Tsw6: A Short Review

Having spent roughly 12 hours on tsw6 since yesterday’s early access begun, I thought I’d write a bit about the three routes and the new features. Starting with the routes, I’ll talk through them from worst to best (all my own opinions). For reference, I’ll include what services I’ve done for each route. All three routes have been played on Xbox Series X, using deluxe edition.

Dresden-Leipzig:
1x ICE Dresden-Leipzig
1x Talent 2 Coswig-Dresden via Friedrichstadt
The lack of rolling stock is a bit of a killer, and it also feels like the original section from Dresden to Riesa hasn’t been polished at all. The second half of the service to Leipzig is much faster, however performance was much worse on both runs than the other two routes. The line via Friedrichstadt is a nice addition which maintained the variety of the route however, but this isn’t enough to save the route from third place. It’s not a bad route by any means; probably 3 or 4 of my top 10 tsw routes are German. Lots of people will love this route, and I can see why but for me the other two routes are purely just better

Morristown Line:
1x ALP-45DP NYP-Dover
2x Arrow III Summit-Hoboken and back
I was initially underwhelmed when this route was revealed a month ago, however I’ve found myself pleasantly surprised. The variety is excellent, the route looks fantastic and performance is very good. The Arrow III is quickly becoming one of my favourite American locos, the ALP45-DP also compliments the collection nicely. The variety in stopping patterns, different length services and random faults all work very well in this route, if it were a standalone dlc it’d be a day one purchase for sure. Once all the dlc transfers across from tsw5 it’ll be even busier and even better with all the AI around the New York area. Superb effort from all involved and hopefully this has set the bar for future American routes!

Riviera Line:
1x 802 Plymouth-Exeter
2x 220 Exeter-Plymouth
Paignton-Exeter
2x 150 Exeter-Paignton and back
This route is already my favourite of the three and I still feel like I’ve not properly warmed to it yet. The change in scenery from 100mph through open fields, to the section past the cliffs and sea, to the forested landscape west of newton abbot make for a very fun drive. The 802 is great as expected, the 150 has been improved massively which is great to see, and the voyager is also incredible. It sounds wonderful. The scenery is excellent and the timetable is fun and varied, I can see myself completing many services on this route. Absolutely my favourite of the three.

Features:

Temporary Speed Restrictions (TSRs):
A nice concept, but one that hasn’t been executed as well as it could’ve been. The abundance of them is the main issue, toggling the frequency makes no difference (although I suspect this may be an issue with the game in general, as toggling fault frequency makes no difference either), and you almost expect one before you start each service. There have also been instances where the TSR has shown up on the HUD, but there’s no physical trackside sign which almost defeats the point of them being there. It’s an alright start, but there’s certainly things that can be improved here.

Announcements:
Better than TSRs, but there’s still progress that can be made. For example, when arriving at a terminus station, it would be nice for the terminus message to be part of that announcement, to add to the realism. They also seem to trigger on a time basis, not a GPS basis which can cause a bit of confusion. For trains like the 220 and ICE-T which don’t have automated announcements, and instead have a staff member onboard, it would be nice to see this represented by having a variety of voices broadcasting announcements. Again, a good foundation has been laid but there’s still work to do.

Random Events:
Or not so random events. Predictable events. On a 220 service earlier, the engines stalled 8 times within a half hour timeframe. I expect that to happen again next time. This overload of random events means that they also might as well not be there, as it just makes them seem like a normal part of the game that you know will happen every time you drive a train. I like the idea and it sounds like the catalogue will be expanded soon, but the basics need fixing here

Passenger ambience:
It’s nice that the world feels more alive now, it makes such a difference. The way you can hear people’s conversations and sneezing adds a whole lot of realism that I didn’t know was missing. This passenger ambience is sometimes missing, for example in guard mode on the 150, but the actual system is fine when it’s working, which in fairness is most of the time. Very happy with this one.

All in all, I’m happy with my purchase. 2 superb routes and one… ok-ish route. Perhaps it’ll grow on me. I hope it will. All 3 routes have got stuff right with them and stuff wrong with them, but Morristown and riviera have surpassed my expectations. Sorting out how these new core features work has to be a priority, otherwise we’ll get stuck in a loop of the same problems getting added to new routes, and it never getting fixed. But for now, tsw6 is absolutely excellent and my weekend is sorted!

Let me know below if you agree/disagree with anything I’ve said, which routes you like, and what you think of the new features

 

I haven’t tried Leipzig - Dresden yet as I’m waiting until the 30th for layers, however I’ve already seen reports of blurred textures on the PS5 with the base stock, so as I suspected that route is going to be write off for me. It’s a shame as the RE50 is the longest conventional service we have in TSW (no caveats from low or high speeds, just a plain old 160kmh run end to end), I was looking forward to the concept but I’m just not willing to put up with the textures.

Morristown I’m holding out for Amtrak layers to come in, though I’m quite looking forward to driving the Arrow3, the preview looked decent so definitely going to give it a good thrash.

Riviera is something else though. As always it’s the UK route that brings me into the next iterations of TSW. After the state of WCML last year, I was left very uninterested in TSW to the point that I’ve already put more hours into TSW6 in 2 days than I did TSW5 over the first few weeks. Honestly it’s nothing short of a miracle that this is the result of Rivet - there are certainly things that need sorting with it & a couple of detail passes will do it wonders, but the base foundation is really good, it’s probably the best core UK release we’ve had to date.

Unfortunately the 150 for me is a 2 sided coin, on one hand it is miles better now in terms of sound accuracy, but at least on PS5 there’s a pretty horrid static sound on it (not the ear drum piercer although that’s also there), I don’t get it on the 220 or 802. Hopefully it’s something that gets addressed when DTG fix the ongoing PS5 audio issues.

The 802 is a nice surprise in terms of sounds, miles better experience than the 801 & while I wasn’t expecting to be into it so much, it’s really been a treat.

The 220 is nice, I am biased since the Voyager family is right there for me in terms of favoured stock & it’s been my most used train by far the last couple of days, however the sounds could do with some work. I’m aware that accurate sounds aren’t available from the sources DTG wanted to get them, but what we do have could be refined - there’s a very obvious loop in the idle set & acceleration sounds really basic. Running sounds too just sound like you have air con on, they’re not very detailed at all outside of some clunking once you’re over 70mph. Overall it’s a decent unit & looks absolutely stunning, I just think for it being a standalone DLC some more refining of the soundset is in order.

I turned TSR’s straight off as I just don’t agree with the way they’re implemented, much like guard mode they’ve basically Fisher-Priced them & they’re just a cheap gimmick at this point. Shame really.

Train faults are really janked & the frequency is one thing, but even turned off they still occur.

Passenger ambiance is a nice touch, like you I agree they add life to the world, another bonus here is having the volume slider too. Good foresight on DTG’s part.

Announcements are off to a good start, the female voice is quite well done & is a decent stand in for lack of the real voice you’d typically hear. The male voice however sounds really fake, definitely needs some work on that one. I do like the addition of having the automatic ones on trains which don’t have them IRL, though they need to switch the 220 ones over to the same as the 802, those a much better suited to XC services.

The menus are simply atrocious. I’ve already left a few paragraphs on the feedback thread for it, so I’ll just summarise by saying the quality of the user experience with them is bad enough, but the inconsistency of their design is a whole other level of terrible.

Of course the elephant in the room for PS5 users at least is the texture issue, this absolutely should have been resolved prior to TSW 6 & it really stains what otherwise would have been a very strong release. This issue is also leaking to Xbox now so it’s something that’s starting to affect a massive portion of the userbase.

There is also the straight up dangerous audio glitches on PS5, absolutely critical that gets sorted.

All in all, TSW 6 at a content level is pretty strong this year, but we’re starting to see various QC inefficiencies leave their marks on what should be an opportunity for DTG to tidy up the core. I think if they’d have maybe cut back on a feature & invested in the others, they’d really come out kicking. For what I personally go for in TSW though (UK content), it’s been a really strong release, hopefully DTG will run with this stronger starting point & improve the overall game now, rather than having to spend the first few months finishing off their undercooked routes like they had to last year.

 

Got to say it's a bit sad to read that the random elements have the exact issues I was expecting, too frequent (and amazingly worse than I even expected), and have issues. Feels like whatever random generation they used for the schizophrenic weather got reused here. And I just can't agree that it's good enough to label it as "a good foundation", we're selling houses here, not foundations. The fact that I figured they'd be too frequent as a bystander tells me a DTG developer could've figured that out way before me.

Announcements and passenger noises are firmly in the "Neat, but unimportant" category. Like yes, it's nice to have those little things there, but it has to be said I feel like a lot of people invested in TSW get way too caught up in the trees and not the forest. It's like obsessing over the uniforms of sci-fi show, like yes, it's neat if they have attention, but I can only get invested into that sort of stuff if the core things like story, visual effects, and sound design are solid. And as is they've seem to have blown the random events that could've been game changers if implemented right.

As far as routes go, well, nice to know that they're decent, particularly glad to hear that the UK has gotten something good again from the sounds of it, I'm sure I'll buy them on heavy discount in a year or two. But honestly I've got such a over-saturation of routes in all three eras that it's gonna be hard for anything from those eras to justify a full-price purchase. I really hope some of these new countries being worked on turn out to be excellent and come out in a somewhat timely manner, because those would get me interested in upgrading. As is though I'm kind of siding towards sticking with 5 until 7's out, then I'll reassess and potentially look at upgrading to that.

 

Can anyone tell me if this is just me or if it's a TSW6 bug?
The base locomotive, an SD-40-2, is missing from the Sand Patch Grade schedule. What could this be?

 

I noticed on a couple of runs that the 150 was full of passengers in the last carriage but was completely empty in the other 3. Both were night-time runs so it may be that there's an issue with one carriage being coded as a daytime service.

It was certainly weird hearing another passenger sneezing when I was the only person sat in the carriage.

 

I'm enjoying it. The new routes were good choices. They'll be even better with layers.
Just disappointed that bugs have carried over from previous versions.
I feel a list of promised fixes should be made somewhere, to remind DTG what they have said will be fixed in the past, but which still hasn't been done.

 

I’ve just had the same thing on a Paignton- Exeter 150. Whilst it is realistic that one carriage would be more busy than the others, due to it’s proximity to the station entrance, it feels unrealistic that only one out of 4 carriages would have any passengers at all

 

Glad to hear my feedback has been useful, I hope that the core features have more time invested in them before anything else