Recent reviews by Dell Conagher

I had this game for many years, but it tended to misbehave on my old computer, so I put it on the back burner until a few months back, when I got bored and decided to give this game a shot again, this time on my new PC.

Without ado, here's my review that nobody will read on a 13 year old transit management game, made by a studio that has long since moved away to do different things. This will be compared heavily with much later Transport Fever 2 (2019), as I have sunk well over 1,000 hours into that game, compared to this one, so that's where most of my experience lay, as well as with a lot of mods for the latter. So let's see how CiM2 stacks up.

Let's start with the good parts of the game.

>> More detailed maps versus TpF2
This one might not be so obvious at first, but I am not talking about visual detail here. Coming from Transport Fever 2, where any building can be either industrial, commercial or residential, without any in-between, mixed-use developments are a pretty welcome detail. It makes cities ever so slightly more true-to-life than in most other transport games, CiM2 and C:S2 excluded.

>> Social classes/types of public transit user
As well as this, there aren't merely "residential", "industrial", "commercial" or "mixed-use" developments in the game - you can also see where businessmen, pensioners, students, blue- and white-collar workers, etc. live, and each has their own differing requirements. This is a great level of detail which Transport Fever 2 is missing - not merely mixed-used developments, but social classes, each with their own requirements and desires to travel.

>> Economy
This one might irk some players, but economic variability actually does add a bit of a challenge. When you are in a booming economy, it's much easier to make money than in a recession, and vice versa. Contrast this to Transport Fever 2, where there is no economic booms and busts, and your only goal is to make money and grow cities. Here, sometimes you actually have to cut back on services sometimes which lose money due to factors outside of your control, unlike in TpF2.

>> Company policy - ticket pricing, wages, etc.
With the economics side out the way, let's discuss company policy in CiM. This is an aspect that's almost completely missing from Transport Fever 2, being merely limited to taking out loans in $500k increments, unless Government Mode (No Costs + Sandbox Mode) is active. In Cities in Motion, you, the business owner, are directly responsible for setting ticket prices, setting maintenance budgets, wages, what have you. If you want to drum up ridership, you have to spend money on marketing campaigns. If you want a good reputation, you need to have a good, reliable service with well-paid workers, and many active marketing campaigns. In Transport Fever 2, there's none of this.

>> Better vehicle maintenance and ageing mechanics
Another bonus of Cities in Motion over Transport Fever 2 is the slightly more detailed vehicle maintenance simulation. In Transport Fever 2, merely setting the maintenance budget to "normal" will cause the vehicle to become a rust bucket with time, but it still generates money and goes around the map like nothing happened, if it's slightly more "polluting" (noisy). CiM does things differently, with maintenance budgets and pay of maintenance workers affecting the reliability of your vehicles. A poorly paid maintenance team and low maintenance budgets will lead to low vehicle reliability and frequent breakdowns, leading to dissatisfied customers, and a poorer reputation for the company, with vice-versa being true as well.

>> More vehicle variety
That is a slightly odd one to suggest, but hear me out. Transport Fever 2 can allow you to use any vehicle, but the vehicles are merely limited to:
> Bus
> Tram
> Train
> Airplane
> Boat
This list pretty much excludes monorails and trolleybuses, which only appear in this game and it's successor, Cities in Motion 2. Trolleybuses and monorails are much better implemented in CiM2 than this game, but it's still nice to see them here, even if for trams and trolleybuses the change is merely cosmetic, and monorails are gadgetbahns. Variety is the spice of life, you know?

>> Individual requests from customers
This is a nice little detail, doing these little quests which are to satisfy a customer who had a specific request. Wish Transport Fever 2 had something like that in it's Free Game mode.


This pretty much concludes the good parts of what I have to say about this game. Now, time to get on to the negatives.

>> Lack of a Steam Workshop
This game could so do with Steam Workshop support. Transport Fever 2 has it, and it has benefitted tremendously from it. There are many mods for Transport Fever 2, from timetable mods to new vehicles to entire maps to assets and whatnot. Then again, I'm comparing a relatively recent release to a game whose support almost certainly ended around the time CiM2 was launched, so I guess this point is moot.

>> No timetabling system
This might be moot again, but the lack of a timetabling system really grinds my gears. Vehicles bunch SO EASILY in this game, especially when one breaks down and needs a moment to return to operation. What ends up happening is one vehicle then soaks up all the passengers, then another vehicle leaves half full, and like 3 other vehicles then stop and depart empty, unless the stops are heavily used.

>> No obvious digital manual to refer to
This is a big one. I had to look for a Steam guide to help me not run my company into the red. "Skill issue," some might say, but this is a big turn off.

This is unfinished, but gonna post it anyways. Enjoy reading, take care, have a good day!