Don't understand the complaints about the tutorials, I was able to finish them without much issue. You do have to read the instructions carefully, and they don't handhold key steps as much as they probably should, as I did get tripped up a couple of times. I'm going through one of the sandbox cities right now, Berlin. I had to restart the city a few times to understand the dynamics of balancing transit lines with passenger load. Hint: don't build massive lines with a million stops. After a couple hours trial and error, I now have a nice little profit coming from all my lines. The game is primarily transport focused, no city or community building like in SimCity. While it does not have that kind of depth, there is some good variety with the various vehicles and lines, along with challenges for keeping your lines profitable and customer ratings high. Besides, most of the management in SimCity was related to transport anyway. After spending several hours in Berlin, the game play does wear a bit thin, and that's where the depth tends to be lacking. Also, the buildings in actual gameplay, especially in overhead view, seem a bit drab. Not quite as bright and colorful as in the screenshots. I got the game on sale, and is definitely worth it at that cost. One tip, get the camera and line stat mods. Check the GOG game forums for where to get them, as the usual game mod sites that a lot of people link to no longer exist.
I played this tons when it first came out, and am back to playing it again. The game is great fun. The empire building is a bit more simplistic than other games, but that's a good thing if you want a light diversion. The trains have good detail and the camera ride-along is cool. Rating the game based on comparisons to RC3 is idiotic. Thats like saying I really liked the new Star Trek movie, but wish it had Yoda and Darth Vader. Rate the game based on the game itself. I did have a couple crashes when playing on Win7 32bit, primarily when laying track. Playing on 64bit however has been pretty clean.
... is for me the most crucial aspect of these types of games (see "The Whispered World", ugh). Fortunately, not only is the voice acting wonderful in this game, the story is also very engaging. Someone mentioned it was too short. Really? I found the length quite appropriate. A minor critique is some of the puzzles tend to lead you in the "click on everything and try every object on every hotspot" method. However, in the end I only had to refer to the walk through once. Top marks, and great job!
