Having completed jorney mode I feel like I've got enough experience to jugde LGV, I admit I have been a little bit disappointed and quite toxic right before and after launch, at the end I have to admit this product is not as bad as I used to think. I will first tell what I personally like and think it's "important" in a route DLC, because of course I can't be completely unbiased. 1 - Train Driving and Quality 2 - Close sorroundings and "correct localisation" 3 - medium speed with a good amount of stations (120/160 km/h ~ 80/100mph) 5 - variety and amount of traffic/adverse signals --The train (TGV 200 series) This is one of the strongest points of the DLC, the TGV is the best train DTG created in my opinion (but keep in mind I have not tried HMA), the sounds, the physics, the systems are top notch, and as far as I can tell they are all realistic and working correctly, shame for the Crocodile, but it would have a very limited use anyway. The TGV gets a full 10/10 from me. --Gameplay Of course, being a purpose built HSR you can't expect the same level of gameplay as you can on a conventional line, but at the same time the gradients really really help with making the "high-speed part" of the route more interesting, especially the fact you can't 100% rely on the selected speed mode is really really important in my opinion, as you can't just look away knowing for certain your train will maintain the speed correctly, of course once you learn those 2 or 3 points where you need to use the air brakes it becomes a little more boring overall, but if you don't use the HUD it's still relatively important to focus on where you are. Also the power switching is another great feature, which can be harder than you think to get right, especially coming towards Marseille. I would also like to mention the awesome track work on this route, it really is a huge step up from something like RRO. While not great of course, it is better than what you would think in my opinion. --Variety There is not much variety of course, but if you can use the livery editor looking at the trains with your liveries can help, sadly there is the problem of them not loading properly at speed, but seeing the stations filled with Ouigo, Thalys and Atlantique TGVs can help a bit on the variety side of things, hopefully we will see other TGV models in the future. --Ambientation and close surroundings This is the worst part about the route in my opinion, is not the immersion killer, game breaking experience i thought it was right before/after launch, at the end I managed to "accept" some of the issues, but I think thos is the area that could be improved the most. First things first, one of the tree models they (widely) used on this route has this annoying property of visibly flickering until the high-res version is loaded, so in some areas you just see a forest of flickering trees. This problem is more prominent in Summer Clear settings, if you chose either another season or worse weather (which decreases the drawing distance) this problem can be somewhat mitigated. Secondly, I am still of the opinion that the route feels a bit too cold, with those dark green foliage heavily used instead of the light green and gray foliage I would expect to see in southern France, but as I said it's not a huge problem and I managed to get over it quite easily after the first days of playing. Another problem is key objects such as big buildings near-ish the track or tunnel portals spawing too late, resulting is you seeing huge buildings popping out of thin air and holes through the terrain until the tunnel portal is loaded. P.S. I wanted to add the area between Marseille and Aix-en-Provence and especially the Marseille area are really good. --Amount of Traffic The amount of traffic and number of timetable services is pretty good considering the nature of the route, but I don't really like the fact they seemed to have coded some trains to go slower, so you could do the whole trip from Avignon to Marseille with TVM going crazy, but I guess it's a decent way to try and make the route feel more interesting, and it doesn't affect all services anyway so I can just avoid it. All in all this route is pretty good, it's a good starting point for the new tool DTG developed, and, as I said, there is still room for improvement but this route is definitely not bad as I used to think, although it doesn't feel as "refined" as SKA, but overall it's a pretty good piece of DLC, I'm happy it's well on its way to become one of the best selling DLCs. At the end I decided to write this post just because I felt I have been all over the place talking about this route, and I just wanted to "sort it out".
