Reviews are intended for new players, there is no point in “preaching to the choir” of established player base.

First of all – I bought this like 10+ years ago, back, when this game was still called Railworks 2 and I am not going to lie – the game made some technological progress since. Unfortunately, it is still marred with too many issues and as a result – I simply can’t recommend it to new players.

(Yes, I know I have something like 2400(+) hours logged in this title – and yet I am giving it a negative review. And so what? You really expect someone with mere dozen hours (or so) logged to give you a remotely objective review? Do you?)

There are also some “local” packages available, but let’s stick with the base package for now. If you live anywhere close to the included routes, well, situation is probably somewhat simpler for you, but chances are, you don’t. So, you have to look at the package as a whole and try to gauge what can be had with it.
The funniest thing about all routes included is, that only passenger operations are simulated for the most part (there is some very limited freight action on one of the routes, but that is about it).

This means, that not only there are almost no freight trains to drive – there are (also almost) no freight trains to meet.
Which is weird, to say the least.

And this brings me to the issue of DLC, as the real issue with DLC in this game is not the sheer amount of it, the real issue is, that DLCs are only very rarely well integrated into this game. Example: you buy a freight train for one of the aforementioned routes. Great. Now you should be able to meet even freight train in scenarios, right? Wrong. Unless scenario is made with that particular freight train in mind, that train will not show up, as scenarios are very rigidly scripted with no room dynamic content generation (yes, there is so called Quick Drive, which has some dynamic capabilities, but even this feature is often implemented very sloppily).

But there is a freeware available, right?
Both routes and scenarios. I hate to say it, but for newcomer is the TSC freeware one of the biggest (if not the biggest!) problems, because in order to use freeware, you need to own a substantial amount of DLCs anyway (sometimes even those which are no longer available!), which ads to the cost of the game rather substantially and basically, freeware for this game is “freeware in name only” and quite often, it is cheaper to get “payware” version of certain train and/or route rather than getting the so-called freeware one.

Last but not least – the game engine is obsolete; it is based on the old Rail Simulator from 2006 (the history of Railsim/Railworks/TSC is in fact quite fascinating one, so look it up, if you are interested) and while it has been gradually updated over the years, there are some core issues which are deeply hardcoded.
Unfortunately, DTG, being borderline dishonest company, is fueling in some gullible and less computer savvy players hope, that they will substantially improve the engine in order to better utilize today’s hardware. Given the fact, that these attempts resulted over the year 2023 in no less than two major disasters, which hugely damaged existing game installations, the chances that they will actually manage to substantially improve anything, are slim – not to mention, that there are clearly broken features even at this time right now (as of v77.6a).

Bottom line: unless you really know, what you want and what you are getting here, stay away and try something more contemporary and ideally, not something from DTG.

Reviews are intended for new players, there is no point in “preaching to the choir” of established player base. First of all – I bought this like 10+ years ago, back, when this game was still called Railworks 2 and I am not going to lie – the game made some technological progress since. Unfortunately, it is still marred with too many issues and as a result – I simply can’t recommend it to new players. (Yes, I know I have something like 2400(+) hours logged in this title – and yet I am giving it a negative review. And so what? You really expect someone with mere dozen hours (or so) logged to give you a remotely objective review? Do you?) There are also some “local” packages available, but let’s stick with the base package for now. If you live anywhere close to the included routes, well, situation is probably somewhat simpler for you, but chances are, you don’t. So, you have to look at the package as a whole and try to gauge what can be had with it. The funniest thing about all routes included is, that only passenger operations are simulated for the most part (there is some very limited freight action on one of the routes, but that is about it). This means, that not only there are almost no freight trains to drive – there are (also almost) no freight trains to meet. Which is weird, to say the least. And this brings me to the issue of DLC, as the real issue with DLC in this game is not the sheer amount of it, the real issue is, that DLCs are only very rarely well integrated into this game. Example: you buy a freight train for one of the aforementioned routes. Great. Now you should be able to meet even freight train in scenarios, right? Wrong. Unless scenario is made with that particular freight train in mind, that train will not show up, as scenarios are very rigidly scripted with no room dynamic content generation (yes, there is so called Quick Drive, which has some dynamic capabilities, but even this feature is often implemented very sloppily). But there is a freeware available, right? Both routes and scenarios. I hate to say it, but for newcomer is the TSC freeware one of the biggest (if not the biggest!) problems, because in order to use freeware, you need to own a substantial amount of DLCs anyway (sometimes even those which are no longer available!), which ads to the cost of the game rather substantially and basically, freeware for this game is “freeware in name only” and quite often, it is cheaper to get “payware” version of certain train and/or route rather than getting the so-called freeware one. Last but not least – the game engine is obsolete; it is based on the old Rail Simulator from 2006 (the history of Railsim/Railworks/TSC is in fact quite fascinating one, so look it up, if you are interested) and while it has been gradually updated over the years, there are some core issues which are deeply hardcoded. Unfortunately, DTG, being borderline dishonest company, is fueling in some gullible and less computer savvy players hope, that they will substantially improve the engine in order to better utilize today’s hardware. Given the fact, that these attempts resulted over the year 2023 in no less than two major disasters, which hugely damaged existing game installations, the chances that they will actually manage to substantially improve anything, are slim – not to mention, that there are clearly broken features even at this time right now (as of v77.6a). Bottom line: unless you really know, what you want and what you are getting here, stay away and try something more contemporary and ideally, not something from DTG.