Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 Complete Edition is a good port that overcomes the challenge of adapting its controls to the Nintendo Switch. Building and managing your own amusement park, overcoming challenges and designing attractions from scratch is a lot of fun, both playing on laptop and desktop.
Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 appeared on PC in 2004 and was a refreshing change for the franchise . With this installment, the attractions were played in three dimensions and we were able to get on them to see if they were as fun as we imagined. After a sequel and excessively continuous expansions, this third episode was very successful. And the good thing about a job well done is that it knows how to last over time. Playing this title 16 years later is still a lot of fun. The great thing about Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 is that it has plenty of content both to play freely and to overcome challenge after challenge. You can dedicate yourself to building your park from scratch, experiment, design it to your liking and grow to infinity. You can invest hours and hours in designing a roller coaster to your liking, the flows and transits of visitors to your park, managing finances, preferring to make a water park, a zoo, a children’s park or all at once.
And when you get tired of playing without pressure, you will have to go through their campaigns and overcome their many challenges: reach a certain occupancy rate, build in record time, achieve maximum satisfaction, etc., starting from design bases already started so that you unleash about them to taste your imagination. For all these reasons, Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 Complete Edition is a very sweet title that works very well on Nintendo Switch . The first time you play it, what will happen to everyone will happen to you: you will get fed up with it, dedicating hours and hours to trying all the options it has. Once the initial crush is over, it becomes that perfect title to enjoy between games. Don’t you have anything to play? Well, you set up a park. What are you not especially? Well, you go through its campaign mode and its more than twenty hours of challenges and guided challenges. This is how these games work best for me, enjoying them calmly and always having them ready to pass the time.
Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 Complete Edition video gameplay
For the record, I had my doubts with Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 Complete Edition. I’m already too used to ports traveling from PC to Nintendo Switch with poor performance, poor resolution, and an unfortunate control scheme. But what has been done with this game is remarkable. The first few tutorials are overwhelming. They want to explain where everything is but it is impossible to assimilate all the information . When this happens in a video game, I always do the same thing: I skip them all because I think the game has to be able to explain itself through experience. Surprisingly, Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 Complete Edition does it. Two wheels are used for options. A general one on the left and another with particular elements on the right. We move in it with the sticks and manage the options with the buttons. The pan and zoom camera is controlled by the triggers. And although sometimes it is difficult to move through the odd menu, everything is managed and assimilated with great ease. That is why the only problem with this port are the years that separate us from its original release. Unfortunately, the game is very ugly today, especially if we play it on a desktop.
Hours and hours of fun
Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 Complete Edition is a very juicy compilation in terms of content . At the beginning we can choose between enjoying the career mode or the sandbox mode. The first of them corresponds to the campaign. This edition brings the original game and content expansions: “Soaked!” and “Wild!” Each one contains a generous compilation of scenarios, and each of them will test a specific feature of the game: balance the excitement of your attractions, get the best sets, surprise VIP visitors…. In addition, the game knows how to encourage you to complete them all. By doing so, new scenarios are unlocked .
The only problem with this port for Nintendo Switch is the years that separate us from its original releaseThe game brings the original and its two expansions. Hours and hours of content.
The normal thing is to play this mode first to learn how everything is going. Once we are familiar with such important details as at what price we put the balloons in our beach bars, how many mechanics we hire or how we should interpret the thoughts of our visitors, it will be time to move on to sandbox mode. Here we can give free rein to our wishes with an unlimited budget. The objective? Always keep the satisfaction of our clients high and obtain the highest number of visitors year after year.
Finally, we have a mode for experts and in which keyboard and mouse control is lacking: the roller coaster designer . The idea is that once you are a professional in the management of your park, that you have set up a couple of ideal facilities and that you have lined up, you create the perfect attraction that you can then export to your fairgrounds. This mode of creation also allows us to give birth to our own visitors and groups, even modifying which are their favorite attractions, and also buildings . The problem is that when we bring the camera closer and we want to be precise, we begin to see the problems with this version.
Wish a deeper remake
Graphically it looks very dated, but it makes up for it with everything we can do.
Except that there are no touch options for managing the menus, the good work is to be commended in adapting the computer controls to the Switch. It is true that sometimes the camera plays tricks on us and it is difficult to do things quickly, but without a keyboard and mouse, it is what it is. The team is also to be congratulated on the game’s performance, its fluidity, and its low load times. However, there is a problem with the nature of the project itself, and that is that it already looks very old. Much . The graphic finish of the visitors, the interface design itself, the presentation of the maps or the modeling of its attractions are very from its time.
The adaptation of the controls to Switch is remarkable.
That is to say, the technical section is not fine, it is not updated, and it is especially noticeable when we use the camera that allows us to get very close to our attractions or to ride them. This problem makes it easier for the game to be perfect when we move through its options , but it spoils something that I consider essential: that it gives you an orgasmic pleasure to contemplate the park to which you have dedicated an entire afternoon of work. That does not exist here because we are facing a game that maintains the graphic decisions of its time, and that weighs heavily on it.
So one thing for the other. With this Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 Complete Edition, the video game achieves something that is great: portability . This title is very much enjoyed lying on the couch and playing short games from time to time. It handles well except when we want to do extremely complex things, it performs fabulously and has a remarkable adaptation of its controls. The problem is that the game feels very out of date in its graphic aspect; a lot, which makes looking at what you’ve done not as enjoyable as it should be . Except for this and for some messes that you will make with the camera or in a specific menu, such as direct port and transfer from PC to Switch, this is a good job.
“Interesting”
RollerCoaster Tycoon 3
Without changing the original formula, Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 Complete Edition manages to adapt to Nintendo Switch with great success. It plays very well on both laptop and desktop. Its graphics and artistic decisions are already weighed down by years, but it makes up for it with plenty of content, deep management, and thoughtful controls.
- The game controls surprisingly well
- With a lot of content to enjoy, challenges and a complete editor
- You will feel that there is always something new to do that you did not know you could
- Graphically it is very out of date
- Some problems with the camera or with very specific menus
- No touch control
