AlexanderN

Preface: I play the game on PC, with an Intel 6th gen CPU and GeForce 970 GPU, so a bit dated hardware by today's standard. Will update as soon as RTX3xxx gets more affordable (and available at all) and play the game again for sure. Graphics: with my dated hardware I definitely had to tweak the settings a bit to get good looking graphics with solid fps. But with dynamic resolution scaling and disabling unwanted post processing effects I manage to run mid to high quality settings on WQHD at about 50fps. And although it does not look as good as gameplay videos with high end hardware, it still looks awesome to me. Will upgrade my GPU asap. Technical/bugs: bugs definitely are present and while harming the immersion I did neither experience game breaking bugs nor any crashes. Mileage seems to vary a lot between players but for me everything is fine overall. I did not experience a single crash in over 20h of playtime and no bug was persistent after reloading the last checkpoint, which luckily wlos created automatically after every important step. Game Design: overall the different mechanics play together really well. Different skills can be used to personalize the experience, decisions are given to the player both during dialogs - and but even more important through the play style. More than often while playing you don't even notice that right now you are taking a certain decision because the game is not pushing your face in it. But still, many quests can be solved in different ways. Quest design itself is phenomenal, there are many opportunities and activities without the feeling of repetitiveness or grind. What I still don't get however is the crafting system. You have to invest a lot into crafting, both skill and item wise, while you get a better item dropped after the next quests anyway. And if crafting is part of the game I would like to at least be able to "combine" two items to apply the stats of one to the look/appearance of another. World: the world design is awesome. I totally immerse in this dark, intriguing, criminal, neon city. While most parts of the huge city are more scenery than usable open world the game excells at delivering a feeling of the sheer size of this megacity while the player is still able to identify important and iconic parts of the city and strolling through jig jig street without forgetting in which district you are right now. It should be clear that in a city of this size you can not enter every floor of every mega building, which in itself are own little cities so to say. While this would require a lot of work for the level design alone, it would also not add to the gameplay at all. In my opinion, it would even harm the gameplay as the player would most likely feel lost. For my liking the game found the perfect balance between size and recognition factor of individual locations. Story: this is what absolutely defines the game, its bread and butter. There are just no words to describe how awesome the main story is. The game design plays perfectly with the quests and the story itself is breathtaking and puts me in awe... Summary: I did explicitly not follow the hype, did not watch all the trailers, teasers and did not follow the articles of nearly all small and big pc games newspaper or website out there. Therefore, I did neither expect the "greatest game of the decade", nor a "better GTA" nor a "Witcher in the future". I I don't know what expectations some players and reviewers had for this game. And honestly, for sure at least some players will be disappointed, as the game is not the classical open world game of the last year's (c.f. Ubisoft), nor a GTA alternative, nor a shooter (RPG factors like level and item stats play too big a role). But for me as an RPG lover, and one who missed good single player story games in times of "service online games" polluted with micro transaction, this game is a real breath of fresh air. Despite its grim, dark, and polluted setting, where fresh air might be the last thing you will find. ;) The game offers an amazing story, solid gameplay and a variety of playstyles and choices in how to approach individual missions. There is always the possibility to take an alternative route to what the game suggests and it really makes sense to listen to the small annotations NPC give you. Playing as a hacker and don't like the boss fight the quests marker is clearly throwing you into? Well, just sneak around it! The game does not say you can do so, but it either does not mention that you can't! In the end the game silently gives you this freedom. Free your minds from the shackles that past games put on you and enyoj the possibilities! And last but not least, with one of the best stories I've witnessed in the last years, the game plays more like an interactive movie which gets me hooked, in a good way. Minus 1 point for the occasional bug and balancing issues with items and crafting, which feels a bit out of place.

Even though this game still has some drawbacks, at the end the user gets a very nice transportation simulation! It should be noted, that as of December 2014 the Developers still work on this game and release patches periodically. There is even a free DLC planned for early 2015. Due to the constant work of the devs, while listening to consumer feedback, many of the stated bugs and drawbacks written in the older reviews are fixed by now! Negative points: - for beginners, building tracks may seem complicated - actually, the building tool is quite powerful but it misses an 'undo' or 'planing' function - as every single person on the map is completely simulated, performance gets an issue especially in the late game - without a tutorial, rhe simulation specifications are unknown to new players - they have to inform themselves in one of the thriving communities, maybe a tutorial or at least a help in finding external tutorials would be a good idea Positive points: + nice graphics, realistic vehicles! + modding support, I suggest everyone to have a look at the mods available for this game as they introduce loads of new vehicles, buildings, decorations, ... Even total conversions, industry conversions, and other advanced stuff is available! + periodic updates after release, direct contact to developers possible + long time fun as playing through the different epochs of transportation always offers new challenges, even without a campaign Of course it should be noted. That this game serves a very specific target group. If you have fun building a transportation empire or just love model railways, Train Fever is right for you. Although it is perfectly possible to mod the game in a way that money is not an issue in the game, I do not recommend TF for casual gamers, as they have to invest a bit of time to understand the simulation concepts of the game. When taking the target group into account I can give 9/10 points with clean conscience.