Rating: 
Summary: train lover's heaven
Review: RRT 3 on computer is terrific. Graphics are lovely (a bit like a model train set) and multitude of options are fantastic. The zooming function is great, allowing you to see the trains from all angles and see where the train is going.
This game is a great way to get students interested in geography, history, science/technology, and business. Great for students of all ages. If you're young and interested in how our society developed, this game provides some answers. If you're older, this game gives some reminders of the past. The game can be as easy or as hard as you want.
Rating: 
Summary: Not even close to the original
Review: A Great Disappointment. As a huge fan of all the previous Railroad games I couldn't wait for #3 to come out. Good graphics and nothing else. They took a classic strategy game and made it into a boring sim.
Rating:
Summary: The best tycoon series around
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Fun - Still the best
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: Great, but what's with all of the rules?
Review: First, this is flat out a cool game. The graphics are great, and the settings allow you to alter the detail based on your computer's speed. I set it on "Low" (which is still very sharp), and my computer ran a system with 110(!) trains with no problem of slowing down. The track laying is much more realistic also. I have only two complaints. First, on the old RT games, in the scenario mode, they gave you a map, threw down some towns, and said "go". Now, there are rules just like in the campaigns. For example, in the Southeast US game, the rules state that to win, you must "connect Memphis to Birmingham, carry x amounts of cotton", etc. Well, what if I don't WANT to build a railroad between those two towns? I like building in Florida and seeing how fast the trains can go accross the flatlands. I fear that if you're out to win and not just build railroads, this game would get repetitive pretty quick. Second, and this is a very minor thing. There aren't as many locomotives in this game as in the old RT games, with the result that you end up buying the same engine to replace older ones. I don't know how hard it would be for the software guys to include, but it would also be cool if you could design your own steam and electric locomotives to suit your needs (mountains, plains, light duty, heavy trains, etc), which is what real railroads often did during the steam era. A minor issue, but to a PIA purist like me, I thought I'd bring it up. But that's about it. Buy it--it's a blast.
Rating:
Summary: An exceptional new instalment to the Tycoon saga
Review: I am a huge fan of the Railroad Tycoon series, later shared with the Transport series, and I can say that this new instalment is outstanding! The 3D option is terrific! You can almost jump inside the cabin of any train or follow its way with the camera fixed on it, rotating the view as you wish. The game is really easy to play and very realistic. ie, passengers now travel only to cities and not to fruit orchards. You have many scenarios or campaigns to play and if you just want to lay tracks and run trains there is a special option called "sandbox" which allows you just specifically that. I do not give it a 5 star due to the lack of a good tutorial, not my case but necessary IMHO, and the editor is not quite easy to use. I have not had any problem at all installing it, although I'm aware there have been problems. Read the technical specs prior buying it. But, if you like trains this is game you should definitely have.
Rating:
Summary: Another bad install
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Very fun & interesting, with huge replay value
Review: I am an older player who really likes simulation/strategy games (I still play Panzer General II, which I believe was released in 1996!) This is the first game I have seen in years that has the ease-of-play, historical interest, huge replay-ability, and just plain fun factor of RR Tycoon 3. It is a fairly new game and they have already come out with three new maps (free downloads), which leads me to believe that I will be adding maps and playing this one for a long, long time. The 3D views makes sense for this game (not like some games that get boring very quickly after the novelty of the "special effects" wears off). It is great to be able to zoom in an out of things easily, turn the maps, etc. Railroad Tycoon 3 keeps the interesting decisions in the game, while allowing you to delegate some decisions (such as car consists) that can really get tedious to do manually later in the games. Nice job Poptop!
Rating:
Summary: Great Game, But...
Review: I bought this game because I am a huge fan of Railroad Tycoon. This game has excellant graphics and real-world terrain and situations. It's one of the best real-life simulation game I've ever seen. Plus it has all of the most well known locomotives and train cars since the beginning of the train industry. Unfortunately, you cannot drive the trains in the game. You can only set up their schedule of stops. I was hoping that it would be able to control the trains in sort of a free-style mode, but unfortunately this is not possible. Although it has great graphics, sometimes the train tracks connect but they don't appear to connect in the game. Also, there is no way to cross tracks without a bridge over top of them, which is both expensive as can be and also slows down your trains. So, it's not exactly reality. Also, the free loco-comotion game that was included on the CD is by far the most boring and useless demo I've ever tried. It's so bad I won't even waste my time explaining how useless and dumb it is. All in all, it's a good game that's both challenging and educational, but you have quite limited control of the train movements.
Rating: 
Summary: Choo Choo
Review: I bought this game for my husband for his birthday when it first came out. My husband loved RRT 2 and the expansion pack, so I thought this was a definite can't lose gift. And it wasn't. The graphics are great, the music is fun, and the ability to play online is great. (Not too many play online yet though, for some reason) However, my husband who spent much of his life playing the previous game did not spend nearly as much time on this one. He says that he enjoys it, but I can tell that the thrill of this game is just not what it normally should be. I've tried playing it, and I know my husband misses micromanaging everything. It's become rather simplistic and much more about the stock market instead of the railroads themselves.
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