Railway Empire 2 Review (wsmith140)
This game showed a lot of promise when it initially came out. The customizable engines (to an extent). The massive maps...I was very excited for this. RE1 was a fantastic game I sunk hours into. I have with this game as well. But after multiple patches and DLC, I am putting it away. Below is why.
- The latest patches have made the game unplayable in certain aspects to where you can't get anything to load.
- There are items from RE1 that are or were blatantly missing from RE2. Manual track signals are probably the biggest of them. The devs launched the game without thinking it was unnecessary. Then implemented a poor version of what was in RE1. It is overly complicated and doesn't work in a lot of cases. You'll have trains teleporting back to their point origin constantly.
- The United States map is poorly put together, particularly in the heartland. There are areas of mountains randomly on the map that shouldn't be there. Rivers are missing. Towns are placed incorrectly. Considering the devs had access to the RE1 maps as a reference point, it feels inexcusable for them to make such major errors. I have been told this is similar on the European map as well. Cities are in the wrong spots. Mountains are randomly placed. Rivers poorly placed or missing. It is just bad mapping.
- The AI is bad. There really is no point in having them in a game as they are not competitive and not logical in their track & station building.
- The logic for how engines are unlocked and how they compare to others is absurd. Particularly the Shay engines are incredibly fast. They would never run the speed this game alleges. They were used to haul freight down incredibly steep grades at a consistent speed, not operate as almost an express engine.
- There are engines missing from RE2 that were readily available in RE1. Particularly Mikados stand out. Key major engines that should already be in the game are just missing. Inexplicably.
- The rate of unlocking technology is hardcoded in such a way that it makes choices not really matter. In RE1 you could affect the rate at which you got research points and unlocked things. In this game, it is all a flat rate. It really eliminates any real strategy for this piece.
Overall, I am disappointed with where this game as gone. There is a lot of promise here, but the things that draw away from it being enjoyable have gotten to be too much at this point. I've spent a good amount of money supporting these Devs for both RE1 and RE2. I don't expect I will do so further unless I see something change with some of these basic core items that have gone unaddressed.