Developed by Live Motion Games and published for the Xbox platform by Ultimate Games S.A., Train Station Renovation is a management sim that tasks you with traveling to different destinations and renovating different train stations for their new owners. While we have seen a plethora of new management sims, Train Station Renovation definitely takes a unique take on the whole management/simulator genre by allowing you to renovate a train station. This is our review of Train Station Renovation on the Xbox Series X in which we grab our tools and renovate some train stations.
The concept of Train Station Renovation is very simple. The game offers you 15 different locations where your task is the same. Arrive at the train station and renovate it. For this purpose, you have a certain number of objectives that you must complete in order to get the maximum payout for your job. The better you perform your job, the more stars you earn and the higher your paycheck at the end of the day. Train Station Renovation is more of a low-stress simulator rather than a hardcore one.
After arriving at every train station, you start by fixing its electricity and once you get the electric juices flowing through the station, you start tending to its dilapidated condition. Your goals include repairing what can be repaired, cleaning out the weeds and overgrowths of any kind, collecting garbage and throwing it out, getting new items and placing them down, and finally re-paint the whole thing. While all of these tasks are not required for every job, the more you work on a train station, the higher the number of stars you get at the end of it.
For doing your job, you get a large number of tools including brushes, ax, wrench, crowbars, and others. Each of these tools is used for a unique purpose and for doing your job, you will need to use nearly all of them. Each train station has a certain requirement of tools and you must have them all in order to renovate that station. Apart from stations, some of the levels require you to fix trains and train cars sitting at the stations as well so each station brings a new challenge for you.
Earning stars allows you to upgrade your tools to better ones for example you can upgrade your scrubber to a power wash and your wrench becomes a powerful tool. Upgrading tools makes you more efficient at your job and saves some time too. Some of the tools are unique to your truck and you do not have them in your inventory. To get them, you have to go to your truck, use them and then put them back. Using these tools, you will first clean up each train station and break away all of the broken furniture.
You have the option of putting down large trash dumpsters or recycling dumpsters. You can recycle bottles, cardboard boxes, and other items that come in a carton to make some money as well. The rest of the trash goes in the normal trash dumpster that costs you money to remove trash from. You can purchase new items using your tablet such as signs, paints, benches, chairs, and many other things for the beautification of your train station. Each room or place in every train station has certain goals for you to achieve.
These include items that you must place or things that you must do in that particular area. Pressing the B button on your controller, you can scan your surroundings and see what still remains to do around you. As you clean, renovate, paint and refurbish the train station, you earn rewards based on your performance and once the project is complete, you earn more rewards as well in the form of money. This money is then used in later stages to purchase new items for your renovation projects.
While there is nothing much you can do in the game, you can also jump in the sandbox mode and just keep playing a stage at your own pace. There is no online in the game and once you are done with all of the levels and a few hours in sandbox mode, you are pretty much done with the game. For some people, it might get a little repetitive after a few hours as well but I managed to log in some decent hours into the game in order to complete the missions and some hours in the game sandbox mode as well.
Probably the biggest disappointment with the game is its visuals. The game looks something straight out of the early Xbox era as the visuals are pretty lackluster on the Series X. Everything is dark and there are minimalistic animations in the game even for items that can easily move around in the game. A few gameplay bugs are also present in the game however they are not that big to ruin the game or anything, but they are certainly annoying in different scenarios. Other than that, you will have a fairly decent time playing the game.
Final Verdict:
While Train Station Renovation is a good, low-stress train station maintenance title, some in-game mechanics come in the way of making this a great title. I enjoyed my time with the game despite it looking like a PS2 title and not having enough options to place in the game. The UI could have been better, but it does the job. The audio design is fine as well. From what it looks like, Train Station Renovation is nonetheless a fun game, and it is good for spending a good number of hours in it. I will mention here that do not really go on the visuals and skip this one out, if you like to play simulators and management titles, Train Station Renovation is a great addition to the Xbox Series X|S and certainly deserves your attention.
Final Score: 7.5/10
