> In this reviewer’s opinion, it was a sparkling creative success as well as a commercial one, making it all the more deserving of remembrance. We’ve seen a fair number of train games built on similar premises in the years since 1998, but I don’t know that we’ve ever seen a comprehensively better one.

RRT2 is my all time favorite game, and has yet to find a spiritual successor in my heart. Alongside Anno 1602, it may be the oldest PC game I regularly open up and play for fun.

The gameplay is still so good. The fact that the game is so open-ended and also so cutthroat, combined with the procedurally generated maps means it always feels fresh to play, even all these years later. The UI has aged but has not gotten in the way.

And yes, as reviewer describes, it absolutely nails the theme. The sound design, the visuals, the music, the historical setting. Things feel gritty and real and tough. Just like the game's treatment of Robber Barons, the game perfectly balances romanticism with cynicism. The game made me love trains.

I still remember learning as a child how stock trading on the margin worked when I simultaneously made and then lost a massive fortune attempting to buy out a rival.