- Exceptional modding support enhances gameplay
- High replayability and engaging logistics focus
- Historically accurate vehicle details included
- Clunky and unintuitive UI frustrates players
- Performance drops in large transport networks
- Heavy reliance on mods for full experience
Emotions
Players experience frustration primarily due to poor tutorial systems, unclear mechanics, and steep learning curves. Common issues include unbalanced economic systems, repetitive tasks, and bugs like disappearing vehicles or broken train logic, which disrupt gameplay. Additionally, unintuitive UI, cumbersome construction tools, and performance issues (e.g., crashes, lag) exacerbate the frustration.
Satisfaction stems from the game's depth, mod support, and the rewarding experience of building efficient transportation networks. Players enjoy watching cities grow, overcoming economic challenges, and mastering logistics. The game's visuals, strategic depth, and improvements over its predecessor (e.g., better graphics, smoother performance) also contribute to this positive emotion.
Enjoyment is derived from the game's engaging and immersive gameplay, particularly in sandbox mode with mods. Players appreciate the creative freedom to design transport systems, the addictive nature of optimizing logistics, and the relaxing yet challenging gameplay loop. The visual presentation and long-term replayability further enhance enjoyment.
Excitement is driven by the game's modding potential, historical progression in campaign mode, and the anticipation for future installments (e.g., Transport Fever 3). Players are also excited by the variety of transport options, the challenge of building complex supply chains, and the immersive experience of seeing their networks come to life.
Disappointment arises from unmet expectations, such as unfinished or shallow gameplay mechanics, lack of multiplayer/AI opponents, and repetitive campaigns. Players also criticize the game's bugs, poor execution of core features (e.g., signals, station mechanics), and reliance on mods to fix fundamental issues, which detract from the overall experience.
Verdict
Mostly positive
Summary
Positive 78% · Negative 22%. Score: 22 / 100
Positives:
- The game features a highly active and vibrant modding community with thousands of high-quality mods available. Mods enhance gameplay, add customization options, and significantly improve replayability, often addressing minor flaws in the base game.
- The game offers endless replayability through procedural map generation, mods, and sandbox modes. Players report hundreds of hours of engaging gameplay with no signs of boredom.
- The campaign is entertaining, educational, and serves as a well-structured tutorial. It introduces gameplay mechanics gradually and includes historical scenarios, adding depth and replayability.
- The game features highly detailed and historically accurate vehicle models, including functional parts like valve gear motion and doors. This attention to detail enhances immersion for enthusiasts.
- Unlike traditional city-building games, this title focuses on transport networks, allowing players to indirectly influence city growth. It combines elements of *Railroad Tycoon* and *Cities: Skylines* with improved graphics and mechanics.
Negatives:
- The campaign and tutorial are frequently criticized for being unclear, frustrating, and lacking proper guidance. Players report confusion, repetitive tasks, and insufficient instructions, leading to a steep learning curve and low motivation.
- The user interface is frequently described as cumbersome, cluttered, and unintuitive. Players struggle with excessive menu navigation, poor snapping mechanics, and limited station/vehicle selection tools.
- Gameplay mechanics are criticized for being unrealistic, inconsistent, and buggy. Players highlight issues with train routing, AI behavior, and time simulation, which detract from immersion and playability.
- The game suffers from performance problems, including FPS drops, lag, and crashes, especially on large maps or with many mods. Optimization issues are a recurring complaint, even on high-end hardware.
- The base game is often described as lacking in content and functionality, with players relying heavily on mods for essential features, vehicle variety, and improved gameplay. However, mods can introduce instability and crashes.
Gameplay:
- The game revolves around building and managing logistics networks, including transporting goods, passengers, and resources across multiple modes (rail, road, air, sea). Players optimize supply chains and infrastructure for efficiency and profit.
- City development and economic systems are tied to transport efficiency. Players influence city growth by optimizing resource distribution, passenger routes, and infrastructure, creating a dynamic simulation.
- The campaign mode introduces gameplay mechanics step-by-step, teaching players through missions and scenarios. It serves as an optional tutorial for learning logistics, transport systems, and economic management.
- Players focus on constructing and optimizing railway and road networks, including stations, signals, and junctions. Infrastructure development is central to connecting cities and industries.
- Players manage both passenger and cargo transport systems, including intercity routes, public transport networks, and freight logistics. Balancing demand and efficiency is key to success.
Performance:
- Players frequently report FPS drops, lag, and response delays in large-scale networks, especially with high vehicle counts, mods, or complex city layouts. This issue is more pronounced on less powerful hardware.
- While some players experience buttery-smooth performance on modest or older hardware, others report inconsistent optimization, including CPU underutilization, thermal throttling, or memory leaks during long sessions.
- Performance issues, including lag and slowdowns, become more noticeable in the late game, particularly with large populations, high vehicle counts, or complex networks. This is exacerbated by hardware limitations.
- Using multiple mods or performance-enhancing mods (e.g., shaders) often leads to crashes, lag, or general instability. Some players report crashes even without mods, indicating broader compatibility issues.
- Players highlight the need for better optimization to handle complex networks, large populations, and late-game scenarios without significant performance drops or crashes.
Recommendations:
- The game is widely recommended for its replayability, mod support, and strengths in strategy and logistics, even though it has notable flaws like UI issues and optimization challenges. Many reviewers suggest buying it on sale to offset these drawbacks.
- The game is highly recommended for enthusiasts of transport simulations, logistics, and city-building games like *OpenTTD*, *Factorio*, or *Cities: Skylines*. It is praised as one of the best modern transport tycoon games available.
- Reviewers frequently mention the need for quality-of-life improvements, such as better UI, chain signals, blueprint systems, and smoother early-game mechanics like maintenance costs.
- The game demands patience and long-term engagement, making it less suitable for casual players or those seeking a quick, low-effort experience.
- Many reviewers express excitement for the next installment, suggesting improvements like day-night cycles, better resource management, and enhanced mechanics to address current shortcomings.
Miscellaneous:
- Players appreciate that the developers actively update the game based on community feedback, improving gameplay and addressing issues promptly. This responsiveness fosters a positive relationship between the developers and the player base.
- Players have noted that Russian, Soviet, and Russian Federation vehicles are incorrectly placed in the 'Asia' category, which is geographically inaccurate. This misclassification has caused confusion and frustration among players.
- Some players report experiencing eye strain while playing the game, which may be due to visual effects, brightness settings, or prolonged screen time. This issue impacts the overall comfort and accessibility of the game.
- A portion of the player base has requested a MacOS version of the game, highlighting the need for broader platform compatibility. This would expand the game's accessibility to users on different operating systems.
