Beautiful game, starts nice and easy then becomes more complex. Nice, except that it crashes randomly under Vista. I was never able to finish a game. Issue is known since early 2007, and discussed on many web sites, publisher has not acknolwedged the issue, no patch has been issued since December 2006. Product seems abandonned by the editor and the distributors. Will try to get my money back, with regrets...… Expand

I've bee a huge fan of Mr. Meier's work for years - this product is disappointing and frustrating. Disappointing in there is no real logic control - or challenge and the scale is just - wrong. Disappointing in the frequency of crashes. And yes, I've downloaded the patch and even purchased a new graphics card thinking it had to be my system. Sorry Mr. Meier, you really botched this one!… Expand

Seems to be a great game till you start playing it. The crashes take all the fun out of it. I can live with things like the engines have no tender and the occasional graphics failures but the continious crashes (OS Vista Ultimate) completely takes the fun out of this game. Waste of 10 Euro's.

I was really excited about Sid Meier’s Railroads!, but I have been sorely disappointed. The game is the latest in a growing trend among not only Sid Meier’s games, but the entire video game industry of releasing substandard video games. As long as consumers keep falling for it, though, they'll keep doing it. It's not like anyone is getting sued for travesties like Diplomacy, Civilization IV (with its horrendous installation problems.), and countless other games which boast recycled gameplay, unacceptable and unforgivable wait times while the game makes sure you’re not using a pirated copy of the title, and a number of other unbelievable practices employed by companies. The industry isn’t really new any more, so why isn’t there any consumer protection? These games border on fraud. One of the first problems with this game that I noticed was the way in which train traffic is managed by the game. Like its predecessor, Railroad Tycoon 3, the game allows you to lay double track. Great! Double track is just two railroads side by side which allow trains to bypass each other. However, it doesn’t work. At first I was making some stupid mistakes as I learned to lay down the track, and I thought it was just me; but as I became better at it, the flaws became more and more apparent. As an example, imagine a circle of railroad track. There are four towns along this railroad on each compass point. We will call them Town A, Town B, Town C, and Town D. Town A has a lot of apples, which the people in town C really like. In return, the people of Town C send their prize Chickens to town A, which are equally celebrated. The citizens of Town B have delicious beef which they trade to Town D for delicious deserts. The most efficient way to capitalize on this situation would be to have two trains on two routes sharing the same track instead of one train. However, being an equal distance in each way, the train might decide to go the wrong way on the track, causing a permanent traffic jam when the two trains meet. (Or worse… trains start going the wrong way, their cars separate from the engine and fly around the map… that kind of thing.) I thought realistic track laying was a neat feature that would improve upon the fun gameplay of Railroad Tycoon 3. Indeed, it would be if it worked properly. All it needs for this to be the case is the ability of the player to dictate which direction trains on a given portion of track must travel. Voila, problem solved! Failing that, though, at least let the trains turn around. After about a year of game time, they do fade out and allow one of the trains to phase right through it, depending on difficulty, but a player should be able to DO something about it when this happens. Instead we must watch in horror or lay down a crossing and double track to allow the train to bypass… But crossings just make it worse without direction control. Additionally, the maps, like Civilization IV, are FAR too small! I want huge maps that more accurately represent the world in which I’m playing. In Railroad Tycoon 3 your competitors forced you to be stuck in maybe a state or two until you bought them out. In Railroads!, you end up being confined to the space of a few CITIES. It’s utterly unrealistic. Yes, the map looks great, but it’s a virtual world! Give me more room! Where’s the map of the entire United States? It’s not unreasonable to expect, the technology is there. It’s possible to do! Augh! One of the other things that has irritated me is the completely unrealistic stock market system. The goal of the game is to buy out or bankrupt all your competitors – kind of like monopoly. Indeed, what you’re shooting for is a railroad monopoly. In the real world, stocks buy and sell for the same price – that is to say, at any given moment a stock has a price. That price is the same whether you’re buying or selling. In Railroads, however, the buy price is inexplicably much higher than the sell price. This is, of course, to balance game play, since if you buy 1,000 shares of stock in a company the price will rise slightly and you can then immediately sell for a profit, causing the stock to drop a little bit. In Railroads, there are only ten shares of each company, though, and buying and selling therefore has a much greater impact on the game. Well, here’s an idea of how to balance your game: how about you make a realistic god damn stock market with hundreds of thousands of shares for each company – millions! It’s not like anything needs to be rendered! It’s number crunching. The game is played on a computer! A COMPUTER! IT COMPUTES NUMBERS! If children’s sites can emulate a stock market, god damn it, so can a gaming company. Again, the technology is there. It was there in Railroads Tycoon 3. Where did it go?! But, wait! There’s more! The biggest laugh is how buying out a competitor works. In RT3, you could do mergers, hostile takeovers, and all sorts of nasty things. All of that is gone. In the real world, if you control 51% of a corporation, you can do WHATEVER YOU WANT, within the confines of the law. There have been and still are people who make their fortunes by obtaining voting control of companies and then liquidate all the capital or do other mean things. With 51% of stock, any vote you make automatically wins. You become dictator. That’s why it’s a hostile takeover. Not so in Railroads. No, to run a player out of business, the entire 10 shares must be controlled by players and then you must pay for each of the shares you don’t control at 200% their actual worth to buy the company out. WHAT?! That makes no sense. My god! No, here’s how it works: I buy 51% of the shares and I say “Guess what, guys? I move that you merge with my company. All opposed? Too bad, whatever I say goes, and I say ‘aye!’ Motion succeeds, meeting adjourned. I expect you all to have your desks cleared out by the time the bulldozers get here. We won’t be waiting.” In short, Railroads is a trainwreck. I have always liked Sid Meier’s games, but this is the last straw for me. I will never be wasting my money on any of his usually well-conceived but almost always poorly executed games. Railroads, however, was apparently conceived by a mentally retarded school child. In an effort to simplify the game, they destroyed it. Mission accomplished! Great job, guys. This game does not deliver what it promised, and luckily for those who have bought it, it comes with a nice warranty good for 90 days. I know I’ll be taking mine back. If you bought this game, and you are becoming frustrated by these or any of the other problems with this game, return it! You’re not doing anyone a favor by keeping it, least of all yourself. As long as we take it, they’ll keep serving it. Return the game and send a message. It’s the best thing for everyone, even the developers; hell, especially for the developers.… Expand

Fireaxis continues to produce substandard material out from a golden brand (Sid Meier) and from classical franchises (Civ, Pirates, Railroad Tycoon). They are watering the beer expecting trying to catter for today's kids while dumping the yesterday's ones. I think both today's as well as yesterdays' kids will not like it for different reasons. The first ones because there are no "Kool x-plosions", the last ones because the game is so simple and unambitious it leads to despair.… Expand

Fun game, fun graphics. Not up to par with Sid's other games, though. Haven't had any bugs or performance issues, but the game just doesn't feel done. Several things in the manual that comes boxed with the game just don't exist in the actual game. The game is quite simple, not nearly as complex as Railroad Tycoon 3, which may or may not be a bad thing.

I haven't had a lot of the bugs or stability problems others have mentioned in their reviews. The game runs well enough for me and is entertaining although it has a fairly simple economic model and somewhat cartoony feel to it. Difficulty was also somewhat lacking- the only place I found a challenge was multiplayer which is now all but abandoned.

I just bought the game via steam. The game is fun so far, despite the following: I'm using Vista 32bit (HomePremium) and get maybe one crash every 1-2h. Since there is autosave you lose maybe 10-15min of gameplay per crash. I haven't played RRT2 and 3 yet (maybe will do so if Railroads proves to be not sophisticated enough.) I only played one scenario so far: the german (1835-1980) with 3 computer opponents and beginner difficulty ("investor"/"medium") - and it's far too easy: I retired 1917 after completing all tasks and buying all stocks /defeating all 3 opponents - why should I continue until 1980? Retiring 1917 earned me best possible ranking - I think ranking should be "normalised" like in Civ IV (where I'm usually sticking with "prince"-difficulty), so that difficulty is taken into account (I'm not sure if this is the case here - but you shouldn't get best ranking in easiest setting - even if you finish very early). Will continue playing now in harder settings.… Expand

Well, so far Railroads! has been pretty fun. The supply/demand and cargo changing between cities has been very much simplified and is a lot easier to use. The railway layout has been simplified a lot as well, so that it automagically lays the track for you and you don't have to worry as much about minor/small gradients in the track. The downside to this new system is that it seems kind of buggy and is hard to get it the way you want it. You also have to worry more about switching between double tracks and signals and such. It does the switching automatically, but with the new layout system again, it's hard to get it to work right. It appears to be somewhat unstable, my roomate crashed multiple times in the first 30 minutes, but has been fine for the past hour or so. I just crashed for the first time when trying to delete a complicated piece of track (trying to get it just right...) So far overall I think it's definitely worth a purchase, and I hope more Shackers will pick it up. If they can get it more stable, and hopefully work on the auto track layout, I think it'd be incredibly engrossing. Oh, and more maps would be nice as well. There's no US south east map! Worrrd. Look forward to a patch, but until then I will enjoy it. Later impressions: Played a couple more hours and it didn't crash, but the automatic track making was very frustrating as the trains did not work very well, or atleast the trains would stop where there was available track to use up ahead. It also runs pretty shitty once cities got larger. I JUST built this system last week, an OCed C2D with a 7900gto and it slowed down quite a bit. Also, NO ONE was playing multiplayer. No one even in the lobbies. At most, 2 people. So yeah, great game, worth picking up, but hopefuly they will patch this with some graphics optimizations and fixes for the track laying.… Expand

This game is riddled with bugs. Its too simple. RR Tycoon II was much better. Shame on you Sid.

Fun game for those who aren't sticklers for detail. I've never played RRT2 or RRT3, so you can categorize me as a casual train-game kinda guy. I have the boardgame Railroad Tycoon, and in general I've never been disappointed by a Sid Meier's game; and I'm not now. I can see how the hard-core crowd wouldn't like it, but that being said I think it's a fun romp and a good game. If you are like me, and think games like MS Flight Simulator IL2 and Harpoon! are too detailed to be called "games", then you might very well like this one. Let's be honest gang...Sid isn't known for hard-core simulations...Pirates can't be called a true simulation of the Age of Sail any more than the Civ games aret detailed historical simulations. Sid has always made games that were on the simpler side...but fun. There are some bugs, which unfortunately is pretty much the rule rather than the exception these days.… Expand

Wow, Ryan H is upset! That sure is a lot of text! In any event, I've enjoyed this game a lot - removes a lot of the clutter from the past Tycoon games to clear the way for fun. I've enjoyed the multiplayer games I've played immensely - I'd recommend picking it up for MP alone...

A very pretty toy train game with little content or control for the Sim enthusiast. Highly suitable for ages 5 > 12, but not much over. You simply click in the required place, the bits appear, the time races by, you finish in a few hours. (If the bugs in it let you)

Dissapointing. The biggest challenge is to figure out how to deal with laying double/triple track so your trains don't block each other. This is made difficult by the 3/4 view - it's very hard to lay track precisely. Other than that the economy is pretty simple with only a few types of goods. Since a 150 year campaign takes only 3 hours to complete at regular speed it's simply not worth it to reconfigure your opponents's to work with your network once you've bought them out - I just couldn't be bothered to worry about efficiencies for a game that would be over before I could even enjoy the fruit of my labor. Also frustrating there is no way to figure out what trains serve a city, so when you do purchase your opponent you either have to click on every bloody train to figure out what it does and rejig it (computer is very sucky in terms of route mgmt!) Again, not worth the trouble since the game will be over before you know it. Other than that UI looks good and very simple (perhaps too much for this gamer), maps are a little too small for my taste - 4 player game quickly become a nightmarish spaghetti of tracks trying to serve the same small cities. Conclusion: I like simplicity, but this makes it feel like a msn game. Maybe my girlfriend will find it interesting for an hour or two. If you want a game to immerse yourself in, take a pass. Version played is an electronic download - any patches coming?… Expand

let me start by saying that ive never played a train sim before. i enjoyed this and i imagine for someone who like train sets that this is a bit of simple fun. the first thing I thought is that it sort of looks similar to Civ4 but that aint a bad thing, its a very easy game to get into and i feel theres enough there to keep it a challenging game, i imagine where the main part of the game lies is in its multiplayer and that looks intresting. overall good looking simple and fun.… Expand

It is a fun game but mostly after playing a while i got a load of cash and good income. I layed a bit more track and than it happens everytime again some trains start acting weird like taking routes they don't have to getting stuk on some places and then I start losing money becuase my income drops and I cannot recitify those stupid trains

Game is too easy...maps too condensed...not much of a challenge. RRT3 is better.

A very simple game more fit for my 5 yo daughter than myself. It is too easy. The epic feeling was completely taken out as the maps are very small. Also only 8 maps in the game. Addressing some generous comments posted before, this game IS NOT for "someone who never played a tycoon game". It is too simple and easy. No, you don't need to like FS10 or IL2 to see this game as the real turkey it is. Another interesting argument of the few people who liked it is about the great multiplayer capabilities: FORGET IT. I played with my wife. It crashed 4 times in an hour. It's boring, becaue you have not many things to do besides looking for the trains to go around collecting huge piles of cash! This is a turkey!… Expand

What a huge disappointment. The track-laying is just a mess. This game is so dumbed down that the fun is gone. I really was hoping for something close to the gameplay of the original Railroad Tycoon with updated graphics. Why can't the developers understand that accurately and precisely laying track and placing signals is immensely satisfying in a railroad game? And why are there no top-down overview 2D maps of your railroad empire? Or at least a few more levels of zooming out. The game is so claustrophobic and crowded. The maps are just so small- your trains never seem like they are going cross-country. Overall it feels like a "kiddie" game. I could go on here... Firaxis owes us a refund.… Expand

I am not normally a railroads game player, but am more of a Civ die-hard fan. I tried this game based on the Sid Meier's name alone, and am pleasantly surprised. While this game is not as deep or involving as Civ, it offers an extremely fun, casual escape. I haven't run into the crashing problems that others have (i'm not saying they don't happen, I just haven't seen it). If you are looking for an all-around solid game, with traditional Sid Meier's strategy, Railroads gets the job done. As for multi-player, I think this is where the game really shines. While single player is a bit on the easy-to-win side, multi-player is a serious challenge, and is a seriously fast moving game where if you don't pay attention, your apt to get most of your cargo stolen. Thumbs up. It will not disappoint.… Expand

What a deception, this game is a PC toy for Kids ! definitively to easy. Maps are really small, you track few meters only one city to the other. No deep at all, a lot of bugs, no fun, I'm very dissapointed, I expected something closer to RT3 which was very good, save your money buy something else!

Rather disappointing. Railroad Tycoon 3 is better. The maps feel so small, and the fun of laying track is just not there... Camera control is awkward compared to RRT3, and you can't zoom in to your trains and follow them around a huge landscape. It's like a little toy.

I agree with others who give this a low score. Crashes to desktop are frequent, there's a lot of graphic flickering, maps are too small, the trains don't always obey signals and end up in stalemate situations a lot. There is no way to back a train out of these stalemates and putting in a new piece of track to solve a stalemate is just plain stupid. The steam locos have no coal tenders. And yes it is very toy-like. I could live with most of these deficiencies but the crashes and graphic mis-behaviour really kill it for me.… Expand

I only had a few problems with the game. The time scale of the game is just a little too quick, and there aren't enough track optioons. You are unable to really create any realworld switching stations or properly setup rails to minimize wait times.

I was a huge fan of RRT 3 who had solid "true 3D" graphics, good sound and the best economy/RR sim model ever made to day. You still find me under "Champion_Tycoon" in the multiplayer once in a while (I have not lost a multiplayer game in more than a year so strong players are highly welcome). I am also a long time fan of Sid Meier's games, some of which brought me many hours of relaxation over the past 15 years. That being said I expected 'Railroads' to come at least close to what RT3 was: a budget game. Oh boy was I wrong... Sid Meier's game is pure crap; I spent about 6 days playing the single and multiplayer maps and I was disappointed with every aspect of the game: graphics, sound, controls, design, game logic, economic model, RR model, historic accuracy, replayabilty and last, but not least, overall entertainment value. It is one of the worst games I have ever played... and I have played more of them than I should have. This game is an absolute ***ZERO*** Like some1 said b4: "Shame on you Sid."… Expand

I was a huge fan of RRT 3 who had solid "true 3D" graphics, good sound and the best economy/RR sim model ever made to day. You still find me under "Champion_Tycoon" in the multiplayer once in a while (I have not lost a multiplayer game in more than a year so strong players are highly welcome). I am also a long time fan of Sid Meier's games, some of which brought me many hours of relaxation over the past 15 years. That being said I expected 'Railroads' to come at least close to what RT3 was: a budget game. Oh boy was I wrong... Sid Meier's game is pure crap; I spent about 6 days playing the single and multiplayer maps and I was disappointed with every aspect of the game: graphics, sound, controls, design, game logic, economic model, RR model, historic accuracy, replayabilty and last, but not least, overall entertainment value. It is one of the worst games I have ever played... and I have played more of them than I should have. This game is an absolute ***ZERO*** Like some1 said b4: "Shame on you Sid."… Expand

This game is terrible, and full of bugs! Railroad Tycoon 3 is a MUCH MUCH better game!

This game is unplayable due to crashing every 10 minutes or so. Even with the latest 1.10 patch I cannot even begin to get into a game. I feel like my money was stolen.

The game is full of bugs, the game tends to lock up and likes to crash to windows. It's disappointing to see Sid Meier putting his name on an unfinished product like this. The game has potential but for now it's just throwing money away.

It looks like it could be a good game to come home ticked off and just want to conquer, without too much resistance. I would like the game easily 3 times as much though if it didn't throw me on the desktop every 15 minutes!

Huge disappointment, It seems this game is geared mostly for multiplayer play. I found it difficult to keep up with the goals on the single player mode having to read down a long list and try to remember everything. I have been a big Sid Meyers fan but the last 3 or 4 titles that he has put out all seemed shallow, rushed, and short of expectation. Maybe Sid should keep with the Civ series. In my opinion, the only games that are any good, that has had his name on it in the last 4 years… Expand

WOW RYN nice talk about your frustration ever considered just not playing sim games, hell that solve all your problems don't take it serious just laugh at it and play for about half our the quit laugh some more play something else p.s have fun with the sending it back.

Very, very disappointing. I've loved other Sid Meier titles and was a fan of Railroad Tycoon and the sequel. This, however, is absolute rubbish, riddled with bugs. Trains just get stuck (this even happened to me the first time I ran the tutorial) or end up going round in loops never reaching their destination due to terrible routing algorithms. Avoid this game like the plague - it�39;s not the quality product we've come to expect under the Sid Meier label.… Expand

Could have been a fun basic strategy game but the bugs make it unplayable. Even with the patch, it crashes consistently after about 20 minutes play time. Running on a pretty solid system with 3GB memory so the problems are with the program. Was never able to begin playing with even one computer opponent due to the instability. There may be a good game there if it can get properly patched. For now, save your money.… Expand

Its a good game but alot of minor bugs make it less fun then it should be.

It gets a one, because at least it makes it onto the monitor - sometimes! Purchased thru Steam (who don't appear to want to help) I have not enjoyed the experience at all. Game keeps crashing without warning and for no apparent reason. Running Win Vista Ultimate; 2Gb DDR2 800 RAM, 256Mb Video; Intel E6400 Duo Core2; so it has enough power......What a load of crap.......

Pretty and a really good idea but even the demo goes wrong, what on Earth are they playing at?

This game ran great on Windows XP Professional. Got a new PC with Duo Core, 2 gigs, 256 mb video, etc.... and it crashes within 10 - 15 minutes. No help from Steam, who I purchased from, they said try Fireaxis. Tried Fireaxis and they said it was the distributors issue, yeah right, the people that distributed can't figure out how to fix it, isn't that the developers job? Anyhow, very dissapointed, my 7 yr old really liked the game. The patch didn't fix anything that I could tell, same problems still exist. Oh well, no more Steam purhases or Fireaxis for me until they resolve the issue.… Expand

A fun and light strategy game which might be seen as a good introduction to transportation games. I was concerned when I began playing because I felt the economy wouldn't be deep enough. As it turns out, once you've got a few stations and trains running, I felt the game has struck a great balance. A lot of fun. (I'm sure my experience is colored by the fact that I haven9;t suffered wioth the instability others have complained about.) Weak spots: track laying UI is a bit clumsy and you can't manually set switches to better control the routing.… Expand

It has unfortunately become a good business model to release software full of bugs, and then run away from the responsibility when the complaints start flowing in. Well, Firaxis is now on my blacklist; no more from that direction. I can only warn against this product: It's so full of bugs that it's essentially unplayable. Also embarrassing to watch the official reviews that look like the reviewers must have been on drugs.… Expand

I LOVE Railroad Tycoon 1 - 3! I started to love this one too, but then I noticed after I was doing well and had a lot of track on the map, bugs would start emerging: Track would disappear; Water would suddenly be in the middle of the map where land was before...then...crash! After it crashed, Windows would do some really funny stuff too until I rebooted. What a huge pain the butt to have to reboot everytime I felt like playing Railroads...and most of the time I could not even make it through a game without it crashing.It really sucked when I played multiplayer becuase rarely did any of us make it through a game without someone crashing. On the other hand, my brother's copy runs just great. I am guessing that they only tested this game on a very small set of hardware and decided that everyone who doesn't use that set of hardware is just SOL. From what I see here, that means more people than not get the shaft. So here's a big thumbs down to the development team and most of all the management team that proably pushed the developers in directions they did not want to go, all in the name of maximizing profit. Gotta keep those shareholders happy you know. Morons. I guess told them that game sales will start declining when people get fed up with their substandard software.… Expand

I can only assume Sid Meier's and his marketing partners were aiming for the WalMart crowd with this dumb-downed, comic book iteration of the RRT franchise. This game is a disappointment on a par with Master of Orion 3.

Great game, horable vista support. That wouldnt be a big deal if the game had just came out. But people have had problems from release on. And they never fixed them.

I absolutely love this game. If you are experiencing bugs, download the patch! A couple of my friends and I play this every week online. This is one of those 'easy to learn, lifetime to master' type games. I highly recommend it!