Only playing this game will you discover there are Cartoon Characters you must deal with! Each has personality quirks, including your train crew and office personnel who may not get along with each other! Why? We see childish Spies, Bandits, Saboteurs, more like a Carmen Sandiego game! All negative stereotypes that pop up to taunt you and to bid against you in Auctions. The very Beautiful scenery + trains + music shown in advertising [worth the 2 stars] does NOT mix well with Cartoon Characters! Bad programming still exists! If you hire a Professor, he GIVES you money, and REMOVES research points! Not the reverse! There is Poor Managing of trains and loads. You must go to Train Line setup to see details of your Load orders. The only way out is "Make Change" which often reverts to default settings! Every Train, Every Load! Poor demand info is easily misleading. Signaling is very confusing to set up. The AI characters still cheat and do NOT have to build double track or signals as their trains magically pass through each other! Soon they will surpass your system in track miles and cities covered! The Economic model is poor. A city may say it only uses 0.2 car loads of a good per month. Why build a spur to get wood or cattle if you can sell less than 1 load per month? They WILL buy many loads of goods but then suddenly NOT buy anymore because they stockpiled maybe 20 carloads! Can you wait till they use 0.2 a month before buying more? Ridiculous. They won't offer to sell these goods for you to transport to other cities. Wacky logic. Real Railroads run on ORDERS for goods to transport, not by picking up random stuff and trying to find where to sell them! Was this supposed to be a detailed railroad simulation or a simplified game? Was this to be a realistic historical game or a comical interaction game? Was this to appeal to adults or to kids under 18? Sadly, they put BOTH in a mixed bag! Not recommended if you want railroad management! Railroad Tycoon 1990 was better!
I've played strategy games since 1974. Compared with the original Strategic Command of 2002, it is not as good. All hours put into reworking this game are lost by the final product being confusing to play. Graphics are muddy. What is a Mountain or Forest or Hilly hex? You'll find trouble moving units. See other review about poor play in China. Designers still haven't changed Air units taking up an entire hex and blocking ground unit movement. They still haven't included stacking of units in hexes (LOTS of acres in real life). The "switching" technique to move units from behind the front line to the front line doesn't help much. The control for this is sloppy, using two hot-keys + mouse to see an arrow which can disappear. The GUI is NOT very intuitive. Tutorial is too brief and only found in the manual. You must follow written notes with your game. It's NOT on screen. Tutorial doesn't match units on screen (entrenchment values). Each game, and all units, are placed AS IS, often poorly placed. You can't change your opening attack or defense. Editor is poorly presented, including terrain graphics. No mouse-hover to explain choices. If you place something wrong, you are faced with DOZENS of alternatives! If you work an hour making changes and make a mistake, pressing the Undo button will remove that mistake AND ALL YOUR WORK UP TO THAT POINT! Saving your work frequently in the Editor brings up a screen listing maybe 20 items with problems in the Event Generator, with no info what is changed by choosing "Yes" or "No" to continue. Saving your game during play does NOT allow you to alter the NAME given you. You can't discern from other games of that scenario with the same year and date. It simply overwrites the other game saved! Cost is $40, sale is $15. The original 2002 game with clear graphics was $5. The painting of He-111 flying over boats is about the clearest thing in this 2018 game. Advertising! I say NOT TO BUY IT. Graphics and Controls fail this game. Shame!
