Railway Empire - Review
I have always been fascinated by management games, mostly city builders like SimCity, but I’ve also been interested in transport management games. When I was younger I could never get into the deeper mechanics involved. Railway Empire is now making tracks for the Switch. I figured it would be a great chance to see if I’ve gotten any better at being a transport tycoon.
Railway Empire takes us back to the 1800s (and early 1900s), where the United States of America was yet to be united by rail. Steam engines were vital for connecting far away towns and helping to transport produce and materials in large numbers. Empire has you reliving this period of time and helping to bring the wonder of steam trains across the land. There’s a lot of track to lay that stretches across the country, between the Campaign, Scenarios, Free roam and Sandbox modes. You can sink a lot of time here, even more so with added DLC (some included, some not). The Campaign takes you through the 1800s as you cover the West with tracks and fill the air with steam. It begins with the basics, setting up stations and connecting towns by rail. Helping cities to grow by getting produce to them from the surrounding areas, meeting supply and demand is king here. There’s only a handful of chapters, but it also works as a tutorial for the other modes where there is much more to do.
Scenarios involve completing a list of tasks in that region, their difficulty is ranked hard or tough, so it’s worth doing the campaign first. Here you also have access to the DLC scenarios, which means you can also take your trains to Canada, South America and Mexico. Ireland, England and Europe are not included and need to be purchased separately. Free roam and Sandbox let you pick an area and just build. You can choose if you want to do it against rivals, and in Sandbox you can also make money no obstacle to you achieving the empire of your dreams.
The tutorials give enough information to help push you forward, yet at the same time they feel clumsy. I got caught up for a good half an hour trying to get past a tutorial moment early on. I was doing exactly what the tutorial was asking of me, but it turned out because I had done it too early, it refused to recognise I had done the right thing! It wasn’t helped that the tutorial videos would get in the way of what you needed to do. Even when you followed what they wanted you to do, it wouldn’t always work. Nor would the game always explain clearly why you couldn’t do something. This was the biggest barrier in the beginning, sometimes the tutorial was getting in the way of what it wanted me to do, other times they said too little. With a game like this there is lots of time spent in menus, with enough time looking through them you can piece together what does what. There is also a tutorial section where you can bring up any previous information you may have forgotten along the way, but this lives or dies by the quality of the information it provides.
While you start building up your Railway Empire unopposed, it doesn’t stay that way for long. You’re not only trying to build up your own empire, but competing with other companies all vying for a piece of that pie. When you were only up against time itself, the fact you can’t pause the game without losing points had less impact. It’s a different story when the rival AI doesn’t stop, you need to plan and run multiple tracks and keep everything organised with signaling stations. The competition laughs at your well planned out tracks. Turns out that they don’t have to adhere to the same rules as us meaty mortals. At first your rivals don’t pose as much of a threat, they can get quite brutal further in. One of the bonuses of the free roam is that you can level the playing field by either removing the realistic restrictions. This means your trains can travel both directions on the one track, or you can have it so the AI has to also has to run multiple tracks and signals.
There’s two very different games here, you can be the sole railway company and just work on connecting cities, building them up along the way. Finding the most economic ways to get your trains across the country while traversing some rough terrain. Or you can pit yourself against rival tycoons, sabotage one another, smear them, outbid them and do all you can to put them out of business, even if you have to play the stock market. All the while growing your company, purchasing everything you can and filling in your tech tree, enabling you to carry more produce or improved productivity or just increased ticket prices for passengers.
While others will enjoy all the rivalry and tycoon tomfoolery, I enjoyed being able to take on the big open plains by myself. Just peacefully laying down tracks and being a successful sole operator. The game is very much functional for people who do want all the competition and to dig into all the nitty gritty too. As long as you know the odds are stacked against you, but who knows! Maybe that makes it all the more fun when you get one over on the AI and absorb their railways.
Playing the Scenarios means you can jump right into areas you don’t have access to from the Campaign with their own set of goals. At the time of playing I couldn’t get any further than South America, with the other DLC unavailable until launch. Since the game has been released I can see that the remaining DLC costs $15 AUD per region. A discounted bundle would’ve gone a long way, if you want them as they are currently it nearly doubles the price. It’s not unreasonable to have paid content that is made after the initial game, it just feels like a weird decision to include only some of it.
Australia is also going to be available in the Down Under DLC available at some point, I am genuinely interested in seeing how they tackle the harsh conditions the land of Oz can pose.
Now cramming a simulator/planning game down into the Switch I didn’t expect too much. Especially after Cities: Skylines, there’s just only so much the Switch can handle. Running the simulation while also having to handle large amounts of land is a big task. Railway Empire manages to keep chugging along, but it feels like it’s only just inching forward. There can be noticeable framerate issues when trying to move around the map, but the more noticeable impact is on the visuals. Everything feels like it’s on the lowest visual settings. It's understandable why, but it’s hard to ignore. This means that the ride along view on the train fails to capture any excitement, everything looks like smudges. Managing the camera is frustrating, always seeming to zoom in on an angle just slightly off from what you actually want. With the Switch’s reduced resolution you’ll need to zoom in to really make out anything, once again even more of an issue if you decide to view it in handheld.
Usually a management game like this would be on the PC first with the keyboard and mouse interface having to be reworked for controllers. From what I can find, Empire had worked it in from the beginning. This is good news for anyone playing on the Switch, the radial dial you can bring up with the press of a button gives you quick access to most important options. It’s not always responsive, but the setup does make construction straightforward.
If you are playing handheld or have a Switch Lite, prepare for some small text, and this game is filled with stuff to read. I can often get by with smallish text, but it’s not ideal for a game that requires being able to read despite some voice acted dialogue.
Railway Empire chugs along just fine. It's a good management game set in an interesting time period for railways. Fans of the genre will have a lot to do, especially with some of the DLC included and more to purchase. The negatives can seem overwhelming from a glance over them, but there is a solid game underneath. I enjoyed setting up my tracks and connecting cities to farms and factories. While I wasn’t a fan of the AI rivals, there is a mode where they’re removed. If you only have a Switch Lite or only play handheld, the small text might be a deal breaker, I still have fingers crossed for an update to address it. Despite any minor issues I had with the game I am still looking forward to the Down Under DLC, so it’s not the end of the line for Railway Empire yet.
The Score
7.5
Review code provided by Kalypso Media
The Pros
+Plenty of content (especially trains) for early train enthusiasts
+Some DLC included
+The controls translate the traditional PC interface to consoles effectively
The Cons
+No larger font options impact the game in handheld mode
+Tutorials can get in the way while not being informative enough
+Extra DLC packages nearly double the price of the game
