routes. And Railroad Empire has the best track-laying tools in the industry. It is pure genius: It starts just like Sid Meiers Railroads!, where you build smooth curves from point to point. But instead of buying the tracks the moment you click, Railroad Empire will let you tweak long stretches of track after you have layed them out initially. Only once you are satisfied, you click buy and it buys the whole thing. It is genius! But, there are just no interesting obstacles to lay your track around. Every once in a while there is a mountain range to build around, or a river to cross, but money is so cheap in this game, all the great building tools are wasted and it is almost always easier to just build a giant tunnel or bridge. That is this game in a nutshell. Don't get me wrong, I had a great time with the game. It has dozens of interesting, interlocking systems, and it is a joy to figure out a good network. But at the end of the day, it somehow doesn't live up to that promise. The tools are there to optimize and fine-tune everything, but apparently that's just not the game Railroad Empire wants to be. Instead, it wants you to be a Tycoon, who plops down new track instead of optimizing existing ones. There is a constant mad rush to meet the next mission, and never enough time to fix old problems. So I find myself torn between these two goals: The building game of trying to design the perfect network, and the tycoon game of outmaneuvering your opponents, and expanding to conquer the world. Both are in there, somewhere, if you can find them.

AI plays on "Easy Mode" which means it doesn't have to worry about parallel rails or signaling. Also had to dust off my windows machine to play it cause the Linux version won't ever finish loading past the character selection screen. Basically, I should've listened to my anti-Kalypso brain cause it's the same story. So much promise, so little delivery.