With the Japs there is no middle ground. The vast majority of management games that I have played have always been Western, because seeing rarities like this A-Train: All Aboard! Tourism that now comes to Switch is not something especially common.
And it has been a real discovery, but not because the game has convinced me excessively, but to see how from the Japanese country they approach one of my favorite genres. His style comes to be that of, as they say, coffee for very coffee growers .
Much more than a Railroad Tycoon
The main idea behind A-Train: All Aboard! Tourism is standing up to the expansion of cities through the growth of their communication channels. In other words, we will not be in charge of constructing a building here or there -although there will be some room for maneuver in later levels-, but rather of making cities grow until the flow of people who pass through it gives meaning to the idea. to create a stadium or a shopping center.
The game would be great for all the sharks who set out to create ghost towns in the middle of nowhere waiting for people to go there as if by magic, attracted by the real estate boom that left our economy shaking. And not only for that, but because A-Train: All Aboard! Tourism is also a conscientious economics and urbanism class.
He said that with the Japs there is no middle ground because in the end, the trains are the least of it. In fact I expected a game with a great weight in it. Something like a game for train geeks that aroused me a lot of curiosity despite not being me at all. But the slap that hits you when introducing concepts has little or nothing to do with what you would expect from a Railroad Tycoon or Railway Empire.
With a fairly equal weight, the options range from connecting cities by train to doing so through a network of buses and boats, another of goods both by rail and by road, and a system of investment in the stock market that would be great for all those who they keep putting money in Gamestop hoping that a second miracle will work.
Replicating the Japanese growth model
With two initial levels that serve as a tutorial, the first one focuses exclusively on the trains and the game’s economy system to give you a glimpse of where the shots are going to go. It is the moment in which you learn to lay roads and the importance of connecting some cities with others to promote the movement of people.
As its title indicates, there is a great weight in tourism and, in fact, the vast majority of challenges that the game proposes to us go in that direction. It will be necessary to reach a minimum quota of tourists and citizens in a region based on expanding its size and interest, and we will have a limit of X years to achieve it.
A priori the thing is as simple as creating train stations large enough to accommodate more and more people, with increasingly efficient connections to other cities to save time for your users, and with schedules and routes of exquisite punctuality so that everything go rolling and no one stays on the ground waiting an hour for the next train.
If you do it right, the game’s news system will inform you of how the industry in one city is growing, or how a residential area has just been built in another, and little by little you will see the days, weeks and seasons go by. until you see how your goal is completed .
Not everything is trains
So far so good. On paper I would sign without hesitation for such a game, even more so when in the later chapter they invite you to be even more effective by making use of a network of buses -or even tourist boats- that you can deploy throughout the city.
It makes sense because, in essence, the whole idea rests on the expansion of Japan’s public transport network , one of the reasons for its urban success and probably its greatest achievement as a nation.
It’s even interesting to grapple with how the whole idea can be curled even more. Taking advantage of the built roads and highways, you can create railway warehouses of construction products with which to accelerate the growth of cities , or create a product marketing network with other regions that, in addition to filling your pockets a little more, also helps in said expansion.
It cannot be denied that the concept of taking advantage of the ups and downs of the business to tinker with the stock market is more or less well resolved, buying and selling shares to complement or expand the benefits or the lack of them that causes a possible recession. economical.
But. Because there is always a but. Don’t let its pastel colors and incessant veneer waifus fool you, because all that that last sentence could have made you raise an eyebrow is, to a large extent, what you’ll find in A-Train: All Aboard! Tourism . The coffee thing for very coffee growers was not trivial.
A more twisted experience than you expect
Through a complex monetary system that tries to get as close to real life as possible, A-Train: All Aboard! Tourism gives a tedious and thoughtful lesson in business economics that can be choked up by those who come here looking to create train lines in different historical periods.
That’s undeniably there, from the tourism boom of the 1950s to today’s metro and bullet train transportation networks, but it’s constantly peppered with a good handful of additional concepts and information that, frankly, could have been addressed from much more comfortable ways .
To show a button, the annual tax regularization. The time has come to pay salaries and comply with dad status and, although you see black numbers and the profit margin does not stop rising, suddenly it turns out that you are bankrupt.
How is it possible? Could it be that you have not remembered to navigate through a tedious menu and go through four screens to verify that in a few months you had to pay X amount that can only be seen there? Well no, sorry. He was building a tunnel to connect one city to another.
A-Train: All Aboard! Tourism takes the idea of realism and depth so seriously that the concept of trying to make the difficult easy not only doesn’t cross its mind, it tramples on it whenever it can.
It would not be a problem if it were simply limited to sections such as the economy, but the truth is that it complicates things excessively as much as it can in pursuit of a customization that can be appreciated when you master it perfectly -see here to the ability to create and share maps – but as a gateway it chokes a lot more than it should.
From an interface that does not take long to become a toothache unless you play it in touch mode, to a control of the universe and how you place a track at X point on the map that, frankly, seems to be from a game from another era .
Far from being one of those games that does not deliver what it promises, it is right at the other end of the visible spectrum. A-Train: All Aboard! Tourism replicates – as no one has done so far – the idea of creating a video game in which to expand tourism in a region by creating, modifying and improving its transport network.
From there it all comes down to how much or how little you marry the idea. But not only because you may like it more or less, but because depending on how hooked and enthusiastic you are with the proposal, it will be easier for you to avoid all the problems that it displays at a technical and usability level. It is difficult that you end up finding a middle ground .
ATrain All Aboard Tourism
| Platforms | Switch |
|---|---|
| Multiplayer | Not |
| Developer | Artdink |
| Company | Nintendo |
| Launch | March 12, 2021 |
| Price | 59.99 euros |
The best
- Mind-blowing level of depth and customization.
- The ability to create your own maps and challenges to share.
- A well of hours.
Worst
- Its performance on a technical level is questionable.
- At the interface and usability level, it can be a toothache.
