Little Kitty, Big City
Little Kitty, Big City
Game
Game2023
Railway Empire 2
Developer Gaming Minds Studios
Don the coat of a clever entrepreneur, take over a small railway company in the early 1800s and turn your steam engines into the workhorses of the economy. Grow your company into the largest railway company of the continent and outsmart your competitors. From the Steam store page
191 reactions from 3 sources (Steam reviews, Bluesky, Mastodon) · newest Oct 6, 2026 · last updated Oct 7, 2026 · How this works
Audience score
67
Fresh
122 positive · 61 negative
95% range 60–73%
| Source | + | − | = |
|---|---|---|---|
| Steam reviews | 122 | 61 | 0 |
| Bluesky * | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Mastodon * | 0 | 0 | 0 |
* shown, not counted in the score (label accuracy below our 85% bar or not yet audited).
8 newer reactions are still waiting for a label.
Steam's own rating
Mostly Positive
1,957 of 2,692 reviews positive (all languages, per Valve)
What people are saying
Summary pending — the reactions are listed below.
Reactions
60 of 191 · most liked firstFor €50 — which is what I paid — you don’t get very much. The game feels simply made, and the options are quite limited. If I compare it to another game like Transport Fever 2, which cost €40, you get far more content for that price, plus many more building and management options. As you can see, I haven’t played this game for very long, and I bought it about four months ago. So no — for me, the game is not worth the price.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The negative reviews for this game are very frustrating - it is objectively an improved and streamlined followup to the original that removes a lot of points of frustration and allows us to make bigger and more exciting layouts. The negative reviews I see largely come down to two things: 1) "Simplifying" the game. I did NOT enjoy manually placing signals, creating complex transfer criss-cross lines at stations, and micromanaging individual trains. I enjoy building efficient railways to…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Very relaxing as well as challenging. The many different scenarios will keep you captivated for hours. I utilize this game for relaxation from previous military traumas, which allows me to immerse myself in constant thought with the challenging play. Great graphics as well as realistic movement.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →None of the DLC are worth getting because none of them let you use the trains in the main game. Basically, you are losing trains, because there are less in this game than in it's predecesor, so they can sell them back to you in a format that doesn't even let you use them right.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →So close, but so far. I like the track laying. General aesthetics. But it feels goofy and disappointing next to the classics. The core problem of this game is it is so arcady and goofy in the maps. Why even bother using real word maps when you are going to insert random mountains in Indiana or suggest that Des Moines needs to import corn from Canada? If you want a kind of mindless game connecting dots, sure, it was entertaining in that regard, but if you want something that will finally…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I read up on this game and the devs said that this one would be an improvement on the first one where you can control the flow of goods better than Railway Empire 1. In RE1 you had to have a train connection to every rural goods area to your city, which made for spagetti train lines running everywhere. In RE2 they said this would not be the case and the new warehouses would allow for movement of goods easier. This is false. the warehouses do not allow you to stockpile/deliver goods to it to…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The game has fundamental, unsolvable logistics issues. Once you try to manage high-volume goods, station throughput bottlenecks make it impossible to maintain 100% satisfaction. Furthermore, the lack of train AI for parallel tracking forces you to block entire rail lines just for a single resupply, turning what should be a complex logistics game into a frustrating experience with inevitable, broken bottlenecks.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Don't even bother with buying this game on devices with proton (Steam Deck, Desktop Linux). Developer doesn't fix bugs and glitches that make game totally unplayable. They are steamrolling on new DLC's to gather more money.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The game is not bad until you try to merge tracks it is a nightmare. You fight for hours to merge tracks from one major line to the next just to get on the 8th line for it to give you an error that the last track cant be laid. It is unacceptable. If you can't make track merging easier, I think your game is a joke. I have enjoyed my playthrough until which time I needed to finally expand to full blown 8 line wide tracks which cannot be merge unless you get lucky. I am still trying to figure out…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I bought this, super excited because the first game was awesome, but holy dang the track builder in this one is reeeeeaaaalllyyyyy bad. Like unbearably so. Sid Meier's Railroads has better track building and its 25 years old now. With this new game I was really hoping for some improvement to the track tool and it has just gotten worse. Everything else is well made-ish I guess? The game, other than the graphical improvement feels super lazy. It adds weird American locos to European settings and…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →As a big fan of RE1, this is a frustratingly worse experence. It looks better, graphically, but they simplified everything, hiding a bunch of mechanics under the hood, or making the controls overly simplistic. Just like Kalypso did to the Patrician series with The Rise of Venice, and the management of logistics here is a much worse experience for it, with less control. I'm really disapointed with this.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It's alright and thats about it. feels unfinished and made with no love or passion
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The game is too finicky. Setting up rails and directions and stations, carefully following instructions always seems to have a problem. I spend more time trying to figure out what is wrong than actually playing. I wish I had not purchased.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Kalypso games really never get past that sorta 80% effort level, do they. Tried a bit of Railway Empire 2 and it sorta works but so much is just kinda half assed. Laying track is unintuitive and unpleasant.... in a railway game. Crazy
unlabelledView post →I really wanted to like this game despite it's quirks but if you have a cool idea, the game actively works against you. Want to merge an 8 track line with another 8 track line? Some times you can but other times, it will delete part of the original line or it will let you do 7 but not the 8th or it will instantly close the game with no warning or you will get to 3 or 4 and it will tell you the line is too close to another line. If you are a masochist, you will love this sadistic game.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Pretty broken and un-optimized game, I do like the gameplay loop up to a point but it's a mess after a certain point. Devs seems to be only interested in dumping out DLCs to make money nowadays...
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →There are multiple issues I want to address. I wish I had considered Mixed reviews as red flag. 1. Always consider Mixed reviews as Red flag. 2. For a 30$ long, it's poorly designed. 3. The automatic signaling system is garbage and only works for simple routing, for complex lines, it wastes time. 4. The sounds are bugged. In ride along mode, the engine sound can't be heard. It's been released 3 years now and still the bug exist. What a shame. 5. Coop mode is not much enjoyable as one or more…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It seems like the negative discussion around RE2 is that it doesn't add sufficient value for money on the previous game. I disagree. Having played over 300 hrs of the first RE, and almost 80 hrs now of RE2, I can confidently say this is the better game by far. Signal, track and train management are cleaner, stations have a lot more utility and flexibility, and the goofy cartoon cut-outs have been done away with. The base game starts with several European regions for more varied scenarios,…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I really don't like this game. I wanted a spiritual successor to RRT2 but it's too clunky for me to use. My main gripe is the route mechanics — I don't understand why a route can't pass through another station. Also, why can't I build a station on an existing line?
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I enjoyed the first game, so I decided to try this one. The graphics are more realistic, but not everything actually looks better. The UI, in particular, feels like a downgrade — it’s less intuitive and harder to use. Some of the new features are nice, but the clunky menus make it hard to enjoy the game.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It's a good thing I am retired because this game probably would have resulted in me losing my job. I have been hooked on it since I first downloaded it and I now eagerly await each new DLC. The beauty is that my trains don't go careening off the table going around turns like they did when I was young. By the way, I am waiting for Australia... hint, hint. I will now settle for China. Thanks.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Apparently they've known about launcher issues for years. At least 1/2 the time, I end up having to find the EXE to launch directly. Non-campaign game play is meh. Not a surprise from Kalypso, but in this genre, that should be a key feature. Entirely too much manual interaction needed in track building adds to the lack of excitement in the game. 20 year old entries in the genre still outshine anything that's come since.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Until the bugs are fixed and QoL improvements are made i can not recommend this game unless it is heavily discounted. It has potential, but the constant various bugs make it a nightmare at times. Track routes breaking for seemingly no reason. I found RE1 to be a more polished product.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I really liked the previous game, to be perfect, it just needed fewer bugs, as they were pretty annoying at times. So this was my expectation for the second game, unfortunately, it has more bugs, which are very annoying since the first mission of the campaign. Also, I don't like the new design. I understand that a more realistic-looking graphic is easier to create than the cartoon-like one, but it deprives this game of the charm the previous one had
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Great visuals and neat gameplay, but some of the mechanics are just broken. Weird blockages to routes that are removed if you just delete and rebuild the route the same as it was. Other issues with how goods are distributed - to open up some locations for use you have to manufacture and and transport good to the site to "open" it for resource extraction. In MANY cases your train will go to a location with the needed good and just circle back and forth without ever loading it. In other cases…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Every time I play this game, far into it, after many hours of play, trains will get hopelessly backed up at a train station and the only way to clear the traffic jam is to delete one or more trains; sometimes deleting a train line clears the traffic jam, sometimes it doesn't. Eventually uninstalled game and have no intention of playing it anymore.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game is fun for the first few hours figuring out and setting up production lines and trading routes, but after a while it just gets tedious. The problem solving just becomes a chore, that makes you realize you're playing single player board game (I don't know many board games that are single player that is fun). The (computer) competition is a joke and just acts more like an annoyance. Lots of people have probably pointed out that its essentially the first game, just with a bit more…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I bought this game thinking it would be a fun game to play with my kids. Turns out this game is definitely not a game that 12 year olds can play easily. LOL Instead, I am completely engrossed in this game and have spent many, many hours building railroads, demolishing railroads to remake them, routing supplies, building factories in cities, ensuring each city has enough supplies to continue growing, buying and selling stocks, buying farms and companies, and meeting checklist deadlines. This is…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →game is a very big let down buy the first game and avoid this one. they have taken the best parts out of the first game and replaced them with the worst parts of the new one.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This is a step down from the previous version. First, no random maps. That is a step backward. You get two very large maps (Europe and USA) that you are allowed to prune down in to 4 smaller maps. You never get to choose which cities go in which map. The graphics are not that great of an improvement but they are not bad. I could not get past setting up my first train. The camera would zoom either too far or too close and there seemed to only be 4 levels of zoom. Very frustrating.…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Not a bad game for a railroad tycoon style game. But be prepared to work through and live with bugs that haven't been fixed in a while.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The game is too simple compared to alternative railway simulator games. It gets "figured out" in an hour and then becomes boring with no challenge present. The tech tree isn't affecting anything and is simply bunch of bonuses that you acquire with the time. There are no interesting or impactful decisions to be made. Overall, I regret purchasing it
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →“I’ll just try it.” — Me, 190+ hours ago I’ve played Railway Empire, so I thought I knew what logistics games were about. Turns out… I had no idea. This game starts innocent: 1. Build a route 2. Move some goods 3. Make a little money Next thing you know - it’s 2 AM!!! oh boy i missed my sleep again 😂 You’re fixing one tiny bottleneck and suddenly your entire network feels perfect. I’m 190+ hours in, and I still find new ways to improve things. No stress. No rush. Just that “yes… this…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Management: 8 There are some issues with trains transporting goods from warehouses. Graphics: 6 I have seen better. You will get decent graphics at the cost of intensive resources from your PC. Otherwise expect some lagging. I think optimisation needs work Gameplay: 9.5 This is personal but it works for me Veredict: 8 If you like massive maps, management and trains where you can board on them and see the scenery from the trains then I think you would enjoy the game. The game was very very…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Fun game, not as detailed as Transport Fever, but more like an improved Sid Meier Railroads
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →None of the upgrades like 8 tracks make this more fun than the original and it has worse track layout interface and glitching. When loading saves you have to go back over every inch of your track in case the redraw has glitched any connections in your layout and the automatic traffic control feels less intelligent than the original game. The game regularly backs up traffic instead of using all tracks in a station. I would have preferred if they had just released all the RE2 expansions for…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I would really enjoy this if it were not for the track laying tools. I would like to build the tracks section by section like TF2 or Cities skylines. This track building system is like pinning an elastic band into place with unnatural looking curves. If this ever gets updated i'll be playing again, Back to TF2 for the virtual train set building for me
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Others have said it, this is fun to start with. But then you end up fighting with the game to manage the tracks because it has decided that this one is not unacceptable, just because. You also get an issue where the game refuses to pick up load from a station until you reload the game..... If there is an issue with a train then the game does not make it easy to understand if it is something you have done and how to fix it or if it is another bug. In the end this game lacks the polish it should…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Loved version 1, but Empire 2 is too buggy. No explanations for why you can't meet goals, connect stations, etc.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The campaign is genuinely enjoyable – clear objectives, well-paced scenarios, and just the right amount of challenge without feeling like you’re fighting the game. It teaches you the mechanics naturally, and I rarely had that “what on earth does it want me to do?” feeling. On top of that, I’ve run into very few bugs, nothing game-breaking and certainly nothing like what I dealt with in TF2. What I love most is the focus on planning and logistics over micromanagement. Building lines,…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game has gotten past the point of needing mod support for map editing and other stuff the community could come up with. New players will eventually find themselves wanting more. Especially with the bugs and lack of support for the base game and older DLC's. I would not recommend buying this game unless heavily discounted going forward.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I tried this game when I first bought and struggled with laying tracks. Went back to it a week ago, worked It out, and not played a different game since !
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Still a bit buggy.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Absolute rubbish
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Railway Empire 1 was better
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →of limited value. sorry has good bones, but no editor makes it BORING. same maps forever and ever and ever and ever and ever.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Devs dont care about game breaking bugs like trains not seeing signals. Seems unimportant to me in a train game. But what do i know.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Strange change of the build. I do not like it!
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This is an all around fun game if you like city building or resource management games. Many of these negative reviews lead me to believe that the people leaving them are not very bright. They get stuck figuring out track development or resource management or create stations with huge traffic jams & call these game breaking bugs. I have not found these to be issues if you figure out how to do them properly. No sir the game is not broken, you just are not good at the game I guess. I have…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It's a bit finicky and lacks QoL controls. Also, rather than just getting to the game, an annoying window pops up after you start the game. It's kind of fun, but I've thought of at least a dozen little things that would make the game easier and maybe more fun, though I think countless other players have probably already told you all my ideas. Follow through!
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I have love trains as well as resource management and both of those values are in this game. It keeps you on your toes, there will be a breakdown or a shrinking city so you cannot do nothing.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game is an absolute disaster compared to the last one.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →if you like geography, if you understand contour iines and if you enjoy laying out railway lines, then this is the game for you!!
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Railroad Corporation 1 plays much better, sorry (and even considering that _that_ game also has major performance issues e.g. when laying out tracks)
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →campaign in useless. to many flaws in production lines. built warehouses everywhere built up farms to higher levels still could not get wheat and corn to faraway cities. the sandbox was fun ONCE> played for almost 19 hours and I am done. not worth the money.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This 1 is WORSE then the 1st one ITS SUCKS compare this to TF2 or even TF 1 was WAY better I tried to give a chance but there is NO way this game is worth $5 let alone the price they have on it. I should of known by the makers of Tropico game they suck also
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →If you like trains, then you should like this game. After all there is plenty to like. I prefer the sandbox feature which allows one to build in a world without constraint. If you have the played the original, this one is an improvement, not the first one needed much of one...
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →DLC's improve the game however, I believe they are a money pit. That doesn't make the game less intresting.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Some how worse than the original, by a massive margin.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Overly to easy , nothing new and exciting to talk about. Connect to stations and the money flows . Got boring very quickly
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
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