So I bought this in the Steam sale and played it quite a bit lately...as you may or may not know I very much enjoy the Tropico games, for their mix of city building, resource management, dictatorial aspirations and of course their extreme silliness. But I also know that they are a bit of a cash cow for their makers so I'm not gonna blow 50 euro on one of the games at release and then spend another 2-5 euro per piece of DLC. Not to mention they are doing the same thing as Bethesda and keep the price of the DLC high but then release a cheap GOTY addition with the base game and all the DLC...which you then don't want to buy because you often already own the base game if you were a fan and don't want to pay twice for it. Ugh.
So unlike with Skyrim, I was smart and waited. And it was worth it.
For well under 10 euros I got several hours' worth of great fun. I love building cities and systems already, so when it's coupled to a nice atmosphere, good music and funny scenarios I'm sold. I finished the main campaign already which was mostly the same old as in Tropico 3 and 4, with one major change: the dynasty system.
Basically the main changes to the campaign are twofold:
- You don't just have 'one' Presidente, you can build a dynasty of up to 6 family members with their own weakness and abilities. You can exchange one for the other during one game with the elections - if you win them, of course.
Which can come in handy, as in some scenarios a character with a military background can be much better than, say, an environmentalist. Or vice versa.
- The game campaign moves along in history and slowly progresses you from the colonial times up to modern times. This means changing industries, loyalties, needs, foreign partners, technologies an so forth. This also means that you don't switch islands all the time. You play on only a handful of islands and "continue" with the stuff you've built there before. Which is pretty neat! So if you plan well you can make things much easier for yourself by having a well working economy and good infrastructure at the start of your later missions. Alternatively, you can really fuck yourself if you're focusing too much on one (or the wrong) industry. Raw product exports are great in colonial times, but if your entire economy is based around it and some of your mines and oil deposits are depleted around the Cold War era you can create some serious problems for yourself. So, as with anything, diversification and renewable resources (ie plants) should be a good basis of your economy.
I feel like the developers probably put the "play on the same islands several times" in there because people didn't like having to say goodbye to the islands they'd spent so much time creating at the end of every mission. I have to admit, it created some problems for me at first since I didn't realize this was how it would work so I spent the beginning of the game doing short term work to just win a mission, not caring about the long term consequences. But once I got the hang of it I was raking in cash at an insane tempo, with approval ratings of 85%. I didn't even had to suspend elections and declare martial law anymore.
Because seriously, these Tropicans are ingrates. You tell them to stick with you for a few years as you lay the foundations of a paradise on earth, but those fuckers would vote you out and rebel instead. Sure, I only gave you cheap (decent) housing, early retirement, a decent wage, social security and free elections. I didn't even bother to install a secret police in most cases, and rarely (if ever) actively pocketed money into my Swiss bank account. At least I was smart enough to create a professional army and pay it well, to avoid coups and rebel takeovers during the planning phases.
So yeah, TL;DR, Tropico 5 is still an amazingly fun game if you like the genre. It's not perfect, and don't expect too much new stuff compared to Tropico 4, but eh. I could play this game forever, really, if they keep the gameplay and have more silly and unique scenarios.
