This was a well written story with nice characters! The puzzles were all very logical, and the only time I had to resort to a guide was because I had missed one obvious dialoge out of sheer thoughtlessness. The mood set up in the game is very nice, and carries throughout the game.You really get emotional about the characters and their decisions, which you can decide about. It's a very nice point-and-click adventure game, I thoroughlt remommend it to a fan of the genre. But it isn't a classic. I'd say it's in the same class as Broken Sword 2: not a classic, but really a must play for a fan of adventure games.
I've spent soooooo many hours in this game. It's one of the best tycoon games there is. It's really satisfying to get an epic railroad/industry network working. What makes this game better than Railroad Tycoon 2 is that there is a better economy/market simulation in the map, and that products also travel through rivers and maps. This makes for a much more realistic situation, because all the industries participate in the market, insted of being reduced to a factory just waiting for some nice guy capitalist to pick the goodies up. Also worth mentioning is a whole lot better way to lay the rails than in the previous installation. What makes RR3 a pleasurable experience, than say Transport Tycoon Deluxe, is that it still concentrates on the big picture without a whole lot of micro management. You can have a single rail track with trains coming from both sides, they just slide through (the other one stops, other keeps going). You don't need to design complex swicharoos and whatnots to stop trains from colliding to each others. You're an industrial/railway tycoon, not a train manager. That makes designing your railnetwork more fluid and flexible. But if you are into miniscule type of realistic railway designing, I suggest you to try Transport Tycoon Deluxe, or Sid Meier's Railroads! for a dumbed down industry. Still, when your network gets bigger and more complex, you will eventually want to optimize your network, so you don't glutch your profits because of trains stuck in traffic. But it's not mandatory to start complex, which is what I like. As title suggest, I'm still waiting for a spiritual successor for Railroad Tycoon 3. A tycoon game that approaches railways from their impact to economy, instead of micro managing individual trains and tracks.
I had played Railroad Tycoon 3 A LOT, when I bought this game, thought that this would be a nice upgrade. It was not. Whereas in Railroad Tycoon, you are A TYCOON: you manage the big picture. I stopped playing Sid Meier's Railroads! when my trains collided. The game hadn't been much fun, and now it said you have to start micromanaging some damned trains and their passing tracks. If you are into micromanaging and things like that, I guarantee you are better off with OpenTTD. Transport Tycoon Deluxe kicks ass, but I'm not that keen to tediously designing complex train tracks with waiting lines and whatnot. The core game in Railroads! is painfully simple and unrealistic. Usually in tycoon games you have to adapt to environment and make it work, but not in this game: the enviroment/cities) actually adapt to you. Whereas in Railroad Tycoons you try to cover the city the best you can (as it has 2-3 dimensions), in Railroads! cities are just points in space, which you must reach. There is no economy in Railroads!, also nothing moves on land or by rivers. As I said before, painfully simple. If I must say something nice, the locomotives looked nice in their candylike appearance. But I really, really can't recommend this game to anyone. If you are a tycoon-maniac (as I am), get Railroad Tycoon 3. If you are in to micromanaging and designing great tracks and whatnot between cities, you are better off with Transport Tycoon Deluxe (or better yet, Open TTD. Google it).
