I am a huge Tropico fan. I discovered the series not too long ago, when Tropico 4 came out. I played through it feverishly, and then bought Tropico 3 because I couldn’t get enough. I played all the T4 expansions, and anxiously awaited the day T5 came out. I got it on launch day (last Tuesday), and have played many hours already this week despite dealing with a move and a broken ankle.
Overall the game is really solid, just like previous iterations. It’s only $40, which in the age of $60 games is a pretty good deal. And you get a lot of game for the money. The graphics aren’t anything to get too excited about, but for a strategy game that’s hardly surprising. Other reviews online have talked a lot about game glitches and incompatibility with DirectX. However, I have yet to run into a single glitch (of course, now that I have typed that, I will have some game breaking bug).
For those who haven’t played the series, the basic premise is that you’re a dictator who is in charge of building up a new island. Through harvesting crops, mining, building up tourism, and so on you bring money, and in turn people, to your island. You have to balance a number of factors to keep all the political factions on your island happy, as well as a host of international groups and countries.
Pros
One big pro is just a cleaning up of previous things like road building. Road building in the previous games was a bit tedious and difficult, but now they snap to other roads really easily. Since you always have to build roads to ship goods and to get people to work, it’s a really nice upgrade.
Another cool new feature is managers. With almost all the buildings you can assign a manager (if you have one available), and they have specialties that change the way the business runs. It adds a cool new level of oversight when it comes to the production of goods or your soldiers or students or whatever.
Cons
One negative is the removal of certain choices when it came to the look of your buildings. In the previous iterations, you could choose and customize particular buildings, but that option is gone now.
Another con is the way T5 handles combat now. It seems the rebel population is not linked to what the player does, but rather rebellions are pre-planned to happen at specific intervals. This makes a host of things totally superfluous now, because it doesn’t really matter what you do, the same number of people will hate you (or love you and still rebel) regardless.
A Pro and a Con
The one thing I can’t get over is just how similar Tropico 5 is to 4 and 3- especially the T4 Modern Times expansion. The stories are the same, the characters are the same, the options are the same, and most disheartening, the strategy is the same. It took me awhile to really “crack” Tropico 4: the order to build things (plantations, plantations, plantations!), the balance between pollution and industry, the best way to utilize space, and so on. Don’t get me wrong, I loved T4 so much that I’m happy to have a continuation of the basic principles. But they’ve made is so similar that the addicting challenge part of it is gone. I can play the game exactly as I played T4 and get the same results. I like feeling like I’m really good at a game, no doubt, but the lack of challenge does take some of the fun out of it. Further, it makes this game feel like an expansion, not a new game.
Many reviews out there claim that T5 is “very” different than T4, and many say that this game is much more difficult. I have absolutely not found either of those to be true. Perhaps I’m not far enough into the game to see how much it ramps up, but I’ve played several hours and I have not found there to be anything difficult or that different whatsoever. Perhaps someone else who has played can weigh in.
In the end…
If you like Sim City or Civ, then you’ll naturally love Tropico 5. The core mechanics and idea behind it are excellent, and you really can’t beat that. It’s not crazy expensive, so I definitely would vote for you to drop a few bucks to put this game into your inventory. Well worth it! In fact, I’m going to go play now…
