Bounty Train

"I'm a cowboy, on a steel horse I ride. I'm wanted, dead or alive."
Hiding behind an inadequate tutorial, Bounty Train is a really fun game. The tutorial gives you the basics - how to trade cargo, how to pick up passengers, how to hire staff and buy locomotives and carriages. Once you finish the tutorial and are on to more open ended missions, you might think you're going to trade around, run some missions, and achieve the game's objective of acquiring 51% of the shares of your father's company in a straightforward manner.
Oh, sweet innocent businessman, if only it were that easy in America's Wild Wild East. It will probably take you only a couple months to run into some bandits who will ambush your train, see you and your friends' faces, and rock them all. You'll wonder what happened, the tutorial bandit on the way to Buffalo wasn't that strong, what do these guys have against you? Primarily, that you were there. But also, you were poorly armed and had goods they could steal.
You see, Bounty Train is like Port Royale or The Guild, where there is trading and there are bandits/pirates/highwaymen, but the bandits here are somewhat more dangerous. You can't just ignore them or have token defenses. In addition, there are Indians who may or may not be friendly, and the Union and Confederate armies who probably won't give you trouble unless you get caught smuggling. But you likely died before the Civil War started, and are still wondering, what went wrong?
So here's what the tutorial doesn't tell you. One, there can be a lot of bandits/Indians/soldiers at once. Two, if you don't have good weapons, you will lose. Go to a gunsmith and buy some better weapons. Three, you will get injured. Hire a medical specialist, or buy medicine from a drugstore. Four, if you are in a car that loses all its health, you die. Abandon the car and go to the front of the train if need be. Five, you can buy upgrades to your cars/locomotives to increase their armor and fire resistance. By default, your cars are basically tinderboxes, so this is a good idea. Six, enemies can board your train, and decouple cars that are behind them in the train. If you let them do that, those cars are lost, and anyone on the m dies. Consider having decent melee weapons. Seven, if your locomotive blows up, you die. Your caboose might be a fortress that is armed to the teeth, but if a bandit or two are lobbing dynamite at your locomotive and you don't notice, you've got a problem. Eighth, make use of the "tactical pause" option. A lot can be going on in firefights, and I'm pretty sure the game isn't intended to be played in full real-time.
Whew, so that's a lot! So now that we know all the ways to die in a firefight and have a better idea of the hazards, we're in the clear, right?
Not so fast. The tutorial also doesn't mention a few other ways in which the Wild Wild East is not entirely fair. One, if you fail to repay a loan, you lose all your cash, and also still owe the entire principle. So it's not a good idea to have 90% of what you need to repay it, you don't get partial credit. And failing to repay a loan/failing a few quests with financial penalties can really make things tough. Then you can't afford decent guns/armor/medicine, and you know what that means. Two, maybe it's obvious, but the penalties for smuggling are pretty stiff, and perhaps worse, if you don't have enough coal to make it past a city where your cargo is contraband, you have to enter the city, likely getting caught. This is why the "larger tender" upgrades may be worth it. These sort of financial cliffs aren't quite as frustrating as getting rolled in combat without knowing what you're stepping into, but can also really throw things off.
So with all that out of the way... it's a really fun game once you have figured out how not to die right away. The missions start a bit slow to ease you into it, while you fumble around and accept more commitments than you can fulfill, but once you get a few hours in they pick up and there's plenty to do, and you likely will have to make tradeoffs as to what's worth it and what isn't. You only have one train, and likely not enough cash/time/cargo capacity to do everything. Do you try to make progress on the main storyline? Potentially rewarding side quests? Building up your coffers? Improving your equipment? Acquiring licenses to travel on more routes? Smuggling lucrative cargo, but risking becoming an outlaw, and being forced to play for keeps, because you might not make it back?
It's a fun challenge. There's enough time pressure to keep things interesting, but not an overwhelming amount. You'll find profits and be doing well and then all of a sudden you'll be confronted by hostile bandits or Indians, and likely won't have enough money on hand to pay them off, and then it's trusting in the loaded six-string on your back... well, not really, that's only in the expansion, but your Colt or Remington or Sharp Carbine will be your trusty companion. Just like that locomotive that... eh? what's that? It's having a mechanical failure? Drat! Just when I was about to call it trusty as well. How are we supposed to complete our contracts on time when our locomotive isn't reliable anymore? And how are we supposed to afford to buy a new one when we can't complete our contracts on time?
Go into the game a little bit less innocent than I was about the hazards you're about to face, be prepared to die early your first couple attempts anyway, and have a lot of fun.

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