A-Train 9 V4.0: Japanese Rail Simulator Review (PC)
Do you want to direct traffic, buy off the most profitable properties, become a real estate mogul or the rail-road king? You can do all that and more in A-Train 9 V4.0. This is the 17th entry in the A-Train series of games, each building upon the last while honing the proven formula.
First off, the control scheme isn’t quite what you might expect from similar simulation games. It definitely takes a bit of time to get accustomed to the interface and particularly to the way the tracks are laid. Lining them up properly or connecting two roads can be a bit tricky. There are certainly tricks that you can employ, but there should have been a bit of a less steep curve for learning the basics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6Csk6VFebQ
There are tips here and there, but the game doesn’t tell you much about what you should do and how. There is a manual in a form of an html document. I found it to just gloss over important topics, so you should look at it like a start up guide as it doesn’t really get into the core of the game.
Nonetheless, the game consists of some pre-made maps that you can load up and try your hand at. It’s like a mission list, and the only guidance you get is an introductory text describing the city with some vague hints on what you should do. But most of the time you will find yourself with a city that has many properties that do their business with quite a loss. You can either get rid of them or try to fix everything by balancing the economy, hoping they will make profit in the long run.
Essentially, the goal is developing a network of services that are carefully designed with a profit margin in mind. In order to build anything you require materials. Materials can be obtained by building factories that will supply you with resources or by bringing them from beyond the map.
What you won’t find in the manual is that trains go faster forwards than backwards. And factories don’t work on weekends, therefore your freight trains will be losing money if they go around empty handed. Managing your city requires a tight control on all your resources and the Timetable Assistant gives you just that. It pauses the game every time your train or bus gets to the station or a junction. You can then manually set where, when and how your vehicles move and work.
You can even follow a set path your little train takes. You can set it up so that the train waits for the other train to pass through or waits a certain amount of time, loads the passengers or goods and stop at the next station where it will unload. From there on you can load at another station and repeat this process. You can even name your stations however you like, so there is really a great deal of customization and freedom in organizing your city the way you want.
Timing is everything as rush hour is the key for getting the most profit with passenger trains. Freight trains should pass around the resources necessary for the city’s growth. And if you time everything right you’ve got yourself a profitable business. Of course you should be also thinking about what resources you have and how you want to spend them.
The AI will spend your resources if you don’t employ them yourself soon enough. What this means is that AI will start building its properties and this will effect the land price, but also spend your precious resources. You could buy the properties back for a price, but most of the time this will make you pay much more if you decide to build over existing properties. For some reason people in this game can’t seem to build their buildings strait most of the time, so you will have to regulate this by reserving strategically important areas on the map by placing buildings there yourself. Of course, you can place roads close to each other so that the AI can’t make those diagonal properties it loves to place all over the map so much.
Economy is a huge part of playing A-Train 9 and if you don’t know how to manage your resources you will go bankrupt very early in the game. You can invest in a wide variety of buildings which provide different services to the local community, resulting in an economic boost. Everything you expect for a city to have and a bit more is in the game. There are loads and loads of facilities to choose from and you will find some of them to be much more efficient than others. Still the variety is there and you could basically build a miniature city of your choice.
With all that complexity I expected to be able to experience major traffic jams and sheer chaos, some of which could be player induced. But there is nothing like that in A-Train 9, which is a shame as many simulation games permit such actions and even encourage them. Coming from Japan, A-Train 9 was designed with a tight logic in mind, with you the proverbial god in total control over the game, sometimes a tad too much. For example, there are no other cars, buses or trains or even people in the game and the logic behind it all solely depends on you. So if for example you have two trains that are heading on a crash course they will just stop dead in their tracks, so you can’t have a bit of sadistic fun in destroying your city.
The only downside to missions is that the only goal most of the time is to make enough profit. But you can have fun creating your custom maps. Though editing terrain is a bit primitive, you can let your imagination go wild with the creator. Of course, this means all the expensive buildings are available to put down and build immediately.
I can’t say that A-Train 9’s graphics look impressive, but I would say that the game has it’s own charm. There is something about the feel of a city when it gets basked in the sunset. You will feel awed as you look into the distance of your megalopolis when the city skyline lights up at night. Not to mention all the idealistic imagery you can get when it starts snowing. It is just beautiful how the mood of the city changes with the weather conditions.
A-Train 9 can go quite deep on the simulation aspect as far as simulation games go. It is an excellent single player experience, but what could be added is a multiplayer mode where you compete with other players on who will make the most profit or who will make the biggest empire.
Those of you who are familiar with the series and are interested in what is new in V4.0 there are a lot of features and tweaks added into the game. The difference from V3.0 is that there are many more trains to choose from, with trains modelled after some of the famous real life Japanese trains. And there is a new feature that gives you the ability to drive your trains, which is cool. Twice as many vehicles can be placed on landscapes with twice as many art assets. It’s now possible to colour-code your vehicles, as well as sort and filter them.
A-Train 9 can be quite tough to get into especially if you haven’t experienced anything like it before. The control scheme takes a while to get used to and the game doesn’t really hold your hand at all. For the most part you are left on your own to figure everything out. Be prepared to lose over and over again, sometimes not even knowing what you have done wrong. Despite these minor flaws, I’d say A-Train 9 is one of the most thought-out simulation games I’ve ever played. It is one of those rare breeds of video games that haven’t been getting enough attention in the past couple of years and they certainly don’t deserve to be overlooked and forgotten.
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