Good review! I picked this up last week (I ordered it directly from Days of Wonder and it arrived within two days).
I don't play online, so I just got it for quick solo play. I've been enjoying it a great deal.
There are a few things that people have noted on the DoW forums and some of them may be addressed in the near future.
- The game runs in 1024x768 full-screen. Other resolutions are not supported, but it's the lack of support for running in a window that I find a bit irritating. DoW has said that this will be fixed in a couple of weeks in the 1.05 update.
- The game installs automatically to your C:\ drive with no opportunity to redirect it elsewhere. This didn't really impact me much, but it annoys people with lots of drive partitions. A pretty silly bug and easily fixed, I should imagine.
- There is no Save/Load Game option. This won't be as much of an issue once support for running in a window is implemented as games are fairly quick, but I've had to quit out of more than one game because my wife needed to use the computer. I suspect this is a result of the game's multiplayer/online-only heritage.
- The fact that double-wide routes are not allowed in a 2- or 3-player game (USA or Europe) or 2-player game (Switzerland) is not graphically reflected on the map. With the physical board game, this is no big deal, but on a computer game, the map should update to reflect the rules in play.
Other than that and a few lock-ups (don't click on the screen until it finishes initializing everything), I've had a blast with the game! I recommend it for anyone who enjoys the boardgame.
-- Matthew Gabbert
P.S.: The accompanying DVD is excellent. I showed it to my kids to gauge what other DoW games they might like (my 8-year-old son got all excited by Memoir 44). I even found out that we've been doing something wrong when we play Pirate's Cove!
