With lots of new additions, Dovetail Games‘ latest revision of Train Sim World is possibly the best one yet.

Dovetail Games very kindly sent RailAdvent a copy of the Special Edition to review – here is what we think!

What’s included for the price?

The Special Edition of Train Sim World 4 will set you back £89.99 here in the UK, and for that, you get the base game update (worth £39.99) as well as

LGV Mediterranee: Marseille – Avignon, Linke Rheinstrecke: Mainz – Koblenz Route, Northeast Corridor: Boston – Providence, Southeastern Highspeed: London St Pancras – Ashford Intl & Faversham, Antelope Valley Line: Los Angeles – Lancaster, East Coast Main Line: Peterborough – Doncaster, Nahverkehr Dresden – Riesa and S-Bahn Vorarlberg: Lindau – Bluden.

Train Sim Wold 4 is available on PC, Xbox and Playstation

All of your TSW3 routes transfer over to TSW4, which is great to see.

One of the main updates to the base game is the ability to spawn trains in when in timetable mode as well as a new free roam mode.

Optimisation and Detail

Train Sim World 4 has run well across the board.

For the brand new content, which is

• East Coast Main Line: Peterborough – Doncaster with the LNER BR Class 801
• Antelope Valley Line: Los Angeles – Lancaster with the Metrolink F125
• S-Bahn Vorarlberg: Lindau – Bludenz with the ÖBB 4024
• DELUXE EDITION: LNER Class A3 60103 Flying Scotsman
• DELUXE EDITION: Railpool BR 193 Vectron (and Nahverkehr Dresden – Riesa)

We love driving Flying Scotsman, which is really high quality when it comes to textures, sounds, and lots of openable doors, things to click, and even walk through the tender!

What we like to see is Dovetail sending out updates which is great to see when spending quite a large amount of money on the game.

All the animations in the game are smooth and high quality, walking through the various trains is lovely and you can see the hard work that has gone into modelling them.

When it comes to sounds, we felt the low speed ‘chuff’ of Flying Scotsman was a little too deep, but this is not the case when you get above 20mph

General Gameplay

Our review is going to focus on the free roam abilities, whilst we will explore the world of the overhauled scenario planner in a potential stream over on our Twitch channel.

For us, free roam ability is the biggest thing about the new game, as it really makes the game feel more open to what we want to do, rather than previous versions that could feel like playing out a video, with set routes, no way to change, signals nearly always at green etc.

There are a lot of similarities to previous games, but this is the stand out feature for us.

Graphics are high quality as always has been with previous TSW versions, scenarios are engaging to play through, and the addition of spawnable trains is just the icing on the cake.

For those that dont know, in timetable mode, or standard free roam mode, you can spawn in trains wherever you are and drive them to anywhere on the route by setting paths.

This is really enjoyable, especially in timetable mode, as you have to set paths and drive around the AI. Free Roam is your standard empty route to let you do what you like.

We really like the new photo mode, which allows you to capture your gameplay stills and share them with the community.

Any Bad Points?

Any faults with the game?

On the whole, no, everything has run well. A few issues we have picked up seem to be related to compatible content whereby older routes crash if you start spawning trains on (this doesn’t seem to be the case on ECML for example).

We also noticed that the LNER Azuma connecting cables dont stretch when going over points, and are just fixed in position.

Final Thoughts

Bringing our review to a close then. What do we think? With the addition of Flying Scotsman and the new free roam aspects, we really think this is a step up on previous versions.

With the Deluxe Edition starting at £52.99, when you bear in mind the new routes, Flying Scotsman, and the base game upgrade, I think this represents excellent value for money.

I would definitely recommend picking up Train Sim World 4: Special Edition and adding it to your library – I’m sure you will enjoy it!

Want to see the route in action? Make sure to follow the RailAdvent Twitch channel to see when I go live streaming the route: twitch.tv/railadvent