Picture the scene: it’s family game night, and you’re playing Monopoly. Your younger sibling, with tears in their eyes, hands you their final property. Your parents look on disapprovingly, but they are powerless against the absolute law of the rulebook as you proudly look over a game board entirely controlled by you. And it is good. Sadly, for many of us, our families no longer gather for intense Monopoly games anymore. Maybe it’s difficult to gather everyone in one place, or maybe your family are just cowards to your superior Capitalist intellect. Whatever the case, you can once again feel that thrill in a competitive game of money and material: Railway Empire 2!
Much like those old-school board games, you can select from one of six in-game characters. However, unlike Monopoly where these pieces offer no real in-game features apart from style points (and thus the best game-piece is the top hat – fight me) in Railway Empire 2, the six individual characters each provide in-game advantages and disadvantages. Whilst The Engineer might be the master of building and maintaining tracks, he doesn’t have quite the… persuasive abilities of The Gangster when acquiring factories at auction. The Professor can bargain for cheaper locomotives, whilst the wily Entrepreneur can take the best advantage of the staff running her empire.
Once you’ve decided on your character of choice, it’s time to get into the game! Starting out with a fledgling city, you begin connecting and expanding with the game’s intuitive-yet-complex track creation system. You will have to decide whether it is worth building an expensive bridge over troubled water, or take the long way round, slowing the route but saving precious money with which to build further tracks or resource-building factories.
Factories and warehouses, much like hotels in Monopoly or a Fianchetto in Chess, are a longer-term investment for your empire. These allow you economic advantages over your opponents by producing refined goods and allowing them to be efficiently distributed between cities.
But you will be richly rewarded when you supply a town with these complex luxuries, as the town will begin growing, supplying you with new customers who will rely on your company to transport them, and sate their ever-increasing appetite for the good life.
So, whilst Railway Empire 2 may not allow you to traumatize your younger sibling, it will still capture that healthy competitive urge. You can buy out your competitors slowly, before finally absorbing their empire into yours. Alternatively, and unlike real-life family members, you can slowly purchase their corporation – meaning that even while apparently competing with you – their profits are still coming into your coffers. This is, after all, the golden age of the locomotive, the birth of the railroad system, and a perfect opportunity for a clever entrepreneur like yourself.