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Great 3D engine...insane ecomony

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 7 / 10
Date: October 28, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Wow! Be prepared to jump onto the forums and start your education. The economy is a total 108 from RT2. The learning curve can be very steep. You can start playing within minutes. But I've been playing for 5 days now and I still cannot grasp the economy. The manual does not explain it well. Fortunately there are a lot of people discussig it online and you can pickup tips there. Enjoy.

The best tycoon series around

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 106 / 115
Date: November 01, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Back in 1998, Railroad Tycoon 2 basically kicked off the tycoon-game frenzy. Now RRT3 is here and it has gone fully 3D. PopTop software is using a very powerful 3D engine with an easy-to-use camera system, and the results are beautiful. Hills and valleys look realistic, lakes and oceans look gorgeous, and the game has a new night-and-day cycle as well as weather effects. Even on lower end systems, the game effortlessly zooms from a satellite view to a close-up look at the buildings in a town.

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.

WARNING! Copy Protection Scheme prevents installation

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 34 / 57
Date: November 03, 2003
Author: Amazon User

The copy protection prevents installation on my machine. I am not alone. I have also read that there are problems for people who are able to get the program installed. I understand the problems with Piracy, but to put down big $ for a game that won't install is the worst.

RT3 rules!!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 11 / 19
Date: November 04, 2003
Author: Amazon User

RT3 is by far the best in the Railroad Tycoon series.
This game is visually stunning and has really challenged
me in the past couple days...and nights. I have had
absolutely no problem with the install or copy
protection that some reviewers speak of. Finally a
game I can sit down with the kids and play.

WON'T INSTALL

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 6 / 22
Date: November 04, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This program will not install on either of the two computers I own. Both far exceed the minimum requirements listed on the box. I took it back, obtained a new copy (thinking I had a bad install disk) and it did the exact same thing. I love the railroad tycoon games, but this one just does not work. If you buy it, beware.

Good but Disappointing

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 136 / 144
Date: November 06, 2003
Author: Amazon User

RT2 is one of my favorite games--it's one of only a handful of computer games that has been on my computer continuously since I first loaded it. A game I have always been able to get pleasure from. The wonderful music, the fabulous gameplay, the fun & detailed graphics--Railroad Tycoon 2 is everything a great computer game should be. When I found out that there would be yet another edition of Railroad Tycoon I was delighted. 3D graphics? Great! New gameplay options? Bring 'em on! And over & above my anticipation of a new Railroad Tycoon was a steadfast faith in the game's creators that the game would be everything it should be.

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.

Another bad install

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 7 / 33
Date: November 07, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I am an IT professional so I know what I'm doing. I have a high end rig that plays any new game with ease. I have just spent 2 hours trying to get this to run and it doesn't. BEWARE!!!!!

I have just emailed tech support. No 24 hr support. No 800 number. Nothing on their web site about any problems.

I love RR2 and couldn't wait to get this. $50 mistake.

Wait for resolution of the problems.

Fun - Still the best

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 26 / 27
Date: November 14, 2003
Author: Amazon User

First off, I haven't had a problem with crashing. One crash to desktop in twenty hours of play. The game runs very smoothly, even with 25 trains. The graphics look good. Just for your information, I'm running the game on XP pro, Geforce 4 ti 4600 and 512 DDR RAM.

I've tried Trainz and a new train game called Railroad Pioneer and Railroad Tycoon 3 is in my opinion far superior, mostly because of the financial aspect. The towns are already there. You link them up and select engines and which businesses you want to buy. Making money is fun. In RRT2 you'd get a "kaching" sound for every coin you made. I kind of miss that as they took it out in RRT3, but then your house sounded like a Vegas slots room when you had a lot of trains using the old sound effect.

Some people don't like the new auto consist device, but I don't have a problem with it. Once you get more than five trains, it can be a real chore to manage all your cars. The new method allows you to concentrate on expanding, getting loans, connecting more cities and so forth.

The trains are a lot less sluggish. It's fun to lock the camera and go for a ride. Best way to show off the impressive scenery, day, night effects, weather.

The new bridges and tunnels are nice, but I've yet to master them. Track laying is never as precise as I'd like it to be. I'm a bit mystified as to how the game decides when it's going to start a tunnel or bridge. It's not like you can tell it to dig here or there like you can with the original Rollercoaster Tycoon, but then that was a tedious, confusing set up that RCT had. RRT3 keeps things moving along and focuses on the financial model and connecting cities. Hook up those routes and make money so you can buy more industries and make even more money.

The game gives you a lot of information in the form of overlays and so forth. I'm still getting used to it, but it seems quite logical and most likely this will be one of the better strategy games to play online as there is no shooting involved and setting up your routes for maximum profitablility is going to make a big difference in how well you do. To be honest though I never played RRT2 online.

Some things that are lacking and there may be a good reason for this, namely they want the game to run well on a decent system. The things lacking are people, cars, traffic, that sort of thing. While the game looks good, it could look better with the things mentioned. RCT had tons of little people, but still the game was graphically much more primitive. It'll probably be a few years before RRT will have all the people and details you might like. For now you get numerous trains with their own sound effects, smoke, lots of industries with some working parts and so forth. The wheels on your train spin, but they're not 3d wheels.

Unbalanced and unfinished

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 17 / 19
Date: November 20, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This game has great potential, make no mistake about it. The economic model is a great idea, it creates a much more immersive environment. Cutting out micromanagement in my opinion was also a great idea, but I guess that depends on whether you're a big picture strategy gamer, or the micromanaging control freak. The new 3D engine looks cool, even though graphics are secondary in strategy games. By now you should expect a but coming, especially with two stars, so here goes. While the idea of true economic model is good, it is implemented all wrong. This creates for very unbalanced game, where one approach beats all scenarios, and there isn't any challenge to keep you occupied after the first 3-5 years of the game time, the game beats you by boring the hell out of you. There are also unprofessional screw ups, like the AI player that almost never challenges you and eventually goes bankrupt, or the fact that AI players like to buy electric locomotives, but somehow neglect to build electrified track, and electric locomotives tend to run poorly on Flintstone power alone. After you play this game for a while, you start wondering whether there was any beta testing done at all, there are so many things that should've been fixed way before the game was released. Pop Top has to go back to the drawing board and introduce some major changes in the patches before I could recommend this game, it's a mediocre rush-job in its present state. I would also be wary of buying any future Pop Top games without conducting extensive research beforehand.

Doesn't have map of US!

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 12 / 24
Date: November 29, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Nice graphics and sound. However, the game doesn't even include a map of the US! The stock market is the same cretin style stock market of the previous game (no matter how much money you have, you can't buy stock from other players). The last and most serious problem is track laying & station placement. There is no un-do. If you make an error (which is easy to do with the weird station placement algorithm), you have to endure a lengthy recreation of the map and reloading all the databases to restore the map. Most games end quickly in frustration.

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