
The sandbox modes let you pick any setting and go crazy. The campaign mode teaches the basics and gives a wide range of goals and challenges for park building and management. This isn't just a rollercoaster design kit, although there is that too, but an entire theme park ecosystem creator. The base game is huge, with tons of customization options, and the water and jungle park expansion packs nearly triple the content. If you do get over the hump, however, Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 Complete Edition inarguably gives gamers a metric ton of content to play with and a wide range of ways to do it. The entire interface has a distinct early-Windows look that has long since been superseded by better games. Those gamers who put hours into the original will likely feel right at home, but anyone outside that group will have to spend a lot of time ramping up. Where modern park building games have intelligently evolved to the almost seamless laying of things like fences, roads, tracks, and other features, RCT3's clunky sub-menu method of clicking on directional arrows and individual spots on the game world feels positively outdated. Even on the Switch, where the interface has been adapted to be largely based on radial dial menus, there's a steep learning curve to get the hang of park building.

The big problem is simply the interface feels like an old PC game. That said, it's not an ugly game, and the character designs have a distinctive, almost 70s-era cartoon vibe to them. The graphics are quaint, low-poly, and have a certain charm, but also look a little muddy and low detail for a game fixated on every little detail.

The problem with RCT3 is simply that it looks and feels like a 16-year-old game. For Switch players, of course, the situation is a little more confusing.Ītari already ported their mobile version, RollerCoaster Tycoon Touch (under the name RollerCoaster Tycoon Adventures), to the portable (to very mixed reception), because who doesn't like paying $50 for a port of a F2P phone game? For older PC players, some might notice this is essentially just the Platinum Edition (from 2006) with the Atari branding stripped away and a default 1080p resolution. The main draw of this Complete Edition is nostalgia. RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 Complete Edition Review: Don't Call it a Comeback The problem with RCT3 is simply that it looks and feels like a 16-year-old game. A lot of those things actually by Frontier themselves, who have made several great theme park sims of all kinds since. As it turns out, many things have happened since then in the world of virtual theme parks.

The original RollerCoaster Tycoon came out in the nearly Mesozoic era of 1999, and the sequels and expansion packs that followed mostly served to expand on a good thing.
