Full of bugs, wants to be miniature railroad sim - is really tecnically difficult to control - neither is satisfying.
2) Crashes often
3) Is designed to be tabletop/miniature railroad experience
4) Train routing and track laying is extremely difficult to control
5) Maps are too small
6) Speed is too fast
7) too easy to make money (mogul difficulty)
1) looks awesome - tons of detail
Small animations play everywhere: loading your cargos, rolling industries, etc. Living, breathing world. Colors are full and vivid.
2) The game crashes often to desktop (but autosaves every single minute which has saved me from going comPLETEly bananas.) I must say that i play on Vista RC2 but since this is coming out in a month, i can't see why it shouldn't be supported. I even play it in XP compatibility mode. 3) Is designed to be tabletop/miniature railroad experience
A radically different step from civilization and pirates, which spanded extreme geographical areas - satisfyingly depicted in the game speed and game map sizes, Railroads is small. While a conscientious design decision, opening options for different gams speeds and map sizes could easily have been included but weren't. Since Civilization 4, also by the makers of Railroads, can be adjusted in size, (though PIrates can't since simulation the actual geography of the caribean) etc, it's strange that Railroads can't. It is as if Railroads wants to cater to kids who can't get a real miniature railroad, or old geezers who long for their childhood ditto - and completely overlook that a large part of their fan base (and potential customers) are fans of the other railroad tycoon games, expecting certain things. In all kinds of commercialism, customer is king. That even to the degree that it is financially sound to yield own creative desires to customer demand since this will sell far more volume as well as set up the reception of the next product. Firaxis has certainly with the Railroads seeded suspicion and reluctance in the customer-reception of their next game. Such a pity. 4) Train routing and track laying is extremely difficult to control
One does not just drag out track across the wide open spaces. If one lays track between two points over several "rounds", the game sets lots of light switches, resulting in lots of places that trains can stop - and will stop, without apparent reason or intelligence. So bad is the AI in these regards, that more than and and a half train per track results in stupid stuff. It is possible to remove this by altering the game to treat tracks unrealisticly, allowing more than one train on a single track - but that foregoing realism in order to simply play, is not only an insult to me having paid money for the game, but also waste of a good challenge in arranging trains on the tracks. It's not me who is stupid, (although impatient) it's the track-system that is strange and not properly explained. 5) Maps are too small
Having had a miniature railroad as a child (i, not the railroad), i do remember how cramped those things get. This is loyally reflected in the game, especially late-game, where lots of trains choo around on the screen. Quite fun to watch indeed, although the cramped nature, involving many turns and few stretches, sort of kills off the benefit of having fast locomotives. It's fun to see a train whizz around full speed - but you're likely to only see that in sand-box mode. 6) Speed is too fast
Completed in an hour, 80 virtual years pass by - devide that into minutes and months... Suddenly you're stopped halt by a screen that declares that you've reached a certain level and completed the game - only when you click the continue button, you find that virtually is not 1920 but 1950. In the same way, you also zoom by locomotives.
I'd like to develop an intimate knowledge of my locomotives, feel what they're capable of. But the speed instead makes me cold and indifferent to the announcing of a new locomotive, and due to 7) below, i buy 10 new locomotives for 1,5 million as if it was a pair of underwear going to laundry.
I also find that i don't have to expand my railroad network in order to survive, i only have to buy industries, optimize my trains routing (see (4) and add a few modifications like a single new station here and there. 7) too easy to make money (mogul difficulty)
It's impossible to not make money in the game. Which again makes no thrill. What thrill is in the game comes from the frustration about your trains clogging up everywhere - once more see 4) above. Locomotives are bought without an eye on the wallet, the newest available in the quantity that is needed, period. No shuffling of nickels, considerations of current fleet age or selling of stocks, just buy. In real life prices fluctuate - so do they here. But where certain goods, say grapes, can turn even into losses, in this game they are never even to be considered. Afterall, the tracks between the distillery and the grape-farm are in place, the trains are there already hauling the grapes, why change it? If the grape-route turned financially red or close to, the incentive would be there - but as it is, the danger is more of being annoyed by the announcing of falling prices, than by the falling prices themselves. ))--------------------------------
This game chose to lock on to a certain kind of game, not including obvious optionality allowing the player to shape his own experience, and in doing so shut off a large part of customers, formerly loyal, now disillutioned.
On top of that comes a host of technical bugs that seriously kills the joys of playing it along with the frustration of not understanding how a major component of the game, train routing, functions - or malfunctions. Ideally having hired 200 local kids to play the game for a single month would have revealed these problems to the game designers, but have now instead come as a seriously blow to their customers - and the profits of next Firaxis game. Time will tell how serious. (and this gamespot editing / reviewing tool supposed to be HTML-based, works like crap)