The interface and controls range from atrocious to mediocre. Unfortunately this version does not remake the controls and interface fromThe interface and controls range from atrocious to mediocre. Unfortunately this version does not remake the controls and interface from scratch to properly suit PCs, and this greatly hurts the accessibility of the game. Still, after a few hours you should be fully adapted to it.
The game is better than the Switch version in all aspects, has better graphics with shadows and textures of high resolution, allow you to move the camera further away, greater draw distance, better frame rate even in very complex cities (if your PC is good), better system of sharing scenarios, loading times extremely fast, etc..
As for the mechanics, the game is basically about mobilizing passengers and cargo in urban environments, while you manage a company in a considerably detailed business management system. The simulation is made in a level of detail that does not exist in other train-logistics sims, the days are simulated minute by minute and the passenger demands will vary depending on the land occupation in the cities, time, days of the week, tourist spots, holidays, etc.
A-Train All Aboar Tourism is considerably easy and you can do only the simplest things and still succeed, but you can dig as deep as you like to optimize your operations to meet the city's demands in the best possible way. It is in this respect that this game is incomparable to other sims, except for other games in the A-Train series. As far as I know, there is no other series available on the market where you can detail timetables in such intricate ways to meet the demands of your population. In the other sims (OpenTTD, Transport Fever, etc) your job is to link regions and then coordinate traffic, usually with the use of signals, so that your increasingly complex lines don't become inoperable or inefficient. In A-Train, your job is to meet the demand of your city, so your problems are not related to solving the complexity that you yourself created, but in understanding how to meet the population in the best possible way, intelligently connecting different districts that will have different demands (residential, commercial, industrial, etc.). While most of western train-logistics sims represent the cities in an "abstract" way, a mere point to connect industries and other cities and thus generate a new node in your system, in A-Train the cities are represented in a "concrete" way, where each building alone causes its impact depending on its function and because of this the solutions that you will find are much more similar to real world urban solutions.
One problem, however, is that you need to do the timetables by hand. You can't create ultra complex routes and try to coordinate everything with elaborate signaling as in the case of OpenTTD, for example. The whole operation will depend on the departure time of the trains, which you will have to handle manually. This will force inexperienced players to try to keep the system as simple as possible. Experienced players will need to use third party software to plan more complex routes.
Either way, A-Train is a unique game and this version retains many of the "hardcore" features of the series, adding some more friendly elements for novices. The initial barrier is difficult to overcome, but you don't need to have a very deep knowledge to have fun and win the scenarios. If you want to delve deeper into the game and try to service complex heterogeneous cities efficiently, however, the A-Train series is unparalleled and this version in particular does an excellent job in this regard, although in some respects (mainly linked to timetables) Tourism! is slightly simpler than A-Train 9 v4.0 or higher.… Expand
