I think this game is growing on me.
At first glance, I wasn't sure I liked it. I hadn't played RT3, but I've played all the other ancestors of this game (Railroads, Railroad Tycoon, RT2, Transport Tycoon). And my very first impression of this wasn't a very favorable one.
But .....
This game is growing on me. I know I don't know it yet. The AI thumps me and buys me out at almost any level. That alone has caught my interest and poses a challenge to me.
The economy and the stock market are both things that are growing on me. This is where I sense the game may be a lot more subtle and interesting than I initially gave it credit for.
I like some of the changes to the economy. Not only is there the beginnings of a sense of appreciation for the subtlety of how they work, but they also seemed to be designed to eliminate some of the micromanaging of other games of the genre.
For instance, (warning, I'm just starting to figure out the concept of the economy, so this could be very wrong!) ....It doesn't seem to matter where you haul a good. Prices are global, not city-specific. And distance doesn't seem to change what you get for the haul.
At first glance, I saw this and was dissappointed. Its not the complexity that I was used to. But, now I'm starting to like it. It means I don't micromanage my routes nearly as much. I don't have to switch destination cities because I've driven the price down in one. And I don't have to rearrange my routes when new cities come online ... in games where you made more money by hauling over a distance, it would make sense to constantly try to find longer routes. In this game, it doesn't.
So, when I set up a route for a resource, I can forget about it for awhile. I kinda like that. Meanwhile though, I will probably be making less money over time because the global price for the good will go down with me hauling lots of it around. So its not completely static. But the level of micromanagement in this game is down.
And when I think of other games, that's what usually killed them for me. Here's what I've always done with these games. I love the early parts of a game. Building an early network, setting up a few stations, moving some goods and making some money. Great fun.
But then, these games always hit a point where I'm sick of playing them. I've got too many trains going to too many stations which have too much resources piling up in them. After awhile, managing all of that just gets to be a pain. I'm making long sweeps through the game trying to check all of my trains, or trying to check all of my stations. All of this goes out of control if I don't micromanage, but micromanaging all of that gets to be a slow, boring pain in the rear. Eventually I save the game and do something else. I might come back to it, but I start it, play just a few turns and quit not wanting at all to do all of that work. I probably move on and play some other game and do some other stuff. Eventually I might see the icon on the start menu again, fire it up and repeat the above process.
This game seems have a nice subtle design that helps eliminate that problem. The economy system seems designed to cut down on that micromanaging. And the stock market system seems to provide a much more defined end-game. Since I'm just learning the game, I get bought out before the micromanaging gets out of hand. But I think I like that the stock market system forces a relatively early end to a game where I'm trailing an AI in money. It sends me back to starting over, which for me is the most fun part of the game to start with.
Thus the game is starting to provide me with both a real challenge and also seems designed to avoid the overload effect of some other games in the genre.
Its growing on me.
