Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 is still one of the best management simulators ever (even on console)

As far as remakes and remasters go, we’re now firmly into the realms of remasters of re-releases of remakes that often came out ten or more years ago. This concept is strange to me, since whilst I often feel like I’m still a spritely teenager, I often go on to realise that I am playing a game that I first experienced more than twenty years ago. Where Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 Complete (on console) is concerned, I don’t even think we’re dealing with a remake — more simply a re-release, albeit with all the settings turned up to the maximum possible.

Does that make Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 Complete bad then? No, definitely not. It makes it fantastic. Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 Complete comes from the most shining golden era in strategy game history — representing the peak of human achievement in terms of depth, immersion, visual flair and strategic challenge. Where modern “Tycoon” games and those like them dumb the experience down for the Insta- generation, Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 Complete simply presents you with a blank page and an unlimited palette of tools and colours with which to create your masterpiece.

Before I go on, let’s get the obvious question out of the way. Before you ask it, I have absolutely no idea why Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 Complete has just turned up on the Xbox Series X now, when it was already made available on Nintendo’s technically inferior Switch console something like four years ago. Maybe it’s because Nintendo’s console delivered a sub-par experience? As I said, I don’t know, so anything I say here would be made up. Either way, it’s a good thing that Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 Complete is now on the more powerful consoles — and it’s better late than never.

• Note: This is a 2025 release of the 2020 PC Release; Read our positive review of that.

As the name suggests, this version of Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 Complete includes all of the previously released DLC — or rather, both of the expansion packs as we used to call them. This means that you get an incredible amount of content which is focussed on the single player experience. There’s a large campaign for the original game, plus further campaigns for both the Wet and Wild packs. There are also sandbox modes and various challenges for experienced players, but I think even the most dedicated tycoon would struggle to work through it all.

Beginning with the first park in the first campaign, Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 Complete will hold your hand via a series of informative, often overly detailed pop-up text boxes that provide a ton of information. This is certainly overwhelming for new players (having tested it on my children) who are used to a more streamlined, immediate experience — but nonetheless, Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 Complete is full of complex tasks and therefore you need to read this stuff. If you didn’t read it — then tough, things are going to go wrong!

Basic ride, shop and feature placement is relatively simple and will feel immediately familiar to anyone who has played a game like Theme Park (since the original Rollercoaster Tycoon and all its sequels copied the same mechanics as Bullfrog’s even older classic) or even perhaps those used to more modern management sims like Two Point Hospital. That is to say that you’ll choose a ride, rotate it how you like, then place it and in most cases, you’ll need to add an entrance and an exit.

Where Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 Complete starts to show some of its more minute details is in what follows. You’ll now need to add a queue path and an exit path, but you’ll also need to open the ride (sometimes testing it first) and set a ticket price. Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 Complete offers much more customisation than most games you’ll see these days, and things like frequency of maintenance are down to you to set. On more complex rides (like rollercoasters) there are other variables that can have serious impacts on ride effectiveness and safety, and you’re going to need to work through these menus on your own in most cases.

As a returning player and someone who has experienced many games of this kind over more than three decades, all of this was completely natural to me and if anything, I felt more at home here than in the more streamlined games of the past few years. I like being in control, and all too often in modern games I find myself looking for menus and features to tweak that simply don’t exist. Nonetheless, players new to management sims or younger players need to bear these things in mind.

As my parks have developed in Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 Complete, so too has my confidence with some of the more exotic rides. Rollercoasters, log flumes, swimming pools and safaris are all in play here, and Rollercoaster Tycoon as a series has always been famous for how much fun you can have making custom coasters. This is true — making big, crazy rides here is hugely enjoyable, but it’s also quite a labour of time and effort, so I was grateful that Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 Complete also includes a number of pre-configured options for most kinds of coaster. 

It’s possible to take your coasters underground through mountains or large hills in Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 Complete, but if there is one thing I did struggle with, it was changing the height of features within the game. Paths are a pain to angle up or down, and any scenery can be difficult to manipulate when underground despite the features that the game provides players when working underground (like a specific icon for it, and a camera that cuts through the overground scenery etc).

This brings me onto controls, which in general for a complex management game on console are quite good. Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 Complete uses two radial wheels on the left side of the screen (for choosing new features to add to your park) and the right (for manipulating existing features or reviewing performance of a ride etc). There is a bit of “lobster claw” required as you move through these radials, with your hands clasped to the bumpers and triggers as you simultaneously work the left stick and face buttons. It’s not perfect, but it is intuitive and it just about works in the end.

I was also quite impressed by Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 Completes’ visuals considering its rather extreme age. There’s no way this title is going to win prizes for its graphics, but the game runs crisply and smoothly at high resolution and looks bright, bold and detailed. Character models and buildings clearly show some of their age, but the crispness and strong colour palette actually works better than some more modern games that use higher quality textures and models, but without the same visual pop as you pan and zoom. Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 Complete looks more like a five year old game than a twenty year old one, let me put it that way.

Between the looks, the strong conversion to console controls and the mass of very high quality content, I am struggling to see much of a downside to Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 Complete. The complexity will be a barrier for some, and as your park gets more and more complex, you will find issues. People still get stuck in places where you can’t possibly help them, and staff behaviour can occasionally frustrate… The lack of clear feedback makes it hard to solve certain problems etc, but most of these things are features of the game rather than issues. They are things that usually come from your poor decisions (like having a path underground or building a burger shop that faces an inaccessible place by mistake) on most occasions.

With all that said, I feel strongly that I want to recommend Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 Complete to almost anyone who enjoys management simulations. When you play it, it’s very clear how Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 Complete has influenced more modern sims of a similar type — most notably Planet Coaster — but also those in other genres. The level of control and customisation it offers is fantastic, but even if you manage those things at the minimum level (using preset coasters and pricing etc), Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 Complete is still a management sim that beats most of the competition hands down.

Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 Complete Edition is available now for PC, Xbox Series S/X, PS5 and Nintendo Switch.