Remaster this game Atari PLEASE - This game is hard and it does not help you with learning it. 1 out of 5 stars
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I bought this game after playing through Roller Coaster Tycoon 1 and 2. (RCT for short) I saw Chris Sawyer's name and wanted to play another one of his games. Thankfully Steam had priced at a fun amount so it was worth getting for the collection building.
I spent 13 hours trying to get comfortable with the game like in RCT 1 & 2 and I could not find a reliable way of finding progress. The only way I would get an explanation on how to build anything better is to play against the expert ai and watch it beat me. This game does a bad job at teaching the user how to play it or get gudder.
This game is 100% harder than RCT with 100% chances of needing to restart the scenarios because the money and how to earn it is harder. Trains, trams, boats, and other things cost more "build" money than you would think, thus, every button click/build has weight behind it. And after establishing transportation in 2+ towns, you will need all the money you can get.
If you did not plan the train track curve right, the train will stall, you will need to rebuild the portion of the track and then get it back to running. This can eat up your time and focus and it can be aggravating. There are no notifications letting you know that the train is having delivery issues, you just have to watch it happen to know there is a problem.
(If RCT let's me know that a guest is lost in my park, WHY CAN'T THIS GAME TELL ME A TRAIN CAN NOT REACH IT'S QUED LOCATION?? THIS GAME WAS MADE AFTER RCT TOO ughh..)
And all of this writing is just the tip of my 13+ hour experience/interactions I had with this game. Unless someone at Atari or Chris Sawyer, reads this review and the others, this game will never live up to it's potential.
This game has potential though. Here is why I spent the 13+ hours figuring out this game, raw.
Positives: The game play is fun. Getting 3+ cars in 3+ towns with their different routes is fun to set up and get moving. It feels similar to RCT but less emphasis on truck/rollercoaster building and more focus on it's base building, where the emphasis is on the pickup zones. Some locations are better b/c of contributions b/c of surrounding housing and etc.
It is a similar feeling to setting up a starter roller coaster park but it allows for more map movement. 1 town's transportation set up can be improved on to connect with another setup in a nearby town. Once you understand how this happens, the game is even more fun.
But learning to get to this point without learning vids or tool tips, took me 5 hours of the 13.
So that is where my 1 out of 5 star review comes in. The game does very little to help any new player learn how to grow or develop skills to do better. RCT has this similar issue but b/c of other outside factors, this issue gets resolved with Youtube videos and Steam guides to explain what the game doesn't.
This game has almost 0 "Beginner's Guides" on Youtube and maybe 5+ Steam guides vs. RCT's library of outside help and Marcel Vos (Ty for your in-depth park guides and challenge videos).
This is part of what makes this game harder to play and learn vs. RCT.
I love RCT and want to support innovative video game creators like Chris Sawyer who make engaging, unique games. I mentally suffered through the 13 hours of solo gameplay to write this review and help others.
You have to like Chris Sawyer's art and gameplay style to keep playing this game. If you do not, this game is going to feel mentally painful and arduous.
I will be a fan boy of Chris Sawyer and say this game is good but the corporations ruined his vision.
Because it does feel that way when you play it. Atari needed to let him cook longer and let him serve his vision for the game. There are just gameplay loops not yet 100% developed for this game to feel as fluid as the RCT series.
Play through RCT 1 or 2 and then play this game to better understand those "Missing gameplay loops" and "underdeveloped ideas". One example idea was "subsidies" which supposedly would make nearby town expansion easier but this was cut from the final game.
To Chris Sawyer - You are awesome. The video games you make are delightfully fun and I wish more people could learn to play your games without needing an informed adult to tell them how to progress in your games. You clearly are a smarter guy but maybe almost too far smart that your inventions suffer.
So, buy this game if you want to support Chris Sawyer and his style of video games.
Maybe 1 day, the Atari gods will be generous and see Chris Sawyer as good investment and give him more time to build the games he has in his mind AND THEN make him watch stupider people play them to better understand why having more than 3 tutorial vids would make this game more playable.
Seriously, this game only has 3 tutorial videos and in 1 of them, the person playing does not complete the tutorial and then quits out. It felt like that "Dora the Explora" moment. I had to physically restrain my mouth from yelling out the mistake. Play this game and find out which tutorial video it was.
