There are moments when the ease-of-use somehow just breaks down – and you’re left cursing a piece of track that won’t obey the laws of physics, let alone sit straight.īut these are minor complaints, particularly when Railway Empire 2 is so successful in other respects and so generous with its various gameplay modes. If it weren’t easy to switch between the two, then the whole operation would be a bust.Īdmittedly, it’s not perfect. Railway Empire 2 is one of those titles that has you making big, historic decisions, such as which states to connect with each other, but also fiddling around with smaller details, like grain levels in Bodie. It’s swift, seamless and – although other management sims allow you to zoom in and out to a similar extent – perhaps more wowing than anything else I’ve encountered in gaming this year. It’s not just the trains that make Railway Empire 2 special it’s also the sheer balletic brilliance of its interfaceīut a single turn of a mouse wheel will bring you from a satellite’s-eye view to ground level, where passengers are loading luggage and cattle are lowing in the fields. It morphs from being a simple choose-your-own-adventure game to a complicated exercise in anticipation, determination and, yes, loss, as whole branches of narrative are systematically closed off to you.
Its main trick is to allow you to see into the future, through a mystical flowchart known as the Augural, and come to decisions accordingly. When you are allowed to start making choices, it seems far less ambitious than developer Don’t Nod’s other narrative games, such as the excellent Life is Strange series.īut soon you come to realise that Harmony is actually far more ambitious than its predecessors. The story is told in the style of a visual novel, with beautiful animations punctuated by static screens of characters talking to each other.
All these things might be connected.Īs for the gameplay: at first, there basically isn’t any. Solving the mysterious disappearance of her artist-activist mother in the real world solving the problems of the gods in the dream world. Pretty soon into Harmony: The Fall of Reverie, she’s spirited away from her life in a fictional near-future Mediterranean cityįrom then on, Polly/Harmony’s always flitting between the two.
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