Customer Reviews

Railroad Tycoon 2

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

What a game. For the rail enthusiast, this is a must have! This game combines railroading, geography, politics and high finance into an incredible game of strategy. Build an empire and meet geographic, financial or political goals.

3 hours passes like 30 minutes playing this game. Each new campaign is progressively more difficult and requires its own strategy to win. I've been playing the game for 6 months and havn't figured it all out yet...but it's held my interest all this time.

Hands down, the best strategy game I've ever played!

Railroad Tycoon...gotta buy it!

Railroad Tycoon is an excellent strategy game. Players design a railroad from the ground up. Where should you locate tracks? What engines should you buy? And just as importantly, what cargo should you carry and where will it fetch the highest price? The railroad genre should appeal to many and it is a refreshing break from military strategy. The user interface is intuitive and the graphics are nice. The game play is real-time. AI opponents are fairly challenging.

When I first started to play Railroad Tycoon II, I thought that it looked great (and it really does), but was extremely complex. But I soon realized that the problem wasn't with the game, but with me. Let me explain.

All I wanted to do was to build trains and track and stations until I ran out of room on the map. I wanted to whip out the European map, get three or four competitors and start playing. Much to my chagrin, you can't do that on the European map because it doesn't let you add other competitors. The game establishes certain goals that you are supposed to meet in certain scenarios. This, I did not like.

There is a wonderful scenario editor, but that really takes a lot of time and work and I just wanted to play with the trains. So finally I decided that, in order to enjoy the game, I would basically have to ignore the goals set up by the programmers and just play. Once I changed my mindset, the game absolutely blossomed. It was weeks before I even placed a different CD in the drive to play a different game.

I found myself coming back to this game time and time again. And in that, this game is exactly like it predecessor. If you liked the original, you'll love this one.

Do you still have any 2 year old games on your hard-drive? Probably not. Most gamers delete games that are even a few months old to make way for new ones, or the game's simply sit there on our desktops - pretty little unused icons. This game though - Railroad Tycoon II, is a definite exception to this deleted/unused game rule.

The reasons are numerous - graphics, gameplay, replayability and of course it's strategy element. The game is a lovely mix of complexity (the business model) and simplicity (setting up stations and laying track). It is real time strategy and economic simulator; as a virtual train set it's playful and yet with all stock market options turned on, it's as cuthroat as the world of the historic robber-barons must have been. The red in the game is not from bloody combat but simply your company bleeding to death as these tycoons (your computer adversaries) take you to the economic woodshed, short-selling your stock if they see an opportunity in ruining you in doing so. From all this it's obvious that economic factors are important, but how does this work in gameplay?

Game play takes place in scenarios which are meant to allow us to delve into all aspects of the game. Some objectives may involve accumulating the largest personal worth or hauling the most cargoes or creating the wealthiest company. Still others may be as simple as connecting two cities or doing something else the fastest. Income is earned hauling cargo. There are dozens of cargo types, either as inputs or output from the dozens of industries that are featured. Setting up is simple. Choose from one of 3 station sizes, lay your track and choose your engine. There are dozens of trains available (not all at once - it depends on the historical period) The secret to making substantial income is to lay routes that create a production cycle. For example: two cargoes available are iron and coal; haul these to a steel mill; take the steel output plus orchard crops to a cannery and then haul the resulting food back to your city completing the cycle and earning all along the way.

The route laying and running of trains takes place in a 3D window which can be rotated as required and zoomed in to give you a good view of your railroad at work. The ambient sounds provide background or serve as clues to what's going on. The sceech of your crashing train is suitably disturbing to make you pay attention.

Have fun tycoon, or are you more of the Robber-baron type?

Railroad Tycoon II is extremely flexible. At one level you can play it as an exciting multi-user game with robbers robbing trains, trains blowing apart and ruthless AI opponents. At another level you can read through the book and understand much more about how the game was built and its capabilities. You can control the speed of play, I use the slowest speed and even then I find it too fast when running over 300 trains in the UK at the same time. For me using the book, RailRoad Tycoon II Official strategy guide and the game together meant learning about the map editor so I could customise other people's maps and make my favourite map of England much more accurate to play. The game itself becomes much more interesting as you deal with more levels of complexity. You can even eliminate the AI opponents and robbers. Introduce new events and generally create your own world.

The game shows its North American roots. My background being English is very different, nowhere in England is more than 50 miles from the sea. Fishing and ports are much more important. My personal wish list would be to add different types of ports and a fish cargo to the game.

But to enjoy the game to the full you really need the Official Strategy Guide. Is it likely to have a harmful effect. Don't know. I have spent many hours playing the game, I have even learnt a bit of geography whilst playing it, I now know roughly where a few places like Denver and Frankfurt are. Also I can tell you exactly where the mountain ranges that are going to slow down trains are as well. It also gives an introduction to economics, how resources interact with cites and manufacturing plants.

Railroad Tycoon II is one of the most addicting games I have ever played! The general theme of the game is that you are in charge of a railroad company with the goal being to gain the most money. What is really going on is this. For example, You look at one of the many maps (Europe, U.S.A., China, etc) and you find a city that makes wool, than you find another city that wants wool. All you have to do is lay some track and order a train to pick up wool in one city and drop off the wool at another.

This is just one of the examples that lies within the game. As the game progresses the cities demand cars so you get to choose to provide them. Within this lies the one true strength of the game and that is it is nearly always a "win-win situation". In other words, if London is demanding cars but I decide that I don't really want to bother with the city, the game will not punish me. The only thing I am missing out is the financial gains of providing London with cars. This is different from other simulation games. If I decided I don't want to worry about unemployment in Sim City than I am sure to suffer in the long run. In Tycoon the only thing I need to worry about is what I want to do! If I want to only build tracks in one section of the map than the game will go on and I will make money from the South. And guess what? When and if I decide to expand to the other cities they will still be ready to accept my rail road with open arms. It is as if the game wants you to have fun and to decide on what you want to do.

Now to the areas that need improvement. Some people say the manual is weak and I must say some additional information would be helpful. But the learning curve for the game is quite simple. Within an hour you will be comfortable with the game and after two hours you will be a pro. In other reviews people have complained about the method of track laying, specifically the difficulty of the process but don't let this one flaw stop you from buying the game.

Railroad tycoon 2 is a fun and highly addictive game that will keep you coming back for more.

I just got the game a few days ago included in a value pack. I am currently playing the campaigns and so far I am enjoying the game. Even my husband is playing it.
Pros: Sim type game
Different type of trains and several campaigns which I love
Is challenging for an average game player don't know about hardcore players
Con's: The game tutorial was okay, but wish I could find a way to start back at the beginning of it. When my husband wanted to play I had to tell him how to do it instead of him doing the tutorial because it wouldn't start back at the beginning
Other than that I don't know of any other cons since I have just started playing and haven't started the scenerios.
You do get tired of laying down tracks all the time, and have to zoom in and out.
So far I am really enjoying it

If you want to get a hint what is big business all about, if you can't understand why have the great personalities (brought back to life in this game!) persisted at their work, when they could have long retire, sit down, feed your mouse some cheese and go on. Graphics is excellent, game runs wonderfully, you have very lot of options, different campaigns, scenarios, around 50 trains and 30 cargo cars. You must master building, transporting cargo, finances & stocks and much more. You must be very accurate at laying tracks because it is made somehow tricky, plus you have to control the steepness of the track (very influential on train & delivery speed). You can also buy many additional buildings for your station, which adds good look and value to your company. I bought the game on second hand, so I haven't got the manual, because the first owner has ''misplaced'' it (would you expect from 12 years old kid in Slovenia to read English manuals? He probably threw it away). But if you are persistant, you'll get into game quite fast. I think it wil stay your thrill for a long time.

Someone gave me this game as a gift and I must say, it is one of few gifts I actually kept and got enjoyment from. I have been playing this game for a long time now and can play it at anytime because there is always something new to learn and new ways to get rich and rule the RR business. This game is detailed, graphically pleasing, and requires some gamer skill. I am sure you can handle it if you are reading this review.

Build your railroads across the USA and learn while you earn or go broke trying. If and when that ever becomes easy then try building through the mountains of Korea or China. A wonderful game I still enjoy and love to teach to my grandkids. If only gradeschool geography class could be as interesting!