Transport Fever 2 is a meticulously designed logistics simulator that transports passengers and goods in a timely manner via trains, trucks, planes and ships. There’s a simple satisfaction in getting what you need to move as efficiently as possible, and that feeling extends to the entire gameplay experience.
It’s worth mentioning up front that Transport Fever is the definition of an avid series. Transport Fever 2 is unlikely to change you if the idea of creating a network of intertwined systems doesn’t get you hooked. Still, if you’re anything like us, you’ll find yourself hours away at a time, obsessed with the prospect of a new locomotive shaving an extra few seconds off your most profitable route.
The main attraction here is probably the free-play mode, which allows you to generate random maps using pre-determined factors such as climate, geography, continent, and difficulty. It allows for a pretty fine level of detail and allows you to share particularly cool maps with others with associated seeds. This feels good.
Funds for a successful transportation company are limited. The rest is up to you. By identifying the needs of residents in nearby towns, you can profitably get both citizens and the resources they need from point A to point B. This would require an absurdly elaborate logistics setup that turns a lush countryside into a maze of railroads and roads. , and rampant urban development. This proposal becomes more tricky as the goods and materials must first be processed in a nearby factory before the finished product can be shipped to keep the poor townspeople happy.
Transport Fever 2 was a little underwhelming at first, but it adapted nicely for PS5. Over time, routes can be plotted and operations extended with a few well-placed button presses. Everything related to road transportation has its own section, so truck stops, depots, and bus stops are in the same tab as other modes of transport. Eventually, we were able to place structures without thinking, tweak lines, and make changes and modifications as soon as we had an idea.
An ever-present aspect of the game is its soundtrack. Leave it alone and it will listen to your psyche and hop around for hours at a time or curl up in fetal position in a padded room. , depending on the day. It can range from smooth jazz like Ron Burgundy playing at an intimate afterparty to a spine-melting, soul-infused guitar solo to another round of honky-tonk piano. It’s a wild ride. You never know what you’ll hear next.
Lines are a fundamental building block of burgeoning economies, and learning to analyze and fine-tune them for specific purposes is an essential skill. The most basic lines are simply routes between destinations. However, adding stops, allocating additional vehicles, adjusting maintenance rates is easy, thanks to relatively straightforward UI settings, and I’m happy to regularly review existing routes.
Once the line is running normally, the money will start flowing in and will be offset by the money needed for maintenance. Over time, much of the fun in the game came from reclaiming the initial set-up costs of what was once a money bonfire, and is now a profitable logistics chain. is available for even greater productivity. Small towns that dot the landscape grow into thriving cities before your eyes. This is proof of the fruits of your labor.
You can pause or increase the flow of time if you want, but still, you’ll find yourself waiting from time to time, hoping that your fleet of new wagons will work soon. I just wish there was a possible level of progression, as I found the experience to be easily distracted, even on the fastest settings.
It has an amazingly detailed and almost fully voiced campaign for players to dive into, and the whole thing acts as a deep and very long tutorial.It guides you through periods of economic growth in different periods of modern history from the 1850s onwards. and help connect isolated rural areas to a booming economic sector.
One thing to note is that it’s all done with characters and meant to be from the period, which leads to some offensive line reading. In a second mission called, stereotypical Western commentators poetically talk about the inferiority of the local Javanese workforce. An optional objective in the same mission explores whether it’s a cannibal, which wasn’t strictly necessary in a game that was primarily concerned with trains.
Transport Fever 2 has enough detail for each of the hundreds of in-game vehicle models and looks great for this type of game. The environment is also pleasing to the eye. You might think twice about tearing down a particularly scenic view. Technically, I had some frame rate issues, and even in performance mode, I never felt like I was hitting a steady 60 frames per second. Sure, there’s a lot going on under the hood, and strategy games of this ilk are notoriously CPU-intensive, but it’s still disappointingly inconsistent.
Transport Fever 2 isn’t a perfect experience, but it’s solid and satisfying, providing developer Urban Games with the perfect framework to expand on in future updates. Whether or not the premise piques your interest, it’s well worth taking a chance.
Conclusion
Transport Fever 2 is the type of frenzy sim that will keep your target audience crazy for hours. However, even though the single-player campaign serves as an extended tutorial, it can be difficult to parse, so it’s hard to recommend it to anyone else. An undeniably satisfying experience for the strategy-minded, and one of the deepest titles of its kind available for the PlayStation platform.
