Ok, picked this up today and played for about 2 hours.

My very casual review of Railroads! is based on those two hours...

All I can say is "What has happened to this great series?"

Where to begin... First of all, all of the gameplay is completely condensed to these tiny little areas where everyone is basically on top of each other. Cities are so close to each other, all of the computer opponents quickly build out into all the cities, and the only way to get around their rails is to build these huge bridges that look ridiculous.

Adding to the bad looks, the screen is completely cluttered, the graphics look cartoonish, it's hard to tell what is going on at any given time, and there is no way to zoom out and see your empire in all of it's glory.. Seemingly, the only view is what appears to me to be super-zoomed in. Also, the large, beautiful terrain maps are gone.

Gone also are the monthly and annual reports that chart your progress (although you can still bring them up), double tracking is completely unintuitive, you can't readily determine (or can you at all?) how full your cargo cars are, and you can't even name your company!

Building a rail station is now a completely dumbed-down affair.. Just build some track to the middle of a city (don't worry, the city 'moves' around the track to accomodate it) and drop a station right on it. Don't worry about size, what buildings you may be building over, performing upgrades, or anything else interesting. Seems designed for a 6 year-old.

Overall, the game seems like an amateur effort (is Sid Meier really responsible for this?). I can't see a single part of the game that is an improvement over its predecesor (maybe the economy and AI?). The entire game seems as disjointed as this review of it.

I will give it some more time, but at this point, I feel that the several years-old Railroad Tycoon 2 is a FAR superior game.

My score for the game: 5/10.