Sid Meier’s Railroads!

Compared to the original Railroad Tycoon by Sid Meier from MicroProse, this is but a shallow spin-off. Another example of where nice graphics cannot compete with good gameplay. The whole game has been simplified down to a level that makes no sense to me. Where in the original you even had to upgrade components of your station (add cold-storage, hotels, restaurants etc.) now you just are 2 clicks away from a fully expanded terminal. Also the terrain survey is no more (nice to place your tracks optimally). I really don't know what gets into game designers nowadays. Sure, some older games are pretty complex, but that did not make them unplayable. Today, RPGs do not require your party to carry along their food rations anymore, flight sims do not require joysticks (and thrusters and pedals), and railroad simulations are down to easy point-and-click. Still, it is a nice game for killing some time, but far away from being as addictive as the original which I still enjoy.

Another great game by Sid. Instantly it's fun. The graphics are nice enough for it's time. The GUI is easy to navigate. Laying tracks is easy compared to other track laying sims I've played. It runs on Windows 10 but I had to set windows graphics res. to 1024 x 768.

There are real problems with this game. It is prone to crashing. Some of the routing makes little sense. The investment engine is extremely limited. Starting a game in the modern era makes starting trains hugely expensive. But. The aesthetic is still beautiful. It's still a huge challenge at top difficulty. And above all it's still hugely addictive. It's massively satisfying to connect all of Germany or to become the king of industry in the Midwest. The good by far outweighs the bad. Don't come in expecting the kind of excellent campaign mode, nor the sometimes-maddening difficulty of Railroad Tycoon 2. Do expect the same majesty and romance of the rails in a simplified form.

Well, if you do like tabeltop-trainsets this game will give you a few happy hours of play. But if you're more into the simulationpart, including economy, you will be disappointed. The game is so buggy it's barely fun at all. Also the singleplayer-szenarios get boring very quickly. After 10+ hours of play I found the following bugs: - Frequent crashes with Win10. Every 3 to 4 hours the game crashes on me. - Trains going crazy. As soon as you build a more complex network trains are going mad all over the map: - Trains are suddenly disappering and showing magically up on other parts of the map. - Trains not going on railroads, but somewhere in the open field, but this doesn't seem to happen often. - Trains not reaching their destination. Especially after buliding new tracks like doubling railsroads or buliding a new intersection trains suddenly change course and start going everywhere, but not to the scheduled destination. Of course this trains make no money. Sometimes it helps to cancel the train and set it up new. But even then the train might get "lost" after one or two deliveries. - Trains taking "new" and wired routes. All of a sudden a train on a connection that worked fine takes a new route and blocks other trains. Well with all that bugs it's not realy fun to play. This is definitely not the quality I'm expecting from a game with the name Sid Meier on it. Don't waste your money ond this game and get a classic copy of Railroad Tycoon!

Did you notice that all of the screenshots are not actually showing the gameplay element? That's because the gameplay element is practically nonexistant. There's no advanced logistics, no carefully pouring over a map while considering the deeper economics, nor any fierce competitive aspect to worry about. It's basically a glorified tabletop railway, and while there's no issue with that, this does fly in the face of the series pedigree; this is supposed to be Railroad Tycoon IV. And it very much isn't. The freeform gameplay has been replaced by something more akin to Rails Across America, which at least had an interesting deckbuilding idea to throw at the premise in 2001. This just complicates the rail building by forcing the player to conform to the lay of the land. If you want to putter around and look at pretty train models? You can do better. And if you want something that requires you to actually balance your railway? This isn't it.