Amazing game... But require some serious commitment to understand it properly. I have been a long fan of the series but rediscovered it only recently. This feel like the right continuation of the A3 and A4. Just know that the "tutorial" last about 12-16 hour. But this is the most clear and clean explanation I've seen on how to play A-Train. So after going thru it. You'll definitively be ready to play any A-Train game!!!

Not Recommended

My favorite A-Train game. I love the 2D graphics. This is a PC port of the Nintendo 3DS version of A-Train. To me this is the most pure A-Train game - it retains the soul of A-Train IV. Essentially think of this as a remastered version of A-Train IV, before they split off and made the 3D versions.


Note to Linux players - this game seems to have known compatibility with WINE and other WINE derivatives, so you will likely need to run this natively on Windows.

A Train PC is fun, complex yet but also kind of annoying railroad management game.

I must say I like the game's complexity. It's a bit sketchy for it's $60 asking price but once you play you realize how complex it is. The tutorials are fun and well presented in a manga style. I've seen a lot of railroad management games on a regional scale like openTTD and Railroad tycoon but I really wanted to see one on a city wide rather than a regional scale in a similar vain through building up parts of your town and various neighborhoods and A-Train comes closest to what I actually want in these kinds of games.

Much of this game is building track and developing land. Building up your town and expanding your system is the fun part. It is suprisingly complex with you having to manage pretty much all aspects of the company and even developing real estate around the stations you build. There is a lot to this game. It's not an easy game. You cannot make a profit just anywhere and you really have to collect some development to make the train lines profitable. Managing things like train and station length, knowing where and what to build is fun. Those problem solving aspects are the best part of this game.

The game gradually introduces you to it's mechanics slowly rather than giving you everything to play around with in the beginning. I don't think it's a bad thing. I helps you get aquainted with using each of them but it definitely has it's caveats when sometimes you need a feature that isnt unlocked yet. One example is for instance, there is a way to get more trains and buses in your arsenal by funding various through what the game calls projects. It's the game's research feature. You get this is in the second or third mission.

Now are there problems? Of course there are. If it takes a bit longer than a second to switch between menus it is annoying. All the time and the annoyance builds up over time. I don't care about flashy animations to open up menus. I want to get to the gameplay. One particularly annoying thing is any warning that causes you to pause the game. You get a dialogue box pop up and then you have to wait about a second or two to press the dialogue then you close the dialogue box and fix the problem.

Getting your trains traveling in the wrong direction is a very annoying thing. Getting your trains to travel in the right direction is pretty unintuitive. The game teaches you to just place trains or buses down on the road or track and you have to make sure you build them right or they will go in the wrong direction. Instead the best way to do this is by going into a schedule manager and doing it yourself. Instead of something like a line manager and putting each of your vehicles on the individual lines you must go into this menu for each train. For whatever reason, if your train travels out of the town borders more than once it can randomly show up on the wrong direction. Even if you set a path for your train it might still change the path if it goes out of town. If your collides with another train. You have to go through that dialogue box thing I did earlier (which is about 5 seconds) then you have to remove your train and then place it back and change it's path all over again. There's no button to reverse the direction of the train after it is already in use. It wastes a lot of time going through this process every time you get something wrong or the game's pathfinding screws up.

The UI is a bit obnoxious. Demolishing things is pretty strange. I feel like they could have had all demolition on one button instead of each menu having it's own demolition button. It would definitely save time if you made a mistake. Road building could also be a lot simpler. The wide 4 lane road cannot transition into a two lane road. You can really only build the 2 lane road across the 4 lane road and then have it terminate. You cannot put streetcar lines on bridges. Even if you build the road it just wont let you drag it across a slope or across water. The lack of the ability to place streetcar lines in a variety of places is very disappointing and you can also only build it in the median of the 4 lane road. This severely limits what you can do with streetcars.

Honestly, I like this game but it is definitely not without it's mechanical flaws and terribly unintuitive UI.

Not worth its full price. But if it's on sale it will be a good game to buy. Regretful on paying full.

To enjoy this game it takes a lot of effort and goodwill. The game has an excellent manual and tutorials, so to learn how it works is not that difficult and there is no need to resort to tutorials outside the game or videos on youtube (in fact you won't find anything, the game is largely ignored in the west).

But damn it, the interface sometimes doesn't make sense and it's not practical. The biggest learning barrier is not the simulation of the game itself, but the interface and all the little details that if you don't get it right or forget it because of inexperience, will become frustrating and infuriating. It takes dozens of hours of constant fighting against the game to start getting used to it. I just got used to it quickly (about 5 hours playing while writing this review) because I have experience with the series.

However, once you start to feel comfortable with the interface and no longer get lost in the nightmare that is coordinating trains with schedules instead of signals, you will start to have fun with what is probably the most addictive and satisfying city management ever made.

The game will continue to be infuriating in many aspects (there is nothing more annoying than the lag caused by the "fast foward" that can make you lose an entire day because the game refuses to turn it off), but the simulation is so robust and the logic behind the game so addictive, that you will probably ignore the bad interface and the lack of practicality.

The only game in town for anyone interested in micromanaging miniature Japanese cities and train lines.

Includes an in-depth tutorial to get you started.

Immensely complex and immensely rewarding to play.

I really want to like this game. I really do. The mechanics seem awesome and deep. The problem is the UI. Half my clicks don't seem to register, and whenever I accidentally move the window (the game runs in windowed mode only btw), the game crashes, and there's no autosave. Moreover, English support is pretty spotty and there's some shady stuff around the publisher with regards to the latest A-Train installment.

At least I got it on sale. I'd say don't try it unless you can get it at a discount.

It is the (very) best version of the A-Train. The deepest in mechanics. It is a great train /company/city simulator. But I recommend buying at a discount!

It's amazing a Nintendo DS-remake ported to the PC can be this deep.
There are so much ways to play.
For example, trains or transport in general can make you money in general, but there is much more to be made by investing in real estate, stocks etc.

Pros:
* Very advanced/deep game systems
* Teaches the player accounting
* Fun managing timetables instead of

Cons:
* Lacks a proper manual. It can be very difficult to work out how to do things. You will need to read a guide (which are also scarce)
* Having trains/vehicles park in a garage at night in nearly impossible to manage with anything more than simple situations.
* There is no option to change the movement setup of vehicles based on deadheading / regular service.
* UI is clunky. One of the biggest cons. It's a DS game ..

Neutral:
* Huge timesink / much micromanagement
* Some more detailed financial vehicle performance graphs/tables would be nice
* When returning to the game after having not played for some months, you might want to redo the tutorial campaigns because you forgot how to use the stock market, manage cities or manages industries. Or understand the company's financial report..


Bit pricey, but a great game.