LOTUS-Simulator Reviews

[b] [u] IMPORTANT INFO: The game is currently BROKEN on the latest AMD drivers as of this date the review was written (23.12.1) and won't work. Apparently the 22.5.1 drivers still work. [/u] [/b] I would love to recommend this game in the future some day, but sadly it's just incomplete and broken right now. The priorities of the developers seem also very backwards to the detriment of the future of this game. For example, the above mentioned AMD drivers issue has been reported in 2022 October and still haven't been fixed. Instead the developers seem to focus on trivial things like passengers and multiplayer with performance improvements and important bug fixes being a rare afterthough. Also, the expensive DLCs are also very off-putting to me, especially when the game is barely in beta state and the promised content like Berlin and the other vehicles are nowehere near complete (By the way, the EA description says that the game was supposed to be in this state until early 2022. Of course things might have changed by the time this was written, but still). Sure, you could say the same thing about Omsi 2, but at least it is a complete game with most DLCs being very high quality for their price. In conclusion: [b] if you want a complete and decent bus/tram game, just buy Omsi 2 instead [/b]. There are tons of freeware and paid content for it and will run on pretty much any hardware regardless of brand. LOTUS Simulator is a disappointment right now: while having the ex-developers of Omsi 2 on board sounds neat, it doesn't seem to help much. Right now, the game is worse (no offense) than Omsi 2 without any free or paid content. Without proper development and communication, the game seems to be doomed to be forever in the shadows of its more successful, older brother aka Omsi 2.

----EDIT on 29.04.2020---- Sadly to this day I can't change my review of the game. There has been extremely little process in the 2 years it has been out in early access. But hey, let's already start selling DLCs, which are with AAA+ pricing + the pricing of the core game itself:40€ for Rail, and 40€ for Street modules, totalling 80€). Ridiculus considering how slow the process is. And let's not mention that a lot of non-german content creators for OMSI/LOTUS are reporting that the staff/team of LOTUS are quite hostile (especially to non-german authors because they are too lazy to write tutorials and stuff in English from the start). Now they are "limiting" OMSI forums to try to push people onto LOTUS even though this game still doesn't support most of the features needed yet so it could replace OMSI. ----------------------------------- I would not reccomend to buy this yet, unless you're addon developer or you really want to support the developers and give early feedback! It's getting closer and closer to being in stage where I can reccomend this to everybody, but not yet. Currently most of the folks would get bored as there yet isn't content and what does exists is still not fully ready. Most fun can be had in the Multiplayer as you get other players and then there is at least some life in the world. Otherwise there is no AI yet (no traffic, no passengers etc), no schedules etc. Due to the fact that we don't have AI yet, which is the most computer taxing content of the game, it's still too early to say how performance fares also. Soon, my padawans, soon.

[h1] Just don't.[/h1] The rather hyper-fanboyish community of this game will rabidly defend Lotus, claiming any and all low performance is due to the oh so advanced graphics and the user's poorly equipped PC, but... Most of the graphics barely look any better than Omsi or OpenRails did over a decade ago, and still the framerate sits at 15fps, [b] on an RTX 2060 at 1080p! [/b]. I can play The Witcher 3 on Ultra with RT off at 60fps locked, and at 40fps Medium with RT on! My PC isn't bad at all. Train Sim World 3 runs at almost maxed out graphics, at 50fps on average. Et cetera. I could go on. Not to mention, the graphics API used is OpenGL, instead of a more modern alternative, such as Vulkan or at least DirectX11/12. Certain graphics cards suffer poor performance even more due to issues with OpenGL. [h1] The Price. [/h1] For early access, 40€ is unaccaptable, especially considering the poor performance, and the fact that you'd have to pay 40€ again for road vehicles.

Very bad, not optimizated game. Developers interested only in money. Two modules of this game cost 39.99+39.99 euro, but game is not completed, i have 25 fps in powerful pc (i5 9400 6/6, 16 gb ram, GTX1070 8GB). The game has been in its early stage in steam since 2018. Developers say they 're not in a hurry. I asked when the optimization would be corrected, and in response I got a ban from Janine (author of the game). She interested only in money, she does not care for lotus users. Support for polite questions answers with hamstring.

Game is too bad for now. Low fps and so on. I don't recommend it to buy for now because developers are interested in money only. Its too raw to sell at so high price.

£32.99 for the base game where you can do nothing but drive a tram around in circles in empty streets. Want a map, pay an extra £31.00 but still empty streets. After a year of release even in early access I expected more for £60 but no, nothing just a simulator that does nothing. They say its going to be great, better than Omsi etc. but when? if this is the progress a year after early access came out, I guess it will be 2045 before we see a playable simulator. I purchased in September 2018 and refunded, a year later I purchased again and the game is no different so guess what.... refunded.. I think I am actually going to give up on this altogether, seems like the devs are just out for a quick buck, this shows in the £31 map addon that you must have to play the £32 base early access trash! You would be better off spending your money on a chocolate tea pot, you will get more use out of it!

Almost 2 years after EA and still no schedules, traffic and passangers. Waste of money at this moment.

I bought this game with rails module before, and now if you want buses you need to REBUY the whole game for FULL price, to just unlock bus that is already in game. You don't even get any discount for owning game, DLC price is same as base game. Avoid this game at any cost. Refund requested

The game itself is decent for being a early accses game or "EA" as it's called ingame, decent realism decent simulation somewhat bad controls. But that's not the point here, i'm calling out everyone to write poor reviews to lower the stats before another poor soul buys this, the price is 40€ for an unfinnished indie game. Thats basicaly like going to a resturant ordering somthing fancy for 40€ and all you get is some microwave quick food. But thats not the worst you need to pay 40€ THREE ****** TIMES THREE TIMES!!! If you wanna get the full game. 34€ for a dlc that gives you literraly nothing execpt one map one tram thats not even that diffrent execpt for the coulour interior and some diffrent parts of the cab for the price of a full game. Now thats what i like to call EA if you know what i mean. And don't get me started about their "revolutionary" multiplayer, oh yeah leave that half finnished and everything else aswell and move on to BUSSES, because you promised trains, metros, trams heck even cable cars. What did we get? One tram one ****** TRAM ACOMPANIED BY ONE ******* MAP THATS LITTERALY JUST A LOOP! Pathetic. Yes i know the purpose of the game is to serve as a platform for the community to create the trains. BUT AT LEAST FINNISH THE ****** TOOLS FOR THE TRAINS BEFORE HEADING ON TO THE NEXT THING. Get your priorities straight. AND DON'T CHARGE AN ORDINARY CIVILIAN THE PRICE OF A FULL TRIPLE A GAME FOR ONE DLC CONTAINING ONE DIFFRENT SETUP FOR THE SAME ****** TRAM! Your greedy. Your game isn't even finnished yet you still release dlc the price of the game who in term aren't even finnished either. I have almost completly forgot that this is review not an angry letter to the greedy devs. Well my conclusion is this game is selling you unfinnished trash in disguise. It's trying to steal your pocket. Stay away from it.

To be quite honest I'm really frustrated about the price of the LOTUS modules and the add-on's. As this is an alpha, the makers should really be encouraging us to get on board. I was really excited to get on with developing my buses for this game but I'm not being taken for a ride and I certainly don't have bottomless pockets. Please sort it out and realise that it's the modder's that make the game last so long (and help increase sales) and the players that allow you to do what you're doing. Show us all some respect and lower the price. I for one am holding out for The Bus.