Metro-North Harlem Line review (2nd update) ~ Train Sim World 4 

Sure enjoy your reviews, and how you save me money. Will keep watching, but I am enjoying RUN 8 too much now. I don't have to concern myself with lies, way overpricing, bull shit, did I mention overpricing, lies, do not fix things, bull shit, and finally, OVER FRICKIN PRICING. I think of kids especially who can't use mommy and daddies credit cards. You bastards at DTG make me sick, as well as you idiot people who love DTG, I loath you more than DTG, as WE could make the difference, figure it out idiots. And thanks again for your reviews. Must say, feel much better now. You Frickiin IDIOTS.

Oh, boy, Long Beach. Could've gotten the Babylon branch alongside it. Since we have Hempstead and the mainline. Didn't even bother to update the mainline to 3 tracks and add Elmont station but kept Belmont.

Fun fact: If you were to stand at any station between Melrose and Woodlawn irl, you’d see a hell of a lot more M8 New Haven Line sets then Harlem line sets so as a local, it’s a bit maddening to see a literal staple of the route not present. Hell, why not build it to Mt Vernon East?

It’s a shame the route was cut short, because when you start to approach Southeast and even go beyond to Wassaic the route starts to get very scenic with wooded hills and ponds Wish we got an extension to Wassaic with a BL20GH included for daytime shuttle services and a P32-ACDM for peak time non stop services

I just got this route for TSW4 for PS5. It’s on sale for $10.99 or whatever it comes out to after taxes. My children love riding the NYC MTA, metro north, and LIRR. So they are excited of this DLC. So we had a chance to play yesterday. I thought this route is awesome. I’m more focused on the driving than the scenery so I didn’t notice a lot of those details you pointed out. I wasn’t really looking for them I guess. These strains are easier to drive than some of the trains in TSW. They pick up speed quick and brake within a short distance. I think that’s how they work in real life too. Overall, we are happy with this route and will probably get the LIRR commuter line once it goes on sale. The only weird thing is opening the doors. I don’t know if that is how it happens in real life but it’s something to have to get used to.

The M7s are actually overpowered irl, so overpowered in fact that the MTA capped them during testing cuz they drew too much power lol

I dread to think what he's gonna say about "LIRR 2.0"

It is certainly decent enough for me to get it, and the busy timetable is most welcome, as well as having both the M7A and M3A included too.

Brilliant review I’ve been a fan of yours for ages and I’m glad we have a RU-vidr that criticises routes for being bad unlike other RU-vidrs so keep up the great work 😊

I thought your previous review of this route was fine but this review is also good as well. As for why the M3A has less services, that is how it is in real life. The M3A's are essentially support trains for the M7A and run usually during busier times of the day with some exceptions. They were supposed to be replaced by the Kawasaki M9A but they won’t be entering service for a few more years. As for why ai trains pull up close behind a player, that is because it isn't realistic. A real life operator wouldn't stop that close to another train

Dovetail needs to take some notes from you

They should release the Hudson Line

Does Dovetail ever react or respond to your comments, criticisms and suggestions?! You raise many valid points. If Dovetail only assigned teams to rectify these problems they could really unlock ”take my money mode” for customers! Otherwise I’m being very careful with what I buy from them, if anything!

TLDR: Great review! I think the Harlem line is fine, not worth it at full price because it's a short route with bad scenery but it's overall an OK route with a decent timetable. I got it because I'm from NYC and like routes that I recognize, I really hate how much they rush making routes though. Grand Central is disappointing, making a good looking main hall would be hard but the lack of a lower level is annoying especially because IRL the Harlem line usually terminates on the lower level! I don't know how fast the M7A's really accelerate, I think they are pretty quick EMU's but I can't imagine they accelerate as fast as the TSW ones. I'm fine with the lack of branches because of the amount of services and variation between express and local services but it's really annoying that the route is so short. Adding the full route with the diesel-&-coaches trains would have been awesome but I would be fine with just up to Southeast too, GCT-North White Plains is too short. The lack of scenery detail in overpasses, foliage, and PIS screens is a bit annoying and I really hope they update the route fix the bad stopping places and doors opening on short platforms (either through the player opening the specific number of doors at each platform or the game automatically not opening doors that aren't aligned with the platform). I don't know why they feel the need to push out so many routes when they obviously don't have the staff to make them high quality. I think more people would buy more routes at full price if they just spent more time to make very realistic, optimized, varied, and long routes. They could probably save money on bug-testers if they offered a pre-release before each route so players could for a short period of time download a free early access version to report bugs and un-realistic things. I know I would buy way more routes if I saw that they were all high quality and was confident that they would run well on my Xbox 1X (TSW4 runs HORRIBLY on it, I don't understand why they even offered Xbox-1 as an option). I also play Forza Horizon 5-an open world driving game developed by Playground Games. It's not a sim like TSW but I think the Forza developers do a way better job than Dovetail. They have a really good content-requesting feature on their forums where people request and vote on new features, cars, and game modes to be added, and the developers actually listen! The game is really well optimized compared to TSW (it runs pretty well on my Xbox 1X), the base game is not too expensive and the paid add-ons are usually pretty-to-very good value for money, and there are really good free updates every month with new content and bug-fixes. If Dovetail made a copy of the Forza Forums for TSW and actually listened to the community through them it would be an awesome change even if routes started coming less frequently. An example of this pretty great community response was the most recent game-release by the Forza developers in October 2023 called Forza Motorsport. on release. it was filled with bugs, ran pretty terribly, and had a lot of features that the community wanted changed so the game was received really badly, it was basically the equivalent to the NY-Trenton TSW release. The difference was that the Forza developers actually listened to the community response and have fixed a lot of the issues! Over the last 5 months the developers have a massive number of bugs, massively improved the games optimization, added a lot of the highly requested missing features, completely re-worked one of the main features that people complained about, and now I think most of the community now has a positive opinion of the game, especially as they keep updating it. It's far from perfect but it's a way better community response than anything Dovetail has ever done. I hope they release an extension to the Harlem Line that adds the entire route length, fixes the bugs and scenery issues, makes the train acceleration realistic, and adds the diesel locomotives and maybe the M8's.

Fun fact - the games has a selective door opening implemented at Bremen Oldenburg. But why activate this feature on other routes, where it could me much more useful...with trains this long and short stations.

It’s hope the new Long Island railroad is much then the old that’s more like the short island railroad

I've had that AI thing happen to me, I ended up ramming the back of an M3A because of it

Cuz it’s that way in real life no two stations are the same