I already have the Dutch Route and Semmerringbahn but I don't have MBTA, LudvigsBahn or Cardiff Network. I'm curious on what the quality of these three add ons are like and whether you feel like they are worth getting. Their cost at base price would be basically £90. Getting them with the Special edition, it works out to about £38. However, if the concensus was that they were rubbish, even that wouldn't be worth it. Let me know what you think.
They’re not bad, just not stand out routes & while I wouldn’t personally be overly critical of them, I couldn’t really come up with must have reasons to get them. The Cardiff Line is probably going to be needed for layers quite abit though. I could see all 3 being on pretty steep discounts in the next year, if they end up at 50% off then 2 of them will work out cheaper than all 3 on the £38 PP. Basically if you’re not sure you absolutely want all 3, id give it a miss & wait for better sales.
As always, my greatest disappointment is the lack of shunting/switching activities, which I am assuming from the fact that only one switching engine is included -- and that's been part of TSW almost since the beginning. There's much more to railroading than transporting freight and passengers from one end of a route to the other! Long live yard work!!!!!!!!!
{P.S. -- I am not a new member, just a loyal, long-term one who lost track of his sign-in credentials.}
Are you considering buying the routes you mentioned you don't have in the future? If the answer is yes then the extra £38 makes it worthwhile. Alternatively, buy one of the cheaper packs and add those routes when a sale comes up. Just my two pence worth….Cardiff is poor…I bought it a sale solely for it to layer into Manchester Commuter from ATS.
For me personally, the selection is actually looking pretty good this time around because I don’t own any of the special edition routes yet. Since I’m not particularly excited by any of the TSW6 launch content (except the Riviera Line, but that alone won’t justify a launch purchase), I may wait a few months for a nice sale on the special edition and get tons of content for very little money. We’ll see how it plays out!
I'm in a similar boat. I have none of the five routes so equally tempted, although only in a sale. I think the reason I don't have them already has been described by CK95, they haven't grabbed me for some reason, and I've lived outside Cardiff and in Maastricht.
Don't have Ludwigsbahn. Only on my radar for a deep sale. MBTA Worcester is actually quite nice, more varied scenery than the Providence route and diesel operation. Though doing an all stations service with the cab car can get tedious. Cardiff City is the runt of the litter. Route itself is tiny, more like a proof of concept. The quality varies too with some nice sections but others with cut and paste poor quality vegetation and Roblox buildings. Cardiff Central station is a disgrace, with the concourse interior and station frontage unmodelled. Two new trains - Class 153 very nice, Class 150 a thinly disguised rework of the one from WCL, slightly better sounds but still nothing like a 150. And most of the time on this small route with closely spaced stations, you won't be going faster than around 50 MPH with most of the time 15 - 30 MPH.
I too don't have Ludwigsbahn and in no hurry to get it. I have the other two. I would recommend MBTA for the HSP46 and control car both of which are fun to drive. Cardiff is worth getting only for the trains which will be needed for layering elsewhere. Don't get it expecting a fun gameplay experience.
I only have Semmeringbahn of the five. No-one has reviewed it here yet because you've already got it, but for the benefit of anyone who reads this that hasn't, I think its a good but not great route. Big fan of the OBB 1116 and its fun to do passenger services with it as well as freight. Also think its a nice route for scenery in the snow. One of my winter go to routes for that. I'm currently a coin flip on pre-order for the special and waiting on the upcoming streams to see how everything looks. As with others, I'm not too fussed by the German route, want to play the Dutch and MBTA routes and would like the Cardiff layers. I also like all 3 of the new core routes and B'ham-Crewe is my absolute dream route, so that is making it pretty hard to wait months for. If everything is performing well, there's a good argument the extra time spent with the game will be worth more to me than money saved. We'll see with stream 1 next week!
Thanks everyone. You've confirmed my suspicions that the routes aren't particularly worth getting (cardiff held the most pull for me out of the three) and if I decide I do want any of them, a 50% or more sale is far better. I'll just go with Deluxe for now. To anyone else on the fence though, if you don't have Semmeringbahn or the dutch route either, I like both of those and I would possibly reccommend the bundle in those circumstances.
If you like so many of the new and existing routes included with the special edition, I guess you can’t really go wrong with it. I’d also like to note that you wouldn’t have to wait months for Birmingham-Crewe since you could just get the free starter pack at launch and then buy one of the bundles later once they’re discounted.
Agreed. Last year, it was a 2 month wait for 35% off and 4 months for 50%, which doesn't sound like a long time. I went with the starter pack and sat through 2 months of people enjoying the 390 on Reddit, and it felt like a very long 2 months! Was still the right call then. I was only really interested in WCMLS and the special edition wasn't a good fit for me. This year though, 10% off, everything looking great and 5 day early access... that first live stream is going to need to be pretty disastrous for me not to pre-order the special
I only own Semmeringbahn, so the special edition is worth the purchase for me this year. I hope we don’t have to wait long for Birmingham to Crewe also, extremely excited for that route.
according to the future roadmap, it will be the first dlc to be released after tsw6 official release (on 30th september) so it won't take that longer note: I have used "official release" term because of early access (wich will start on 25th september)
