One word..... fantastic!..........or two words............ very fantastic!..........or three words................
RT3 is very easy to pick up and play, I started off slowly, I put together a couple of stations and some track and then bought my first train. After a few minutes of working out how the cargoes worked, I had my first train put together and ready to haul.
After a few minutes more, with my train still at the station I figured out that I had the configuration all wrong, so I went back into it and re-adjusted it. At this point I was hooked!
When you first play it you'll be overwhelmed by the amount of work involved in ferrying cargo from one place to another, but after 30 minutes or so you'll understand the concept.
After my first train left the station and travelled to its destination I made some money on the transport and proceeded to connect a 3rd city and then a fourth and so on....
It was only after I had connect 19 stations and had ammased a £20 million fortune I realised I had been playing for almost 6 hours! Addicted? I should say so!
Its hard to find flaws in the game, I would say that trying to find supplies of cargo is not easy, it can get quite complicated. But that said you'll soon start to remember where each one is on the map, that is until you start the game again and find they've all moved around.
There are only a couple of real downsides to the game, one of which is the music, if you like to listen to music I suggest you turn the in-game music off and switch on windows media player! It does tend to get a bit repetative, unless of course you get so involved in it that you dont hear it!
The upside however is the sound of the trains, each one is unique, I actually spent one mission just zoomed right into the trains watching them ferry around cargo!
Secondly the game is too easy, the computer AI could be so much more effective in bringing down your company and boosting his own, but they tend to stick to two cities and dont move form that until much time has past. Its very easy to buy them out.
This brings me to the stock market, this is not something which is common to games, at least not in this much detail. Its possible to make money for yourself and for your company using the stock screen, you can buy players out of the game and increase your own standing. However, be very careful because just as the case in the real world, if you buy too much stock on margin and then your company doesnt make much money and the share price drops then you find yourself bankrupt and out of the game! After 5 hours this can be annoying! But thats through no fault of the game its your own fault! I have done this many times! But then thats part and parcel of the fun!!
The graphics are good, nothing groundbreaking but detailed enough to know what certain things are. I can't see any need for ultra realistic trees!? Although possibly more detail on the trains would have been nice.
There's so much I want to say about this game! Just buy it and see! Its definately worth every penny!
All in all, if you like to be immersed into a game so much that you forget there is an outside world then buy this game!! You will not be disappointed!