hopefully this isn’t considered too off topic if it is i’ll delete :)

Not at all.

Though I cannot offer any further personal comment as I never tried this one lmao. Though I found these comparisons between the two on Ye Ol Hell Hole™ if it helps (albeit from 3y ago and 1y ago respectively, bear in mind):

I played TEW for 15+ years so I’m happy to help.

With PWS, the good:

Much nicer UI, way easier to navigate.

Booking a show takes a quarter of the time it does in TEW. Everything is far more intuitive and just makes sense. At first it looks like there’s less options, but you quickly realise it’s still more than you’ll likely need and goes a long way in smoothing out the whole process.

The presentation of the game is really nice too. I was playing converted mods for a while until I tried a mod made from the ground up, and the high quality picture pack (farewell, 150x150 JPEG’s!) makes a big difference.

The in-game worker promise system is really cool. It can spark new ideas in your booking or give you an idea for a cool main event, etc. I hope this actually gets expanded on because I really like it.

The developer is working extremely hard to smooth out bugs and add new features. Updates seem to come once a week on average and the direction of the game is really positive. He’s also very open to feedback as you can see from his comments on this subreddit, and genuinely seems to want to make a game that puts the players’ interests first.

So the bad:

In its current state it’s still very early access. While we’re getting new features fairly regularly, it doesn’t feel nearly as deep as TEW does. Obviously it’s unfair to even compare given how long TEW has been around vs. PWS being released a few months ago, but it does have a long way to go.

Some bugs are pretty “how does this even happen” but they get ironed out extremely quickly. I think most of my annoyances with the game are actually gone since the last couple updates, now I’m just waiting for more features.

The AI is far from perfect. They book shows and make money (I think) but they don’t feel like they’re competing with you or particularly hungry to grown their promotion. I’m sure this will change as time goes on, as it’s a big part of a game like this and I trust the developer to fine tune this at a later point.

I’ll add to this post if I think of more things to say. Overall, I personally recommend getting on board with PWS as soon as possible so that you can be involved with the development process. In its current state it’s also a really nice booking sim that doesn’t feel nearly as exhausting as TEW does. As it continues to grow, it gets better and better and soon I think a lot of us will be moving on from TEW for good.

Better user interface

PNG picture support

Drag and drop

Better AI rules for events

Support for states, provinces and countries

Less skills and stats

Third party editors (SQL instead of MDB)

Real calendar

No touring contracts, regulars or hiring rules

Limited converter (that don't support TEW mods or save games) = resulting in a huge workload to fix/redo

Errors in the converting process resulting in a huge workload to fix/redo

It's changed a lot since I bought it, it's a decent game that is somewhere between EWR and TEW and maybe some PromWars too. I can't say features and community mod-wise that it's better than TEW but it's being worked on where Ryland says there are no plans for a new game in his series. It does look and I think function better as well. I don't regret spending $20 on it, but I certainly don't play it a lot.