Railroad Tycoon 2 Platinum

RRT2 is one of the most attractive and repayable game in my life. Good Old isometric view. Rotatable! Simplified but still enjoyable transportation model. Economic and Stock market model which make me understand real markets years after. I still see no competitor games which can give you an option to steal revenue of computer player, destroy his business and finally buy his company. Did I say you can buy the factories on the map? Yes you can! Though that money could give you more income if applied to your road network properly. The only issue of the game is that once you master it and know how to earn MONEY it become monotonous and repetitive - analyze, fund, establish, polish, pay back you loans, repeat... Well, some maps on Hard level will knock you out, until you find the key. I'm still frustrated by Metro map... if you want your own Railroad sandbox with challenging economy model - play RRT2. p.s. RRT3 is 3D, and it's terrible, because of it. you don't need 3D in this game. it's economy model is a bit more complicated, but it will hardly give you more fun. P.p.s. OpenTTD is a good alternative. But you must be dedicated to tycoons in order to swallow it's usability bugs and become a master of micro management. While RRT2 could be played by 10years old child. or I was elder? Never mind. TRY IT p.p.p.s I was thinking Industrial Giant can give better economic model. Well it's not even close to RRT2/3

Despite the name, this is not a game about building complicated railroad networks or junctions, for that go to OpenTTD. This is a game about running a railroad company, with a good (though quite simple - no signals etc) part of building rail and running trains, but also a big part of stock market, buying/selling shares, budgeting etc. That stock market part gets more important in the later scenarios. Overall it's a good and very fun game, but it's not what it looks like at first glance.

I've played all of the Railroad Tycoon games, from Sid Meier's original Railroad Tycoon for MS-DOS to Sid Meier's Railroads!, which was a spiritual remake. Inbetween the Sid Meier titles there was Railroad Tycoon 2 and 3, which were developed and published outside of Sid Meier as far as I am aware, by Gathering of Developers and PopTop. While RRT3 definitely has a better cargo management system, in terms of A.I., variety and graphics, I think RRT2 has held up a lot better. Yes this game is aged, and yes the U.I. can be a little befuddling if you're not familiar with it, but as a fan of the series this one has always been my favorite. I like that the A.I. is challenging, I like the variety and scale of the scenarios (everything from the earliest railways in the US and UK to a futuristic scenario where the Meditteranean Sea is drained to make more room for Europe and North Africa's growing populations are presented to the player), and I like the nostalgic graphics (they've also aged better than the 3rd game's too). This game also runs on newer hardware, whereas Railroad Tycoon 3, at least the actual CD version (unaware of how the GOG version runs) does not do as well and takes a lot of tweaks to work, especially if you're using the DLC expansion that PopTop released before the end of the game's life. RRT2, on the other hand, comes with it's Expansion Pack, runs well, and offers a great challenge from both an economic and strategic vantage point. Overall, I think this is just the better game, and if you want some late 90s\early 2000s nostalgia that will work well on modern hardware, this is the one to get.

A classic which holds up surprisingly well and avoids the Civ-style end game lag. The ability to select your level of play is nice going from a sandbox simulator to cut-throat economic competition depending on your mood. If you're a Mac or Linux user, it runs flawlessly under Wine. GOG hasn't packaged it up unfortunately so it's still some assembly required but I had only one inconvenience in the entire process: the GOG setup installer crashes *after* installing the game but the actual game ran great.