Railway Empire 2 PC Review

Kalypso Media is known for publishing massive and complex simulation games, including the city builder Tropico and the pirate adventure Tortuga: A Pirate’s Tale. The first Railway Empire was released back in 2018 and focused almost entirely on just the United States. To go beyond locations like Britain, Germany, Japan, and Australia required separate expansion packs. While Railway Empire 2 isn’t entirely global, it expands the base game’s scope compared to Railway Empire.

In the early 19th century, a need for faster transportation than roads is felt across North America and Western Europe. Several new railway companies are opening across the globe, but only a few will survive the fierce competition. Each character has a default name and moniker but can be edited. What matters more are their unique class, the perks, and even the penalties that come along with it.

The Engineer builds at lower costs but is less inclined to transport passengers. The Gangster can often win over corporations without paying but isn’t very good at building the rail line. The Entrepreneur can quickly deliver mail and get people places but has trouble repairing damaged parts of the system. The Professor can buy new locomotives for cheaper but gains less revenue for express goods. The General gains high revenue for both mail and freight but incurs extra costs when building bridges or tunnels. Finally, The Lady is very good for building up a connected city but is terrible with staff.

Players can select to play in only specific regions of the United States, Canada, Mexico, the British Isles, the German Confederation, or Scandinavia. Or they may choose from two vast maps of the whole of North America or Western Europe. Oddly, some regions of the full-scale maps cannot be selected as standalone, like the Iberian Peninsula.

Players can also choose their starting city, which can impact their supply line, nearby towns, and the reach of their competitors. However, map resources cannot be adjusted and typically reflect natural goods and industries from history - Texas provides mostly cattle and vegetables, while Pilsen is a grain and beer capital.

Jumping straight into a scenario or sandbox mode can be completely overwhelming. Players are suddenly presented with goals and almost no onboarding. Instead, it is highly recommended to complete the tutorial lessons first, even if one is returning from the original Railway Empire. A refresher is always good, even for veterans.

The tutorial will provide the basics of the game, including how to construct buildings, new rail lines, placing gridirons, and supplying trains with goods. The tutorial is typically good at stopping the action and allowing one to get hands-on experience with the various mechanics. However, one oversight is that the tutorial still allows various hazards to persist in early lessons. One example is the train can break down even before explaining how maintenance works - requiring a full restart.

The basic gameplay loop of Railway Empire 2 is supply and demand. Every city has goods they wish to sell while acquiring various items from their neighbors. Even connecting natural resources to the manufacturers can speed up production. As industries grow, more citizens will move in and demand even finer luxuries. Some townsfolk will simply want to travel around or have their mail delivered on time.

Players will need to balance out a rail line’s efficiency, safety, and overall demand. Different locomotives are better suited to lug freight, passengers or can do both. However, it isn’t always good to stop off at every location. If there is no mail to be sent to a rural salt mine, then it is better to exclude it from the route - simply assign trains to drive through the station at express speeds.

However, stations too, do not have gridirons or other means of changing tracks once inside. If a train enters on track five, it also has to depart on track five. This makes it necessary to have good transfer points, possibly including dispatch waiting zones or restaurants, or else suffer delays or traffic jams.

To make cities even more appealing, players can construct libraries and museums to bring in more tourists and residents. To achieve the largest population, one needs to even have a university, though this costs annual fees to maintain. If there is enough room, one can also fund new industries, like bringing furniture making to mostly dairy-based exporters.

However, one needs to be very careful of where these buildings are constructed - most city borders have an extremely limited amount of space. More importantly, buildings can greatly disrupt future rail construction and planning. Entire areas may need to be bulldozed to make way for a line in a decade or two.

If one wants to control third-party businesses, there is also the option of buying them at auction, which typically costs around a million or more dollars. But rival companies have a chance to also purchase the same business. This can cause either side to encroach on each other’s territory or flat-out block a supply chain.

Even if the area is clear, the default automatic rail construction can be a bit haphazard and recommend needlessly expensive routes. In one instance, when building an extension from Prague to Breslau, the game suggested a massive overland bridge that would cost nearly 750,000 in-game currency. It is typically a smart idea to manually adjust the rail’s construction to ensure lower prices and faster commutes.

To help improve the rail company, there is an extensive research tech tree. Players will accumulate a set amount of research points per month, which can be spent on various technologies. This includes new locomotive types, more resilient trains, increased money for different deliveries, and connections to both the wealthy and the seedy underworld. Technology is separated by decades, with more basic options in the 1830s and the final upgrades only accessible in 1900.

Unlike the first game, in Railway Empire 2 one only needs to manage various employee roles, not each individual employee. This includes recruitment, training, and daily wages. If a role is happy, they can provide bonuses. For example, Stokers make trains move faster, while Security boosts freight revenue. Another important employee is Saboteurs, who can cripple enemy tracks, steal completed research, or halt an outside industry.

Railway Empire 2 does include a multiplayer mode, though it is strictly a cooperative experience. Players can host their current game by generating a unique code. When shared with up to three friends, they can join in and become part of the same company. They have access to all the features of the host, using the same budget and innovation points to plan things out. It would have been interesting if a competitive mode was included - like everyone in a rival company - but maybe Gaming Minds Studios will leave that for a future update or expansion.

Due to spanning seventy years and multiple countries, Railway Empire 2 can at times feel anachronistic or culturally insensitive. It’s kind of odd to have early Chicago gangsters running around the Second French Revolution, all while Bluegrass twangs play in the background. It very much feels like Gaming Minds Studios intended the game to first be a rural American setting, then just added on from there.

Railway Empire 2 adds a lot of nice features and quality of life over the first title. Diehard fans of train simulators will get a kick out of the game and shouldn’t hesitate about considering a purchase. Still, for those new to the genre, it can be a bit overwhelming to grasp all of the logistics and years of planning to create a multinational business.
 

Kurtis Seid (@KurtisSeid)
Senior Editor, NoobFeed