Players of Railroad Tycoon 2 will notice that managing cargo and routes is easier than ever before. The game features a campaign as well as standalone missions and maps. And the map editor is extremely powerful and easier-to-use than ever before. PopTop also listened to fans of RRT2 and has added the most requested features: bridges and tunnels. Your trains can also carry more cars than before.
The heart of the game, of course, is building your rail network and managing your empire. Laying track requires that you pay careful attention to the terrain to avoid steep hills, as you make profits based on how fast you deliver passengers and cargo. You have dozens of engines to choose from, all rendered in exceptional detail. The economic model has been strengthened and is now much more realistic -- passengers only want to go to certain cities now, and cities need to be supplied with goods to grow and prosper.
Of course, computer opponents will compete with you for lucrative routes, and other modes of transportation like rivers will also serve cities independently of the railroads, so careful planning will be rewarded. Fortunately the game gives you lots of overlays and data views to help you manage your empire, so you can spend more time watching your trains haul logs through dense forests or speed passengers along the plains to distant cities. PopTop has always been incredibly good at taking complicated games and making them accessible for everyone, even novice players, and Railroad Tycoon 3 appears to be no exception. This is a fantastic game that is only going to get better as the series' countless fans begin creating and uploading user maps, thereby making the replay value almost infinite. If you like strategy games, you really shouldn't miss this one.
My first impression was very favorable. The first scenario in the campaign, in which you have to build track from Boston to Buffalo, begins with the camera showing the Atlantic Ocean washing ashore on the east coast of Massachusetts. The sound of the waves hitting the beach, the gentle wash of the ocean, the colorful leaves on the trees combined to create one of those gaming moments that you remember for a long time. In short, the sound & graphics are great & it's a joy to play a game in such an ambience. And, of course, the music is back just as enjoyable as it has always been.
New features include other modes of transportation (such as trucks, boats, & planes) competing with your rail line to deliver cargo. In RT2, nothing moved unless you or one of the AI companies moved it. In RT3, sometimes those cattle will get to the packing plant on their own. This feature has promise but it's hard to tell what effect it's having on the game since it's hard to see the immediate effects of this movement. You can also set AI to manage your consists for you--i.e. decide what types of cargo your trains will carry. You can, of course, still do that on your own--more on that below. You can also build tunnels & large suspension bridges although those things are hugely expensive.
As you may have suspected there's a "but" coming in this review. That "but" is the gameplay, which I feel is inferior to the gameplay in RT2. My biggest enjoyment in RT2 comes from searching out profitable routes to build--finding places where cattle can be brought to a packing plant or grain brought to a bakery or even longer cargo chains (i.e. chemicals to a fertilizer plant, fertilizer to a grain field, grain to a cattle ranch, cattle to a packing plant, food to a city). Creating & managing these routes is, in my opinion, the most enjoyable part of the game. This is one reason why RT2 was so superior to Tropico, a game from the same company that uses the same engine. When you run out of cash in RT2, you can spend all your time managing cargo & connections while in Tropico when you run out of money you can do nothing but sit & look. In RT3, despite the wonderful graphics, the structures are almost impossible to pick out of the surrounding terrain. The icons are small & many of them are very similar. Likwise, the icons representing the freight cars are often completely indistinguishable from each other. Is that brown freight car filled with clothing or toys? You can't tell unless you mouseover it which is darned annoying & makes managing your trains needlessly difficult. In RT2 I would build stuff till I was out of money & then sit & play with the trains until I could spend more cash. In RT3, I find myself turning on the auto-consist manager & spending my time planning where to build track. This is more fun than many computer games, but it's a *lot* less fun than the previous edition of the game.
Another issue is the stability of the game. RT2 was a rock, but RT3 has already crashed to the desktop three times in the short time I've been playing it. Extremely annoying when you've spent a half an hour building an intricate set of track only to lose it to a crash. The game also sometimes gets stuttery after I create a save game.
My verdict? I'll give it a few more days & try to tease some fun out of the game. And if I change my mind I'll certainly post a changed opinion. But right now, the likelihood is that I'll be back playing RT2 very soon.
