Tae said:
I am really interested in it, I love Sid's games and it looks like they basically just did a Pirates! type update to the original Railroad Tycoon.
If this is what you think I must warn you that this is a HUGE change in direction/philosophy compared to RRT.
I wrote up a pretty detailed "first impression" posting here:
Tae said:
I have never fully played any of the Railroad games prior, but I tried to get into the original. The graphics were just so dated when I finally tried to play it, my attention span became really short and just never got into it.
It's in that sense that this game is the all-time best, as the graphics are mind-blowing.
Tae said:
One preview said there would be a demo and I am waiting to try it because I just don't think anything is going to pull me away from Company of Heroes right now. So if I bought it today, it would probably sit on my desk a few weeks. I am pretty sure I will get it by Christmas though.
I strongly recommend you wait - it has nasty game-crashing bugs which history suggests will be fixed after a patch or two - until then, enjoy CoH - a game which Relic managed to code to run successfully even before patches came out.
CivGeneral said:
By the looks of the train listings here, there is not even a variety of locomotive choices for North America, especialy within Diesel and Electric Locomotives.
I'll be sticking with Railroad Tycoon III.
The variety of trains is actually pretty similar to original RRT - a few names have changed, a few trains have been added/deleted - but the classics are there:
Grasshopper
Norris
American
Ten-wheeler
Consolidation
Mikado
Pacific
If anything, there's much more variety on the diesel side - which IIRC kinda topped out at like 2 for the US scenarios in RRT.
A nice switch is you get money back when you scrap track/trains and when you upgrade engines, you apparently only pay the difference.
A huge disappointment is the HUGE simplification in the stock market - rather than pay out dividends (RRT2/RRT3) or have stock splits (all previous games), in this game there's only 10 units of stock per company - worth 10% of the company each.
While this may ultimately be a good move - I can imagine many people get turned off by the complications of the earlier stock market simulations - the thing is, the old stock market simulations were basically an entire game within the game!
How you ultimately feel about SMR will depend on how much you "miss" the things that were stripped out vs. how much you like the new approach.
There are some nice new twists - in the old game you'd get a bonus to be first to connect to a city - now you have to connect AND deliver a certain type of cargo to get your bonus, adding more nuance.
The "auctions" for patents and industries are a cool new twist which compensate for castrated stock market part of the game.
I was HUGELY disappointed to not be able to borrow money anymore (issuing bonds), but the game seems to let you build trains and stations(?) (but not track) even when you run out of cash, so that partially compensates for that.
The inability to use your competitors' track is a throwback to RRT really (I think both RRT2 and 3 let you do that). It may ultimately be a smart move: your OWN track gets horribly congested with your own trains. If you put one of your trains on competitors' tracks it would probably *never* get anywhere.
The first impressions post linked to above goes into huge detail about issues with the routing system - but if you hate how it works (or *doesn't* work!) on "hard" mode, it's a Very Good Thing that they include easy/medium modes to balance things out.
RRT was the first computer game I *ever* bought, so my reaction to SMR was pretty visceral and instant - more thoughts will pop up over time, I'm sure, but this was one of the few times I've had to go on the internet and "register my thoughts" on a game immediately after playing it.
(Immediately after playing it, passing out at 6 a.m., and then waking up, of course - despite the flaws, it's got the addictive gameplay qualities we know and love in Sid's games - there are serious flaws, but it's still INCREDIBLY fun.)
![[RR] - Sid Meier's Railroad (2025)](data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAEAAAABCAQAAAC1HAwCAAAAC0lEQVR42mP8/h8AAvMB+NzmkbcAAAAASUVORK5CYII=)