Railway Empire

For a genre and industry obsessed with time, can anyone explain why it takes 30 in game days to travel from Cheyenne to Rock springs on a straight line with no stops? Locking the game behind a long tutorial scenario in which the game does not tell you vital game mechanics is bad. Not letting you move on to other scenarios until you beat it is worse. Failing to tell you there is a time limit to the scenario is wrong. Voiced characters are loud and obnoxious too. Game does a lot to keep you from wanting to try again or play at all

In my humble opinion, this is the better Railway Empire game; while the 2nd streamlines a lot, it takes away the fun in the management and complexity. The 1st one is also WAY cheaper, and so engaging, and still looks great for today's standards! Top game! Get it if you like trains, or had fun with Factorio's trains

Certainly not completely bad but falls a bit short of its price. It is a very lovingly crafted gallery of trains but it's just not that great a game... It get's boring and overwhelming with the number of trains to manage. The UI is hectic and confusing (good luck remembering whether the Escape key will go back or open the main menu - it varies...). The cartoonish competitors and employees are out of sync with the realistic representation of everything else. Cash is rolling in no matter what, there's very little if any challenge beyond learning the ropes... Overall while I find the game interesting and beautiful, at the end of the day I was never able to maintain interest for very long, despite coming back to the game a few times.

Fighting controls and trying to work out illogical tracklaying isn't my idea of fun

Well I bought it for less than 10 Euros. The version with all dlcs. The campaign was nice and normal what the difficulty concern. After that you play scenarios (the dlcs) which are very very very difficult. There is no setting and when you set the normal setting (without signals) it seems for me as if the game is glitching and the trains are waiting at the stations for ever without loading anything. I did not knew at the time that there was a Railway Empire 2 game. If you dont have any of them just buy the 2nd game. For me the first one besides the campaign is a no go. I am a casual gamer I cant spend a week for a scenario to run it over and over again until I know all the tasks to complete it. After 2 scenarios I uninstalled it and there are over 15!

Railway Empire is my only Tycoon-Esq game I play, so I can't give a comparison, however, headline takeaway is that RE is a fun, rewarding game that gets better the more you play. There is a learning curve in the game, what kind of track layouts work and what don't, the best way to buy and adjust trains to get the most growth, etc etc. It does have to be said their is a little jank within the system where the game simply refuses to let you place track despite it looking perfectly good. This however is worth the price of admission as the more you play and the more you understand the game, the more you will be able to begin the process of using the complexity of the game. For example you can keep adding new rail lines and shipping more goods directly on single trains, but when you use the slightly more complex systems of warehousing to get over the flow of goods this becomes a better experience. I am by no means a master of all this at time of writing but once you get to grip with a mechanic it becomes second nature and the game rewards you for that. The campaign missions are tough but manageable. To progress you will have to start delving into the functionality of the game rather than doing only the most basic play. This challenge is great if you like that element of gaming, however there is a 'Free Mode' that allows you to sandbox on various maps to create and experiment at the same time. So if you just want to make trains go choo-choo, you're golden. The game is also quiet stable, and tabbing in and out is something the game lets you do no problem. Graphically, I think Railway Empire straddles the pretty enough vs taxing live very well for this type of game. It's by no means ugly. So should you get RE? If you are looking for a good game in this genre, then I would absolutely recommend it. Especially if you are going to concentrate on this title or only have one game of this type. As I say, the game becomes better the more you play. It's also great as a casual player to jump in and out of a game, you can put this game down and jump back in with relative ease. So, go live out you Hornby dreams without the mortgage and converted attics lads, just play this instead.

Railway Empire. *Sigh* The memories this game brings me. If you haven't a resource management game before, this is a good one to train you for it. I didn't intend the pun but I'll just leave it there. The base game takes you through the story of the first railroads of the United States. You'll learn how to set up trains and your grow your business while competing against AI rivals. (No Co-op sadly, which is a big upset to me.) To me, there are two ways to play this. 1. Just set up trains to complete the tasks before they are due and move on, or 2. Play the game in Free Mode and learn how to profit off the stock market. I know the second one sounds weird but, this games mechanics with the stock market are really impressive, and when managed right, you too can control whatever part of the USA you desire. There isn't much on the negative side of things to say, other than the lack of a Multiplayer to me. I'd love to try and manage a railway against some friends but, I'm not against buying out AI. The DLC's are not that necessary to have. They do offer some unique features and more trains that will be familiar to any Thomas the Tank Engine fans, (yes I grew up watching Thomas, don't judge,) but other than that, they are just new regions with their own resources. You don't need to buy them to have a good time. My sole opinion, this game is absolutely worth it to play, but it will take several hours of your day playing so, do think about saving the game session when you can.