Recent reviews by GrimFrame

Overall verdict: Buy on sale later when the bugs get ironed out. I enjoy playing vanilla with the harder setting minus mutators. The bugs here make even that impossible since you cannot micromanage every task.

As someone with a few hundred hours in this game I'm always looking to pick up game changing DLC. It seemed pretty decent at first. Storms, calamities, and rats are just a few of the additions that change the normal game play loop. Normally once you get a prison going well it starts to run like a well oiled machine. I think this DLC meant to disrupt that from time to time by throwing a wrench in the cogs.

What it actually does is bust its own code and add bugs that are pretty hard to argue for. The biggest issue, that I have to assume is a bug, is the calamities call. You'll get a call like you would from the mayor in the vanilla game. Except now it can be anything from your walls falling down for no reason, rats, busted pipes, to more serious events. That sounds cool until the game bugs out and your workers stop performing their jobs or following deployment orders. Get a call for 8 legendary gang leaders in a one day span? Guards stop moving prisoners to correct cell blocks, letting them into staff only areas, and refuse to answer the response call. Thus the 9 member green gang (all 9 are legendary leaders btw) run through your prison killing everyone in their sight. It's ok though cause your guards are opening the 2 heavy doors through security so that they can kill more guards.

There are other smaller bugs but they are not as game breaking, i.e. if you clone a section that is already completed workmen will continue to add concrete flooring where there is already concrete flooring. Never finishing what is actually tasked to build.

Customization does not save this game. It falls to the same pitfalls as similar titles being only as "tactical" and "team oriented" as the people you bring with you. If you are just looking for an arcadey battlefield style team death match then that may not concern you. What will concern you is the crippling system requirements just to run this game without stutters, desync, and frame drops. I know I don't have the best rig around but I can play many other titles comfortably, including the new battlefields. So when I drop into a WW3 match and have to turn everything to lowest setting just to be able to run to the objective I'm not having a good time. I'd love to see the game get better but I'm afraid that by the time it does something better will have already come along.

I'm writing this review becuase I feel many of the negative reviews for this game are from people who are not checking every part of the game before saying it is too hard.

First off I have near 12 hours of gameplay and other than the continue game option at the main menu maybe saving at a pretty bad point I have not seen any game breaking bugs. The game has not crashed, as long as you do not rage quit the continue option works fine for me.

Okay so if you like the idea of starting with a basic train and getting it off the ground to making big profits in many different ways then give this game a try. First off many of the reviews saying the game is too difficult to make money are just plain wrong. There are many lucrative trade routes in the starting cities if you look close enough. And if you really want to rake in lots of beginning cash take on passengers, contracts frim city hall, and bounties if you can find them. Yes you get attacked by bandits and indians a good many times but depending on what cargo you are carrying it seems to change the bandit numbers and skill level. For instance when I was carrying 20 stacks of jewelry across the map from New York to Chicago I was attacked twice by bandits that I could not outrun and thus hand to have shootouts with 22 bandits each time with decent weaponry. However this is to be expected if I am going to make upwards of $6,000 profits from this(this is a big profit margin in the game where the best train engine is around $15,000). Therefore I make sure my crew is geared with good weapons, equipment and make sure I have a healer before I do it.

Also another difficulty curve is the story mode because now you are on a time crunch which prevents you from making big runs like the one i described above. I beat it the first go around by making many more niche market runs using a much smaller engine and train. You are not able to carry tons of cargo but you can make 300-400 dollars off passengers also going to towns you are passing by and by looking for the city supply missions which pay handsomely and give you ample time so long as you can carry the cargo back in time. Also if you can get in on auctions for non production town buildings (hair cuts, hotels, etc.) you can make easy money each week that easily gives you the power to pay off bandits or you can find saloons to take jobs from the bandits, take on bandit passengers, or smuggle weapons to get on their good side and make money on the other side of the law.

The only real downside to this game I can find is that it is early access and some of the mission balances are not well done. The post office missions are completely useless and only good for if you happen to go to that town or just want to go somewhere new. The bandit and indians can be hard but making sure to arm your crew and give them the right skills means the difference between being able to take on 5 bandits or 15.

Summary: If you like trains or ground up money making games then this is a great game especially on sale for an early access. I really enjoyed the challenge of the story mode and completed it with only a few days to spare as I frantically hauled steel from the upper east coast all the way to Atlanta in my mediocre train. And the sand box mode gives you freedom to try out all the game options and train setups while fighting bandits with increasing difficulty.

This game is not worth the money. On the Pro side it is a cool idea with a sleek polish that makes you think a cross between football and robot wars. What you get is actually an AI who will always guess your moves, ALWAYS. Even if you wait for it to finish it thinking and change all of your players to different patterns and plays the AI somehow is never left at a disadvantage and more likely than not will come out on top thanks to its superior omnipotent guessing skills. Also starting off you are given bots(players) who are 4/5 all negative in skills....negative. So prepare to play season after season of losses or barely scrapping wins until you get enough to buy decent players and actually enjoy any sort of gameplay.

I thought hey maybe all this is just because the AI is terribly coded and the online play will make up for it. Well here is to 3 days in a row logging on and searching for a game to be told no one online wants to play. For the price of decent mid range game I expected a lot more. I would not recommend spending money on this game.

Unskippable mission start cutscens? What year is it?

If you like Total War games do not even bother with this.

This is a phone still pay to win game in the same style as clash of clans except much longer wait times for resources and a terrible battle system where your units are killed by their clone enemies like wheat before a scythe.

Might be worth the uselessness when on the phone but unless you want to spend money on a "Free to Play" game then youre gonna be stuck with the most basic units just scratching to get by