The game is too overloaded with challenges and strict limits that demand careful pre-planning to be a relaxation tool. The game is too slow-paced and methodical to be enjoyable as a challenge-driven experience. The game is so strict and tight with its money and building space that you have no freedom in creation, so you have to build exactly the tracks the map demands of you. If I was disappointed in Train Valley 1 for not being a creativity toy even as I respected it for being a challenge-driven game, Train Valley 2 is a game which has no idea what it wants to be, and winds up having other mechanics undermine any attempt one mechanic attempts to make the game become. More fundamentally, however, Train Valley 2 seemingly kicks out the frantic pace of Train Valley 1 for a more relaxing and methodical style of gameplay at the start, only to ruin that relaxation by then cramming in every single stress-building, challenge-driven judgment of your capacity to cram trains close to each other on tracks while avoiding collisions as possible. There isn’t a true challenge except being able to perform at a consistent level without mistakes for an extended period of time. (And that is to say nothing of having to restart because you forgot to change a switch or a gimmick function like a customs ran out of workers and karate-chopped a train in half.) This shifts it from a game of juggling the unexpected and makes it more like a game of being asked to solve basic four-function math problems on a strict time limit. This means that you can’t play at the moment, you don’t adapt to changing circumstances, it’s just a test of looking at the map, realizing what the plan must be, then spending 15 minutes executing the plan you already made long ago. The number of planks needed to win is pre-set, and every single delivery you make is not only pre-ordained, it is perfectly obvious to the player what they must do and in what order. The first mission has you deliver workers to both a woodcutter and a sawmill and then delivering raw logs from the woodcutter to the sawmill, and finally finished planks back to the town that delivered the workers to win. Train Valley 2, meanwhile, has gameplay focused around pre-set supply lines. Basic Train Valley 2 gameplay – no reason to connect sand production to anything but town. Every decision is a decision made in the moment, as you feel the pressure to manage trains and make money and yet relieve that pressure constantly with every train successfully delivered. Train Valley 1 had procedural trains needing to go to randomized destinations, forcing players to adapt on the fly to changing conditions, which meant that gameplay was about adapting to changing conditions in the moment, so its focus upon challenge to cram as much traffic onto overloaded lines as possible aligned in gameplay terms to make a challenge-focused game. The problem with Train Valley 2 is that it exists in that in-between world of not being built for challenge and being what should be that much more relaxing form of experience like a Train Simulator, but winds up forcing that challenge into the game, regardless. A game like Train Simulator, where you simply keep a train going forward while you enjoy the scenery or walk up and down a simulated train’s interior may be something for very particular tastes, but it is delivering a very relaxing experience to those who truly just love trains. There’s been plenty of talk in games media about difficulty and its role in how much people will enjoy games, so I’ll start off by saying that “hard games” that exist purely as games meant to be enjoyed purely because they are hard (think Getting Over It, which deliberately had no production values so that there was nothing to the game but challenge) are perfectly legitimate ways to make enjoyable games, yet at the same time, games do not need to be challenging in any way to be legitimate and enjoyable. While it may be a little esoteric, I think the best way to discuss why two games that seem so similar on the surface can have people giving such different ratings is to start by talking about what aspects of these games people really enjoy.
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