Railroad Tycoon II is a follow up to one of the lesser known strategy genre games. The goal in the demo is to build a railroad from scratch and see if you can make a million dollars before the year 1905.The game uses the familiar mouse interface to get around and I suggest that you read the included readme file so that you understand the basic controls and interface for the game. Once that is done you will find yourself in the 1800's building a railroad from town to town carrying various mixtures of freight and passengers in the ongoing battle to make a buck and become the biggest and the best railroad in the country.

What impressed me the most was that every time you play the demo the "products" were never in the same place twice. It took me 5 tries before I got it where I could make the money required to end the game properly. That was on the easiest setting. Once you ramp up the difficulty this game will please even the most hard core strategy fanatic. You can micromanage the game to the nth degree or you can just build and play along to your own comfort level. If you played the first Railroad Tycoon the dramatic quality increase in graphics in this release will be a very nice surprise. Though in this era of high quality game graphics, great graphics are not only expected but demanded, and this game is right up there with the best of them.

If you are looking for a Red Alert or Starcraft kind of strategy game don't look here as there is no killing just fortunes to made and lost. However, this game will kill many an hour or twelve playing till you get your first million bucks. I personally thought this game was a nice change of pace from the harvest/grow/kill strategy game that is out there now and look forward to the full release.

Reviewed by : Mark "True_" Hetherington
September 5 ,1998

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