Ok, guys I said I'd do a review, but instead I've just written down quite some points that cought my attention without any specific order (sorry for that) and I think one or two points in the list are the same, but it's quite late already and I'm too tired to clean it up.
I'm just going to share my view "as is", maybe I'll tidy it up and categorize them together tomorrow or on the weekend if I can get around to do it.
The bad :
- no intro, nothing, just 2 static pictures
- boringly designed menu structure offering no useful features (and an occasionally bypassing train sound. no animation, nothing)
- a loading screen without ANY kind of progress hints
- road cars spawn everywhere and also disappear everywhere and dont cross railcrossings or road intersections (they simply disappear or spawn right in the middle of the road)
- weather seems to have no effect on anything, raindrops fall right through objects, bridges and even the trains cockpit (wipers useless, no raindrops on windshields)
- overhead wire unrealistically just follows above the tracks (even through curves), also no zig-zag in overhead wire (like the real thing)
- grade / track elevation changes are as jumpy and amateurish as they were back in MSTS (straight *ZAG* uphills *ZAG* straight ...)
- EXTREMELY repetitive trees, bushes, etc (all the same texture, only about 4 tree variants)
- boring ground textures (no love for detail on included routes, just made entire terrain green and railbed track texture)
- instant scenario end after derailment with a huge popup box so you can't see anything from the crash (they could have at least waited 10 seconds or so)
- very strange loco and horn sounds (german diesel electric sounds like a hairdryer and it's horn goes like "eeeeeeeeeeeeee", it's just a pain for the ears. same for almost all other locos)
- bad LOD mesh loading, VERY noticeable and annoying (objects changing LOD model instantly and remarkably instead of a softer blend )
- rail cars not smoothly following track and "jittering" from side to side in curves (also bogies not following tracks, also jittering and drifting around)
- unprototypical signal behavior (some don't even change aspect at all)
- useless compass on top of the screen that cannot be turned off (who gives a dime about the exact coordinates driving on, when you are not currently in route development mode ?)
- HUGE non transparent and unmovable GUI elements, taking away lots of space on the screen (about 1/3rd, even at 1600x1200 resolution or 1920x1200)
- no tutorials, assuming the average user is familiar with all sorts of trains and their operations
- scenario explanations lacking information (just a "pick up wagon 981234 and 843439 then drive to lyma" ... aha)
- coalmines constantly dropping coal, wether there is a loading action going on or not which looks very strange indeed
- no indication of upcoming speedlimits
- when going backwards, next signal indicator is still "looking ahead" and not in the now changed driving direction
- weird shadow bugs, constantly appearing / disappearing (z-buffer-issues ?)
- no animated trees, dead landscape and nature (no "life")
- weird train behavior, even in "expert" driving mode (accelerating like race cars and mile long stop procedures even with empty trains and full brakes applied)
- not zoomable track preview window, making it unusable when traveling faster than 10 mph (the F3 thing for those who got KRS)
- rather complicated coupling / uncoupling / freight shunts (you have to count the wagons to the one you want to decouple from, then count again in the decouple GUI and hope to hit the correct coupler there)
- no "feel" for the weight of the train
- no "feel" for actual driving speed (100 mph feel like 30 mph)
- awful loco, horn and tracksounds (the "clickety clack" and "squeeling" in curves for example)
- complicated operation of junctions (you have to switch to a fullscreen black backgrounded by default fully zoomed in map screen, find the junction and click on it and sometimes the default path is highlighted and should be correct but the train still derails)
- scenario informations in main menu lacking "features" like usable rolling stock, length, duration, difficulty, etc.
- no real resource model for industries (offer / demand) or production cycles like "X treechumps create X woodchips and X lumber as in trainz (it's just the MSTS-ish "drive coal wagon to mine, load, go to dumper, unload, repeat" kind of freight interaction which gets boring after 15 minutes already as there are no goals except trying to keep to some schedule)
- steam and dust being just default particle systems without interaction with terrain (going through bridges, buildings, etc.) or wind
- bulk industries constantly playing the "loading" animation in a loop (coalmine for example constantly dropping coal)
- bad steam sounds, not synchronuous to actual movement
- annoying derailments when moving over a crossing that is not set in the driving direction (when coming from the upper side of "Y", so towards the single line, there should be absolutely no derailment, never ever)
- instant motor / steam sound dropoff when putting throttle back to zero
- descriptive text in GUI in german version cut off (lock function in editor, just to give a simple example : "Wenn Sie ein Szenario speichern werden alle vorhand" <- what ? there are at least 10 words missing)
- editor almost unusable, because of immensively huge GUI windows, taking up 1/3rd of the screen (no matter what the screen resolution)
- extremely complicated 3-way rotation of objects, no easy way to quickly align objects to grades. utterly complicated (there is only free 3-way rotation, not just axis-bound which makes it impossible to align the object because every mouse movement rotates the object across at least 2 axis)
- scaling feature for objects not implemented ? (there was a demo once). all objects look the same which becomes especially noticeable when placing the same object multiple times together
- no preview of objects before placement, making route building a very challenging process, especially when it comes to railroad tracks (there's also no "get object" picker command, you have to select railroad track each time anew from the content list (which has no preview)
- grid in editor does not automatically follow camera, you have to disable and re-enable the function to see the grid on your new position (and it only covers a VERY short area each click (like about 200m by 200m)
- terrain sculpting horribly complicated and details hard to make out because of constantly applied default texture (and no wireframe mode)
- "user help tags" (track description, wagon number, etc. - F6 function for those who got KRS) don't intelligently stack for readability, but are all on the same level / height, so if you are looking at 3 parallel tracks from the side you can only read the track-name of the first one in the help bubble
- no telling from the help-bubbles if they are referring to track or rolling stock as they are all plain grey (should be different colors for trackmarks, waypoints, tracks, trains and wagons at least)
- no indications in scenarios where to go, only a "do this and that, then go there" (assuming the player knows the 200 km route blindly)
- EXTREMELY nit-picky junction alignments that make your train derail (getting frustrating after 10 minutes already)
- pantographs automagically rise / lower themself (a good "bad" example - train is going uphills (rear panto is up, ok) we stop and release the brakes, train starts to roll backwards (front panto goes up), strange automatical behaviour, and this is "expert" driving mode)
- bad initial documentation with LOTS of missing informations in order to get started with creating a map or scenario for example
- no way to exit the editor without saving the changes made to the route (they've got to be kidding me)
- no easy, intuitive way to delete your own routes (yet another joke, you have to hack through XML files and clear up folder structures in explorer)
- AI trains act like they are using some kind of speed-hack, accelerating from 0 to 100 mph in like 3 seconds when departing platforms (didn't have a chance to test the AI intelligence yet besides that)
- rail tracks are plain 3-poly boxes for each rail and look just plain ugly (low detail, unspectacular)
- no passengers on the stations even though their sounds can be heard (talking, coughing, etc.), no animated passengers either, only a few plain, static passengers in coaches
- on one route (york...something) there is like a 50+ meter deep, long crater in the terrain, right under and along the tracks (how could this have made it through a QA department ? like all other stated points too I guess)
- no lights enlighting the terrain, objects or railcars at dawn when turning on lights on train
Even MSTS had a more "catching" factor to it than KRS does. (heck, even BVE is more entertaining and feature rich)
KRS is a totally pointless piece of software, sorry to speak it out like that, but it's just the truth.
Maybe a servicepack or some patches will fix A LOT of issues, but I'm not very proficient.
Tata
Mr.Jingles