Hear that train whistle blowing, everyone? Of course you do because it’s train time again here at GiN. In recent months, I have been fortunate enough to be able to review everything related to railway simulations including building elaborate model train layouts to renovating old stations and bringing them back to life. And GiN has reviewed and written about the Railway Empire series quite a lot as it is the current king of the hill in terms of railroad simulations.
Like many gamers, I really enjoy train simulations and have been entertained by their variety of activities that range from designing railroad empires to navigating rush hour as an engineer for a commuter train. Train titles have been a staple of computer gaming for a long time and for good reason.
Today we’re diving into the newest train simulation, and it provides quite an interesting sandbox for players to enjoy. It’s Railroads Online, which is available on the PC through Steam and also on consoles. That is kind of a big deal too because there are not nearly as many train simulations on consoles. I picked up Railroads Online for the PlayStation 5.
Railroads Online has a pretty impressive design. It’s an open world sim that allows you to drive all sorts of historic trains. In fact, players can be the engineer on everything from modern diesel locomotives to traditional steam locomotives.
I started out with the Railroads Online tutorial, and it was impressively detailed. Who knew that starting up a steam locomotive was so complicated? It’s not easy in the slightest, which is well represented here. The startup process is complex and involves filling up at a water tower, loading wood or coal into the tender, nursing the fire in the boiler, and listening to the steam build up. After that, another challenge is learning what all of the levers, knobs, and gadgets do to safely operate a steam locomotive. The tutorials alone took me a couple of hours just to make sure I understood everything I needed. But finally I was ready to move the engine forward.
Once I hit the whistle, the excitement started to build as I released the brake and moved the throttle forward. I will take a moment to say that the whistles are loud, and those with animals may have some unhappy pets. Every time I used the whistle, my German Shepherd would bark and leave the room for a bit. Additionally, this is where I hit my first issue with the gameplay on the PlayStation 5 version of Railroads Online. When trying to make fine adjustments to key levers like the throttle, the analog sticks made it difficult to make minor changes. I would end up pushing or pulling them way too much, resulting in jerky movements.
When I started the actual gameplay outside of the tutorial, I was ready to drive my chosen trains across the countryside. Unfortunately for me, you begin the game with about 20 feet of track. Railroads Online is a pure sandbox where you have to build all of your tracks to all of the different industries spread across the map. That is pretty standard for railroad sims, with players earning money from those connections to purchase even more tracks and, of course, more engines and train cars.
The key difference is that Railroads Online makes you do all that in a first-person perspective. This caused me a great deal of frustration as I wasted a lot of time just trying to get tracks down in places where I needed them. It took far too long for me to even get a rudimentary track out to the first industry I wanted to connect to my railroad empire. I got stopped because turns were too sharp or when two critical sections could not meet up. I somehow deleted whole sections of track when trying to add a switch (and on and on).
I estimate that my track laying time was about five times more than I actually got to drive my trains. This was made a bit more difficult because of the console controls. It would probably have been a bit easier on the PC with a mouse and keyboard.
Maybe I am unique but when I play a train driving simulation, I want to spend my time in the engine moving down the track. I have to give credit to the developer Stefan Kelnberger because the maps they made for Railroads Online are huge and perfect for making long trips across the country in your chosen train. But they are really rough when trying to connect everything, especially in first person using console controls.
Granted, maybe if I had friends to help me out as this is an online title that has multiplayer baked into it and supports up to 16 players at the same time, I might have enjoyed my time a bit more. I could see getting together with friends and having some people lay the track and design the various runs while others drive the trains. For me playing solo however, it just took too long to do the backend work when I was fighting the controls the entire time.
Normally, I don’t do reviews a second time. However, if Railroads Online updates with improved or simplified track building mechanics on the PlayStation 5, I would be willing to take another look. Railroads Online has so much potential, but I want to be able to spend more time inside the locomotives and not so much trying to convince the user interface that I really do want to put a track down through that field and hoping that it lets me.
Overall, Railroads Online has a fascinating premise and would be a huge hit to play for a group of friends who all love trains. The locomotives are well designed, highly detailed, and interesting to work with while driving. The real sticking point is how the tracks are laid out, at least on consoles. There really needs to be a better way to get that part accomplished that is much more forgiving to players.
That said, even with the frustrating controls and track-laying mechanics, I still had a really good time with Railroads Online. Once I got things in place and saw my trains moving around the map, feeling the virtual wind in my hair as I sped towards another industry desperate to pay me to transport their product, I was in heaven. With a few console interface fixes, this could be one of the best online railroad simulations to release in a long time. It’s not there yet, but there is light at the end of the tunnel.
Developers: Stefan Kelnberger
Platforms: PlayStation 5, Steam, Xbox Series X