Train Sim World 7 Review (PS5)

As I write my seventh Train Sim World review in almost as many years, I’m fighting the feeling of groundhog day a tad – I think even the team at Dovetail would forgive me that.

There’s no question this railway simulation has come on leaps and bounds in the best part of a decade, now looking and feeling like a premium product compared to the scrappy effort it started as.

Locomotives are meticulously modelled, with genuinely impressive audio capturing the character of each individual train.

(In fact, there’s even a scenario that attempts to reflect the difficult endeavours of the studio’s industrious sound team.)

Meanwhile, the routes – which do admittedly still rely on repeated assets and some shoddy scenery – can stun at times, with dynamic lighting and volumetric clouds adding an air of drama to each journey.

I played one objective over the weekend, in the new Airedale & Wharfedale route, where I was genuinely taken aback by the thickness of the fog amid heavy rain. It genuinely reminded me of late night winter train rides as a student.

It’s this sense of impeccable realism paired with virtual tourism that brings me back to the series with regularity, even when I’m not on review duties. I do genuinely enjoy it.

Despite this, Train Sim World 7 gives me very little to work with, because there’s not a lot that’s new about it.

The headline features include a new Freight Hauler Mode, which I think folks who play games like Euro Truck Simulator 2 will really appreciate, but I personally prefer passenger trains so this does very little for me.

There’s a new live weather system which pulls in real-life conditions from the web, allowing you to run timetables with dynamically changing conditions that match what drivers are facing on real rails at the exact same moment.

And there are more accessibility features which should help new players get started much more easily – an important addition considering Dovetail is simultaneously working on a Roblox experience named Train Sim World: Tycoon, which is designed to introduce an entire new generation of enthusiasts to the genre. Cool.

But beyond the various improvements that have snuck their way into the franchise over the years – like proper DualSense integration, including rumble and support for the touchpad light panel, which helpfully matches the current signal light – there’s just not a lot to shout about here.

The dev would rightfully argue that a free version is available at launch, allowing you to import your existing DLC routes into the client, and continue playing without paying a penny. That’s fair.

And those who want to cough up can purchase any number of bundles, which revolve around the addition of three pretty decent routes: the Airedale & Wharfedale in Northern England, the Tri-Rail Miami route in South Florida, and the Bahnstrecke Nürnberg to Würzburg line in Bavaria.

While football rivalries mean I’m a sworn enemy of Leeds, I do like this new UK route, which passes through Bradford through to Ilkeley and Skipton.

I like commandeering the Class 331 train a lot, and if you pay for the Deluxe Edition, you get the Class 333 which is also a lot of fun.

While I much prefer driving European trains to American ones, I must admit I did enjoy the Tri-Rail Miami route as well, which runs from Miami Airport through Fort Lauderdale and beyond.

I find the US trains a bit of a faff personally, but I really enjoyed the scenery change in this route, and the vibes of the Sunshine State really pulled me in – especially as the days begin to get shorter here at home.

I don’t have a particular problem with the German route this time, I just feel like I’ve played a billion variations of it before.

I had a fine time with the DB BR 440, and I quite liked the viaducts and scenery, but without a personal attachment to this particular part of Bavaria, I doubt I’ll play this much.

The Deluxe Edition does include the DB BR 412 ICE 4 and I always enjoy driving these trains, but I’m not enough of a railway nerd to understand how it differs from versions in other games.

One feature that has been added for these three new routes is tannoy announcements, and these add a ton of realism to the experience. I almost dropped my DualSense when I heard the infamous British railway slogan ‘See It, Say It, Sorted’. Love it.

While I’ve complained about Dovetail’s dependence on UK, US, and German routes in the past, I’m also excited about the long-in-development Tadami Line, which will bring the series to Japan for the first time this week. I’ll do a separate article on that once I’ve tried it.

Other upcoming additions include Portugal, the Netherlands, and Romania, so the franchise is slowly starting to live up to the “world” moniker in its title, with a dozen or so different studios now all building DLC for the locomotive live service.

Assuming the content comes out on time, it’s an exciting roadmap, but I’m hesitant to place too much attention on it; the abovementioned Tadami Line was originally announced for Train Sim World 4 if I remember correctly, after all.