I consider Transport Fever to be an unpolished gem. On one hand, I really enjoy playing it, as it does the important things very well. On the other hand, though, it has plenty of problems. The result, for me, felt kind of like taking a shower on a cold day with a faulty water heater, so the temperature of the water keeps flactuating between too cold and too hot. Having played for over 250 hours (at the time of writing this review), it's evident I chose to keep playing despite the problems.

The good side of the game, in my opinion, consists of the main gameplay mechanics. Much like in previous games of this genre, including Transport Fever's own predecessor, Train Fever, the purpose is to build and manage your own network of transportation routes. You build roads, railway tracks, sea ports and airports, plan routes, buy vehicles and manage your fleet and infrastructure. While I have some serious reservations about some aspects of the economy (some of which I'll list and describe later on), the system does feel balanced well, in general, and is definitely complex and interesting enough to carry the whole game on its shoulders. Also, the models of the vehicles look really well, and from what I understand from others, are also realistic.

As for the negatives - while the game is fun to play, sometimes to the degree of being addictive, some issues take much of the fun out of the experience. The most significant of those issues, in my opinion, are the user interface and the performance issues. The game barely uses more than one CPU core, which practically means really low FPS values even on the best of hardware, especially when playing on advanced stages of the game. This issue has been addressed and improved on one of the recent patches to the game, but the game still stutters and lags like crazy - enough to sometimes cause me to quit in frustration, even though I'm playing on a relatively fast computer (Intel i7 2.9Ghz, Quad-Core with 16GB RAM).

As for the user interface - well, sometimes it feels like the developers of the game just didn't think things through before making decisions. Some of the problems have already been addressed and fixed on a recent patch, but many still remain:

1) When you upgrade a train station (adding platforms or upgrading tracks to high-speed, for example), all the passenger or cargo items which either wait at the station to be picked up, or on their way to that station - will vanish as if never existed. This problem has much to do with the game's AI as with the user inteface, and perhaps the closest to the definition of "game breaking", as if it happens mid or late game, it can easily lead you to bancrupcy - all by a mere few clicks of the mouse, without any warnings. Another effect of upgrading a station is that trains on the affected route will sometimes change direction for no apparent reason, and end up halting the entire traffic on the network (causing more losses, as maintenance costs keep accumulating as the time goes by, but since the trains can't move, no passengers or cargo get transported, so you don't get paid).

2) The cargo system is awkward and unrealistic. I won't get into it too deeply, as this is not a guide, but I will say that despite being interesting and challenging when done right, transporting cargo in this game takes a lot of trial and error, as the game simply doesn't bother to give you all the information you need. You'll start having fun with it only when you grasp the concepts it's based on (complete chains and demand base).

3) Replacing vehicles (when they get older and need to be replaced) usually means loss of money, as the 'Auto-Replace' feature will in many cases have at least some of the cargo or the passengers on board the vehicle vanish into thin air (without paying you for the transportation), and sending vehicles to their depots manually will usually mean having to pay their maintenance costs for a long while, without being able to use them to transport anyone or anything during that time.

4) Different scales - maybe the only problem on the list which also has something to do with the game-design. As everything is obviously scaled down, there's a significant and obvious difference between the scale of the maps (including the cities) and the scale of the vehicles and stations. This was most likely designed like this for the eye-candy effect of the moving vehicles, but I believe it has a major negative impact on the gameplay - specifically the acceleration rates of trains and airplanes, and the volume of traffic (especially trains).

Although it seems like most of this review is made up of the negatives of the game, I do recommend it, with all its flaws and problems, to anyone who likes this genre. The game is fun to play - as long as you don't let yourself get too frustrated with the problems.