Would've SEEMED great then, but in hindsight, RCT was never really any good. – RollerCoaster Tycoon® Classic Review

I remember playing this game all the way from 4 years old and beyond, all the way up to the present day. But looking back, I could actually wonder if I should've ever even touched the series in the first place (apart from RCT3, which WAS something truly noteworthy, I'll give Chris Sawyer and Atari that). First, I will point out the good just to keep my cool and stay positive: The game(s) were obviously very innovative and revolutionary for their time, being much fuller theme park and coaster simulators than the ones that came before it such as Theme Park, and the game was written in assembly, meaning rarely if ever any lag with a lot of stuff going on at once. And those are already huge bonuses to the first game and beyond themselves. There's also a lot of variety with what you can do with coasters and other rides, and being able to manage your theme park exactly the way you want it is truly exhilarating. Sadly though, at least for me personally, all of this is more than completely offset by the bad: When I mentioned a lot of variety with coasters and other rides, that's AT LEAST when things worked out exactly, but sadly, that was not very often in hindsight. You see, I wanted to innovate on coasters in this game by providing new layouts and ingenious ways of using certain operating modes, but sadly, I soon found out that all this was severely limited by the stats system and how the operating modes worked exactly. In fact, also as an example, my last straw with this game came from building a LIM Launched Coaster with block sections to try this new mode out and build an innovative coaster with it, but I continued to run into intensity ratings of above 10, and by the time it actually went below 10, the acceptable level, I couldn't even enjoy the coaster anymore at least not that much because I had to strip away so much just to get an acceptable intensity rating, and even that was in the upper 9's - another in-line twist on this thing would've probably been enough to bring the rating above 10. This really frustrated me, because it meant that ultimately, I couldn't even do much with certain ride types that interested me or probably any ride type, for that matter. This was the point where I've decided I've had enough of this game; I've uninstalled the iOS app on my phone about an hour earlier, and haven't touched it since then and don't really ever plan on touching it again. There were other problems such as how punishing the scenarios were - not difficult, punishing - among other things, that combined to ultimately make me decide I have had enough of this game. It's isn't a bad series looking back by any stretch, but apart from RCT3, it never really was any good either, and the games after RCT3 have only served to tarnish that already-rough reputation even more. At this point, it's a pretty long road to recovery for RCT at best, but at least we know it'll certainly never go beyond saving if Atari and their respective partners with RCT do things correctly and get themselves together. Don't consider this the end of the road, RCT. It's only the end if Atari and others CHOOSE to be it so. It's their decision at this point, of course.
Review by Dreamcatcher Leader on RollerCoaster Tycoon® Classic.