Euro Truck Simulator 2 Coaches review: A new perspective

The gameplay loop is very similar to trucking freight across the country, but instead of lugging various materials or items to different companies, this time your precious cargo is passengers, with brand new coach parking bays as the destinations, typically found within city centres.

Select one of the quick jobs available on the map, and the route details contain a timetable and the number of stops required. Unlike travelling from one company depot to another in a truck, coaches may require you to stop multiple times in different cities.

For example, one specific quick job requires you to start in Lublin in Poland, stopping several times in Lithuania and Latvia, before finally ending the 1,129km trek in Stockholm, Sweden. At the time of our testing, every country aside from the United Kingdom had coach jobs available to take on, Blighty’s omission likely due to the ongoing behind-the-scenes rework of the British Isles and its cities.

Once a quick job has been selected, you’re given the keys to a coach and a destination to reach. Now that you have passengers on board, their satisfaction is your top priority, as they will judge your driving performance and punctuality.

The former is measured by a g-force meter at the bottom of the screen, and straying too close to the border can lead to an unhappy experience. Perhaps an alien concept to sim racers who spend more time boasting about high forces when cornering, but now there’s a driving game that the James Mays of this world can excel at.

Feedback on your driving is given instantly, as uncomfortable driving, such as overzealous cornering, can exert unwanted g-forces on the passengers, and a sad orange face pops up on the screen. Dangerous driving especially exacerbates the satisfaction levels, as pulling off emergency braking, colliding with traffic or heavily speeding will lead to an unhappy red face, complemented with screaming or annoyances from behind. The voice actors deserve a special shoutout for their incredible performance. 

Low satisfaction levels result in harsh penalties. Give your poor customers the coach journey from hell, and you will be rewarded with little XP and a stark lack of cash.

Balancing a tight schedule while offering a comfortable ride can be tricky. But with a smooth pedal input and only just going over the speed limit, the majority of jobs are feasible.

Look, I know we’ve had to go 140km/h down the motorway and run through every red light on the way, but hey, at least we’re half an hour ahead of schedule!

Assuming the harrowing screams of your traumatised passengers haven’t done enough to dissuade you from life as a virtual coach driver, or prevented the filling of your coffers, you should earn enough money to buy a coach of your own.

The selection on offer consists of nine different vehicles across three manufacturers, these being MAN, Scania and Volvo. Each has different interiors, layouts and sizes, ranging from the cheapest Scania Touring HD, all the way to the double-decker Volvo 9700, costing just over £450k, and locked behind a Level 23 requirement.

The external customisation options are relatively limited, with a few choices available for the wing mirrors, tyres and dashboard decorations. The interiors, on the other hand, provide a much more meaningful array of options for carpets, trim, passenger seats, lights and curtains. You can even add in a crew seat, especially useful if you want to be moaned at by the trip director for the entirety of the journey.

The option of a right-hand drive coach is currently unavailable. However, considering you’ll only be driving on the right side of the road for the time being, we can survive without it.

The feel of these coaches is noticeably different to the truck counterparts, as not only do they act slightly weaker, but the view from sitting closer to the ground is a new experience. Cornering can be taken at a higher speed without toppling over, though this is not recommended due to earning a lower customer satisfaction. It now also seems like you’re the second-slowest vehicle on the road, as instead of being overtaken by everything down a motorway, you’ll find yourself overtaking trucks far more often than before. 

Immersive elements are also present within the cockpit, including ambient sounds produced by the passengers such as coughing, nose blowing and mobile phone ringtones. The dashboard is accurately represented, with stickers showing the passenger capacity and the display screen containing information you would expect from their real-world counterparts. Reversing cameras are also a nice touch on the dashboard, which appear as soon as the gear has been selected, crucial for reversing out of parking bays and calculating how much room you have left to manoeuvre.

Windows can be rolled up or down, sun visors can be adjusted to your liking, and even the dashboard buttons light up if the doors are open. Yet… there isn’t a reason to open these doors, as only the activate button needs to be pressed to complete a job. Requiring them to be open upon completion would be more immersive.

Speaking of jobs, instead of the usual Cargo Market or Freight Market jobs, the coach offerings are split up between Contract Jobs and Tourist Jobs, with the latter focusing on the exploration aspect of travelling to landmarks.

These have a more relaxed schedule and provide an excellent opportunity to grab those yet-to-be reached viewpoints or unexplored cities, like travelling through the winding roads of the Austrian Alps to reach the Großglockner viewpoint, for example. A nice change from the usual ‘Company A’ to ‘Company B’ job structure, but it is still somewhat similar to the conventional experience.

Upon reaching the destination, however, the tourists are seemingly comfortable staying inside the coach and viewing the scenery from the windows, so it would be nice to see them take a walk about or admire the scenery while you’re viewing the completion cutscene. 

This is unfortunately where the roleplaying aspect reaches its limit and your imagination has to do the rest, as the passengers idle around during job scenes. Animations of boarding or stowing luggage are sadly non-existent. Even a tour guide or director isn’t shown in the crew seat for tour jobs, which is seemingly a wasted expense on this customisation option.

Unlike the huge array of objects you can lug around on a trailer for your truck, jobs are limited to just people. Nothing out of the ordinary, such as taking a football club from their home city to another, a celebrity musician touring a country, or an F1 team going to a track; it’s all just a bunch of unknown passengers spread out in the back of your coach in the same seats as the previous job.

World of Trucks is also seemingly unavailable for coaches, at least at the time of recording, meaning the external contract market may not exist. Any garages you have invested in over on the truck side are not available for the coach mode, so vehicle switching is instant and places you at the closest service station to your previous position. 

This new experience is just Euro Truck Simulator 2 at its heart, but with a different role and perspective. Other titles have tried to emulate the hypnotising experience of this behemoth, and none have taken its crown.

The open-world nature of this series is absolutely perfect for coaches, and it will be a very long time before a competitor comes close. In the meantime, however, we’re off to emulate a loud British holiday across the Spanish coast, filled with boozy football chants and pathetic attempts at pronunciation. The locals will surely be happy to experience our presence!

Score: 8/10

“Great experience, but imagination stretching required”