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About This Game

Ready to forge your railway empire?

The English version of A-Train 9, the latest PC installment to the acclaimed series, is finally coming to Steam! In this 3D simulation game, you'll take control of a fledgling railway company on a quest to amass a fortune and develop a bustling metropolis!

This latest installment of the A-Train series is loaded with new features, such as upgraded graphics, enhanced camera controls, trucks and buses, power management, and more! The ten pre-made scenarios will put your management skills to the test, and the refined map editor will enable you to forge the city of your dreams from scratch - terrain and all!

With its vast array of options and challenges, A-Train 9 will offer you an enormous amount of freedom. Are you up for the task?

Beyond Just a Train Game

A-Train 9 isn't just a train simulator: it's an intricate city simulation game with an emphasis on the railway system. Your company is primarily a railway enterprise, but you'll also need to construct buildings, roads, factories, and many other subsidiaries to attract customers for your railways. You'll be building your fortune not just through your railway, but through your subsidiaries. Everything is interconnected: your subsidiaries will affect your railway, and vice versa.

Here are some of the key factors involved in your success:

Time & Nature: The flow of passengers will fluctuate throughout the day, and operating trains during dead periods will be disastrous for your business. A-Train 9 offers extensive control over schedules, allowing you to fine-tune each of your train routes. You must also take into account terrain and weather when it comes to growth and planning.
Financial Management: Your balance sheet must not be in the red if you want to earn a profit. You'll need to keep track if your financial reports and use the banks and stock market to your advantage if you wish to succeed! Taxes will also come into play each year. Use savvy business and financial tactics to gain an advantage!
Railway Costs: Time and nature affect the railway as mentioned above, but so do other elements. Tracks and trains are expensive to build and maintain, so you'll never want excess if your goal is to make a fortune. Some stations are versatile but expensive, and others are limited in their use but cheap to maintain. Each of the 10+ trains has a distinct advantage and disadvantage, so weigh your options wisely before you spend a small fortune on new trains!
Materials: You'll need a great flow of materials, as they are required to build subsidiaries and grow your empire. Be sure your freight trains and trucks are running at peak performance, and take advantage of in-game tools to optimize your management of materials!
Subsidiaries: Each subsidiary you control (apartments, stores, restaurants, parks, etc.) has the potential to grow the city, your railway company, and your wallet. But it's a delicate balancing act! Build too many and you'll have empty buildings and huge maintenance bills. Build too few and nobody will flock to your city, leaving your trains without passengers. Other companies will move in if your area is attractive enough; they may compete with you on a real estate level, but the people they bring will still have to use your trains!

New Features

Upgraded Graphics: The 3D graphics from A-Train 8 have been improved, making this the most visually advanced game in the series to date!
Enhanced Camera Controls: Follow your trains and take beautiful panoramic shots of your creations unlike ever before! Many of the shots in the trailer above were taken from the in-game controls that will be at your fingertips!
Trucks & Busses: Trains are no longer alone! Use these new inclusions to more efficiently transport materials and customers.
Power Management: A-Train 9 adds a new wrinkle to the formula with power plants! Your city will require power, but excessive power is wasteful. Your options for supplying power are considerable: solar arrays, nuclear reactors, and tidal plants are all available!
New Structures: You'll have access to a variety of new structures, including wind turbines and ancient Japanese castles. Your cities will look more diverse and alive than ever before!

System Requirements

Minimum:

OS: Microsoft Windows XP/Vista/7 (32 bit or 64 bit)
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 3.0GHz / AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4000+
Memory: 256 MB RAM
Graphics: Nvidia GeForce 8600 GT / ATI Radeon 9500 Pro
DirectX: Version 9.0
Hard Drive: 1 GB available space

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Positive (13)

Negative (16)

TheWizard

115 products in account

Not Recommended

6.9 hrs on record

Posted: 18 October

The Good: Nice graphics, great options for building city buildings. Trains and trucks look good and once you get the schedule set up they work like clockwork. Price of the game was acceptable.

The Bad: Where do I start? Extremely finicky while trying to build roads that connect other roads making some connections impossible to make where in real life it would be a snap. Scheduling on trains is a nightmare. NOTE this point as it will drive you bonkers - there is no such thing as train signals so be prepared to have many trains sitting on the tracks as they do the stare down with each other if you try to run more than 1 train per track.

The Unknown: Sound, I hate having music in my games so no write up on that. If I want music I'll play my stereo.

The Big Picture: Depending on what you are wanting this may be the game for you. If you are looking for a model train simulator then you found it. If you are looking for a real world train simulator then look elsewhere, this is not it.

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SuperSluether

12 products in account

Not Recommended

1.0 hrs on record

Posted: 10 October

After playing this game for just an hour, I decided that I would have much rather gotten Train Simulator 2014 (well, 2015 by now). The game's graphics are poor and sometimes laggy, and the game itself is very difficult to figure out. I had to find a guide on the Steam Community to get as far as I did, and even then I had no clue how to play the game.

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^1Bamie- ^6Fuk Yoe Mie

386 products in account

Recommended

15.1 hrs on record

Posted: 29 May

Really cool city builder game, you mainly plan and build transportation (roads, rails, trains and busses) so you enable the A.I. to build the city (you also can build buildings to help, but it's $$$). I found this more interesting the e.g. Cities in motions where you only build 'routes'. Here you need to manage not only people, but also materials from the factories. Because without materials there is nothing to build.

I watched two let's play video's which explains how to start and what the core mechanics are.(since there is no tutorial).

Lets Play A Train 9 Part Two Your First Simple Line
by Paul Rone-Clarke3
Lets Play A Train 9 Part Three Developing Your Infrastructure
by Paul Rone-Clarke3

The first part of let's play goes about patching the (boxed?) game with the unofficial (fan) patch which adds DLC, new features and trains. But from what I have read it doesn’t work on the steam version.

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<fluffy> sɨlℯηᴛlʏ pɨηƙ

211 products in account

Recommended

0.5 hrs on record

Posted: 26 May

Yes i do recommend the game for anyone looking for something a little complex, but not deep ended or completely procedural.

Works on almosy any system mentioned and NOT mentioned in minimum requirements, the reason for this is the fact that it doesn't need even a dual core or high end gpu to run, it does need new shaders, thankfully AMD and Nvidia's legacy drivers fix those problems (suck it SONY)

As for gameplay lets split them into sections, not based on a particular priority.

The size:

Maps are a set size and not changeable unless modded (if it can be) of course maps can be changed, edited, generated anew from a small selection of sliders and options, a comparison game for this would be simcity societies any version.

The population:

No traffic.
Unlike simcity, simcity 4, no people can be seen on any setting, this might be a planned feature in future updates with enough requests, but based on the engine there won't be any purpose for these civilians other than aesthetics.

The buildings:

Buildings throughout the game do have a purpose, most are built along roads, others can be placed "near" a road, these public buildings have cement around them, making the areas seem like blocks for apartment zones.

Roads NOT TRACKS:

Roads have certain directions to be placed in, only four of them, these snap to the grid, not completing a road connection to another road makes these look out of place with no aesthetic way to make them match the area.

The general game itself:

The game is based more information control, your decisions on the grid (placement of buildings) decide whether information will increase properly, since there are no physical beings trying to get somewhere through traffic.

A note for commentors:

I'm not going to change my review, these facts are facts that show how developers tried to do something that is less than other games available, transport tycoon is a classic and far far bigger in size and choice, simcity (new one) is an example of physical populations trying to get through traffic to their jobs, but the size of the areas are made for multiplayer. Developers know about these games, they know they can implement gigantic maps, physical populations, land digging, land placing, "god control" and far many more features that make a simulation game. Sometimes information is not enough when there are examples already out there proving better can be done and has been done. They did not need feedback from a community, their feedback is in examples in the gaming industry.

So please think before bashing this review, i recommend it for someone spending little time on a game, not for anyone looking for a simulation reality city building game.

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fastica

390 products in account

Recommended

1.9 hrs on record

Posted: 29 May

If you can pass through the steep learning curve, there is a very deep and rewarding city management game worth playing. Compared to SimCity or Cities in Motion this one looks like a "professional" city builder, with all the good and the bad that the word professional implies in a game. I would call it the X3 of Cities builders.

I'm going to mention the pros, cons and the "It depends on what you like".

PROS
+ Really big cities, puts SimCity to shame.
+ Includes terraforrming!
+ You can build the core of your city without money contraints and then see how it develops.
+ Clean graphics, especially beautiful at night.
+ Train cockpit view!
+ Low hardware requirements.
+ It has its own stock market.
+ The game is also about buses.
+ Competition with other companies.

CONS
- No cars and pedestrians can make small cities look like ghost towns.
- Boring and a little confusing interface.
- Can be frustrating at first.
- Below average audio, music is pretty, though.
- Steep learning curve with almost no ingame tutorials.
- Lack of trains compared to international versions.
- It isn't the last version (v3) released in Japan.

IDOWYL
/ Complex with a lot of micromanagement
/ Numbers, numbers and more numbers.
/ The lack of tutorial makes you watch videos and comunicate with real people :)

Although the list of cons is big, some of the pros are more relevant to the kind of game I like.
Lets hope the publishers keep supporting this game, releasing DLC and newer versions.

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pasiltd

30 products in account

Recommended

23.1 hrs on record

Posted: 20 June

Great but complicated game at the beginning. Business model is very realistic and making profit over the year is very tricky. It can be done, but it's far from Transport Tycoon / Railroad Tycoon kind of simple approach. Train schedule and route management is customizable nicely so it can be very simple or you can control each departure time, point setting etc. for each train separately.

Goods carrying is just simple building blocks what you store into your warehouses and produce at your factories. Profit is huge if all clicks together.

The only major complaint from me is, that it seems to be impossible to make decent profit on passanger trains with any other train type, except AR-3. This was the issue back in the very first versions of this game so seems bit strange that it would still be the issue. Maybe i just need to clock on more hours in this game. Speaking of which, i'll catch you later :)

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LUFFY

94 products in account

Recommended

8.5 hrs on record

Posted: 31 May

I am so glad that Steam bought in A-Train 9.

One of my very First game since Floppy Disk Era.
Still have that same feeling, bring back good old days.

Thank you Steam !

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[FBNOps]UncleDrax

376 products in account

Not Recommended

33.1 hrs on record

Posted: 1 June

I like this 'game', if you want a good train/city mgmt with some pretty good depth, you will too. Just make sure you take the time to enable the advanced timetable options and get used to them. There is a learning curve here.

That said, the problem with this is it's hard to make money with your transit system.. there are taxes and fees, and real-estate is not cheap. Unfortunately the easist way to make alot of money is to ignore the core gameplay and fun aspects and just play the stock-market. Doing it casually, you can easily make your first $10billion within a year doing so.

Unfortunately that means as much as I do like A-Train franchise (it was the game I bought my first sound card (sb-16) for!); I can't really recommend it to a new player without making sure they understand these cavets.

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SkiesofFire

125 products in account

Not Recommended

14.3 hrs on record

Posted: 28 May

This game should take notes from cities in motion 1 and 2 in how they schedule trains instead of playing pinball with junctions. The timetable assistant is the worst idea ever, especially for trucks where you will enter endless directions and HOPE it follows it the second time. I like the idea of influencing the economy of the world but in the end its just really hard to play since everything costs millions and needs materials. Material transportation is difficult to do with trucks. We need public traffic to make use of our ghost towns. We need more feedback for what we are doing wrong or right, you should switch to monthly stats instead of daily since it clears too often. Power plants should have the ability to scale down or ability to turn themselves off to save cost. But if you put all that aside, I guess the timetable assistant is the most non-userfriendly and game breaking feature because telling one train to follow this route takes more time than it really needs. I do not recommend this game, however I may change my mind in future updates.

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PineyCreek

64 products in account

Recommended

1.9 hrs on record

Posted: 5 August

I will give this a recommendation since I haven't played it long enough to call it bad. This is more of a first impressions.

Here's a rundown of what I have found so far

Pros:
-Game runs great on my old and dying computer.
-Has a pretty dynamic city growth system.
-A wide selection of buildings to improve and grow your cities (and the maps are huge!)
-Has a map editor (sadly no Steam Workshop to post your creations).

Cons:
-This game doesn't pretend to teach you how to play it (look up lets plays on YouTube or you will be hopelessly lost)
-Needs either a better control setup or the ability to rebind keys.
-With no people or cars the cities look pretty lifeless and I have trouble figuring out where people are and where they want to go to make an attractive system.
-Lacks the friendly interface of Cities in Motion 2 which told me what lines go to the stations and how many people are there or how many people are on my trains/buses.

If these kinds of games aren't your thing buy Cities in Motion 2 or download OpenTTD (which is free). So far the thing I found most frustrating is the awful keyboard setup. You use the number keys on the right side of your keyboard instead of your arrow keys like every other game of type I have ever played.

I'm gonna keep at this and hopefully make a breakthrough in the games logic because I feel like I will actually enjoy it. Hopefully this will happen before next month when Train Fever.

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tlatting2001

11 products in account

Not Recommended

1.2 hrs on record

Posted: 29 November

Ok, I put less than a half hour into this game. I was lost from the start and I still have absolutely no clue on what to do. I was able to build some tracks (Which is nearly impossible to do because it doesn't let you build when it would clearly be possible to do so, you would think.)

I have not found a tutorial. I may have missed it, but I looked everywhere. If a tutorial would be in place, then I may have played longer. I have no clue on what to do except build tracks aimlessly hoping I am doing the right thing.

I do not recommend this game unless you want to spend hours figuring out what the hell it is your supposed to do!

This was a waste of money!

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hornbyOO

72 products in account

Not Recommended

2.3 hrs on record

Posted: 26 May

This game has not been patched, and without the game is not much more than a demo (see forum).
There is no link to the patch nor is it auto patched by Steam

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Offensive.

55 products in account

Not Recommended

2.1 hrs on record

Posted: 30 October

Absolute ♥♥♥♥♥. A-Train 6 was the best and always will be.

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rsdworker

107 products in account

Recommended

15.4 hrs on record

Posted: 10 November

its nice game but more features would be nice

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coastervan

33 products in account

Not Recommended

1.6 hrs on record

Posted: 25 May

I wanted to really like this game but unfortunately I don't. There no tuturial to help you understand the non-user friendly items such as, assigning routes to buses or the time tables. What a shame! I'm a huge fan of Transport Tycoon, Railroad Tycoon and Cities in Motion. The idea is good just needs more thought. And it doesn't look good on my Hi-Def monitor.

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