Gaming Minds Studio creates another hit for strategy fans with the release of Railway Empire 2.

Railway Empire 2 was developed by Gaming Minds Studio. This studio has been around since the 90s and is known for games such as the first Railway Empire as well as Port Royale. The publishers are Kalypso Media. They are known for publishing games such as the Tropico series as well as Commandos.

While it is called a strategy simulation Railway Empire 2 is more of a business tycoon where your strategies are the only thing keeping ahead of your competitors in a ruthless world set in the 1800s. Games like Tropico and Port Royale are well-known in this genre as they are long-running game series. But that doesn’t mean that Railway Empires or its long-awaited sequel Railway Empire 2 doesn’t stand out.

Railway Empire 2 features historical settings to launch all the different game modes. It even has information regarding each era and what was happening during that specific time period starting from 1830.

There are different characters for you to choose from, each with its own unique advantages and disadvantages. The professor’s strengths are the fact that auctions cost 30% less and that all the locomotives are 60% cheaper, making him a great character to start off with, but with advantages. There are usually some disadvantages. His disadvantage is that he receives 15% less profit from mail and passengers.

On the other hand, characters like The Lady and The Engineer help with expanding the cities and lowering the cost of maintenance and track building. This means that depending on your playstyle, you will be able to work to create your Railway empire the way you wish. However, it isn’t as easy as it seems.

Railways Empire 2 might seem like a small step up in terms of strategy and gameplay for those who have played the first game, but for players who play this genre for the first time, it is difficult. While the tutorials are extensive and the guides are helpful, it still requires a lot of trial and error to figure the game out, making it less friendly to newer players.

The ability to move the tracks around means you can create a highly extensive network, but you will have to keep an eye on your expenses, and it is sometimes better to do shorter railways with stops in between, especially if you are creating an express route. Although you can also simply drag the rails from one station to another for a straight route, sometimes that isn’t the best, as bridges and tunnels cost more to build. The cities around the main stations tend to grow in size as you meet more of the demand for goods and express.

While there are a lot of options for you to adjust in the menu when creating a custom match, many of them are better for creating a much harder gameplay scenario rather than something easier for a novice in this game genre.

Railway Empire 2 has two large maps for players to play around on, and these maps can be divided into smaller sections. The first map is most of North America, which includes Canada and a few specific states and areas in the USA. The second map is European and includes the British Isles, Scandinavia, and the German Confederation although it can be divided into several smaller maps depending on the routes you wish to complete.

Each city on the maps has its own needs and wants. You will need to calculate your best course of action as bringing these goods to the city is important, but you should not forget about the tasks you have to do. Each of the tasks, once completed, has a decent reward depending on the difficulty of the task, which will allow you to build more railways or buy out a competitor.

Competitors are an interesting concept to Railway Empire 2. They introduce a PvE concept that adds a layer of difficulty and another way for your Railway Company to lose. As you strengthen your company and continue to lay out more railway stations and tracks, you can slowly start buying out your competitors by buying shares of their companies. 

Although they aren’t the only ones you can buy out, certain buildings such as factories and freight goods producers such as farms and logging camps can be bought for extra income, including when you are able to have a railway station nearby for transporting the goods. However, your competitors can out-bid you for them and increase their own portfolio.

There are many mechanics in Railway Empire 2 that help players make their empires successful, but the most important is research. With research, you can get more powerful trains for express transport and freight transport, as well as unlock new buildings to build at your stations and within the cities. They also help with reducing building costs and the success of saboteurs.

Saboteurs come into play when dealing with competitors; whether you sabotage their trains or the train station itself, it makes it easier to slowly buy out your competitors and eliminate them from the game. However, Saboteurs aren’t the most important research. Focusing on getting better trains as well as buildings and buffs that help you build a stronger and faster railway is more important unless you wish to go for the more ruthless route of buying out all your competitors.

Railway Empire 2 also features a Co-op Mode. In the co-op mode, up to four players can work together to create the railway empire, which would make it easier to push back against higher difficulty Competitors and get the Railway Empire to its strongest as quickly as possible. If you do not wish to play Co-operatively with other players, then playing campaign and scenario maps is better or create your own scenario in the free play mode.

The graphics of Railway Empire 2 are really amazing, with a lot of thought and detail having gone into the creation of each of the maps and the different train models and cities. Although the game does have a simplified mode of view where you can instead focus on the placement of the rail lines, it doesn’t take away from the level of detail that has gone into the design of the game.

The Sound engineering was also well executed. The music fits the theme of the early 1800s by giving it an almost Wild West upbeat tune. The Voice Acting in the tutorial is incredibly clear, and it explains what it needs to explain in clear detail. These are not the only things that stand out. When zooming in on a city, you can hear the sounds of the cities day to day life as its citizens go about their days as well as the sound of the train as it comes into the station. In the end, the sounds help create an immersive feel that isn’t repetitive to the game as you create your railway empire.

Overall, Railway Empire 2 is a fun strategy simulator, even if it is a little difficult for someone just starting the genre to get into the game. While the tutorial is highly detailed, it is still lacking in a few explanations that would help a novice player out. It is a game that keeps you coming back with five different campaign levels as well as many different scenarios to explore.