Train Station 2: Railroad Sim

I like this game more than I expected. I'd classify it as an idle game. You start out with the ability to be more interactive with it, but eventually tasks take about an hour to finish, and I expect that will eventually get longer. If all your trains are busy, you have to wait or use diamonds/gems to speed things up. This is standard for mobile games, so it's not unexpected. However, you can choose to not do all of the longer tasks at once and instead focus on other things like inventory management if you keep a train or two free. This is an absolutely beautiful game with great animations and sounds and they put a lot of detail into making it look great. I don't know if these are stock graphics, but the game looks really really nice. My ONLY complaint about the entire game so far is that the task circles ruin the beauty of the game. I like to zoom all the way in and look a the graphics, watch the trains and other vehicles moving, look at the buildings, etc. The game is eye candy! But the task circles are like litter in a beautiful landscape. The devs did a fabulous job making this game look gorgeous. I'd love to be able to have the task circles (and other floating actionable objects) disappear when fully zoomed in. I look forward to #3 in this series.

I know some people are very serious about their games. Maybe they are single and jobless, and can devote the majority of their waking hours to gameplay, but that is not me. I like diversions that will interest and engage me for a few minutes to an hour at a time. This is not one of those. For a week. You are given a small village/country and several tasks to build railroads and deliver items to certain places, and the tasks require 1-5 minutes to accomplish. It’s fun to balance the acquisition of raw materials and turn them into cash and/or developed goods and/or larger railroads. There’s an engaging sense of balance with tasks and upgrades and acquisitions, etc. Then, rather suddenly, every task will require an hour to accomplish. This means, you set your 3-6 trains onto a task, and then…do nothing for an hour. This essentially means you will end up playing the game for three minutes at a time, sending your trains on their way, and then closing out. Then you go away and come back when you can, collect your items, send your trains on 3-6 more hour-long tasks, and close out. After a few days of this, I realized, this just isn’t any fun, and it’s not changing, only getting worse. Where's the fun? Where’s the sense of accomplishment? In short, you realize you’re not playing the game any more, but it's playing you. It’s all obligations, and no entertainment.

I have played this game exclusively now for a few years and I am very satisfied with the game play. I am a veteran so I have a very keen competitive spirit. When you enter the competitions it is a push of resilience! Who will cross the track in first place! You can gage another players willingness to pay their way to the finish line by how quickly they get through each stage. When you are evenly matched and everyone wants the 350 coins it gets very intense, I’ve been in some competitions where I dont think the other players slept for hours. The graphics are great, the story lines need a lot of work, the update in Germany was inspiring, but more work within each geographic region should be engineered. I also suggest the trains go on a more realistic route that you can check on. Going around in small circles takes away from the experience. Lastly the game is pretty lacking as far as diversity in the characters. I know it has a good brushing of everyone, but I would love to see more diversity in the characters. Love Love Love the game, see you at the yard! One addition should be in the rewards department it seems to be the same over and over, every once in awhile place a fully powered train for the first place position. Great job team!