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TROPICO 3 REVIEW
PC & 360
Your Paradise
City building games have long had staunch, loyal supporters and those that don’t understand them or just choose hate them, few of these games encapsulate that as much as Tropico 3. This god playing city builder lets you be El Presidente, ruler of tropical Caribbean islands during the Cold War, and asks you to build prosperous lands while navigating between the world’s two super powers. There’s loads of depth and substance, and an entertaining personality about the game that’s hard not to chuckle about, but you’ll need to get over some niggling issues and possible fair-weather difficulty.
The key top Tropico 3 is being able to multitask without getting ahead of yourself or over thinking things. You start with your palace and a small handful of buildings to get your started, usually a couple farms, a construction office and a teamster’s hall. This is and will always be the backbone to the game. From there you get to flex your muscles, deciding if more farms or mines are the best for your economy, how early you want to invest in tourism or big industry, and whether your people deserve homes, healthcare, liberty, and easy access to food.
Freighters dock and bring in immigrants and leave with exports, but you’ll need something the rest of the world wants. Throwing down a couple tobacco farms and a cigar factory can be an effective means to keep money coming in. Alternatively you can farm a bunch of other stuff, set up ranches, mine minerals or look for oil. Each of these commodities can be valuable, some more than others, but it’s the layers to Tropico’s system that allows you to decide what’s best. Furniture shops, rum distilleries, and jewelry factories are just some of the ways you can capitalize on your resources.
El Presidente + Black Gold = Love
The micromanagement of setting prices or shipment times is out of your hands, the game lets you worry more about the factories themselves and the workers you need. You set the salaries for everything, put them too low and you might find no one’s willing to work in that place, too high and the income disparity might become a problem for the whole island. It’s easy enough to manage, and the depth shows more in the overall wants and needs of everyone than in one single worker, though you can focus in on an individual to read his thoughts, needs and habits – but more on that in a bit.
An element in the design of the game is both what makes Tropico challenging and will likely bring on a most people’s gripes. You can pause the game while building all of this, play at regular speed or on two steps faste, but time passes by so slowly it’s hard to see anyone wanting to play on anything but the fastest way possible. Gamers will want to jump in and plot a masterfully crafted city, but all too easily the economy will spiral into debt risking rebellions and damaged foreign relations both which can result in your undoing.
So it’s as much about patience as it is about strategy. Good relations with the US or USSR can be a boon to your treasury. Similarly, keeping money on hand to deal with rebel threats or populace demands, which can happen at any moment, can assist you in keeping the factions respect level of you high within the region. These usually manifest in the form of calls for more access to religion, military, entertainment and health care and it’s not as simple as just adding what a specific group is calling for.
By Land, Sea & Air
Let’s say people are pining for access to religion, you’ll receive a notification that a specific group has lost some respect for you because there’s no church. Building one might be easy enough, but you also need to a have someone working there to serve the people. If a prerequisite for that role is high school or college and you’ve built neither of those then you have to decide if it’s best to wait for one of those to be constructed or if you’d prefer to bring in a foreign expert to take the role. It costs some cash but it’s a viable option. It also means you could lose some respect from intellectuals for not having good education and nationalists for relying on outside workers. Now you see the nuances within the game.
One difference between Tropico and other city builders is that you’ll spend a shorter amount of time with each of your cities as you progress through the campaign. Each map has different win conditions and each island has varying strengths and weakness with layout and resources, as such you’ll need to figure out different strategies to succeed with each. Luckily, before each mission you’re able to select your avatar from a selection of historical figures or your own custom tailored one. You can select different traits and faults and finding the right blend can mean a long lasting reign or a quick assassination or coup.
Choices don’t end there either, there’s a lot more than just setting down buildings and choosing the right ruler. As you play you’re able to enact different edicts, some only with good relations with other nations or required buildings like diplomatic offices or power plants. If you find you’re on the rocks with the USSR you can use your political smarts and use the “Praise USSR” edict, making them happier and getting them off your back. During an election year you can give everyone a tax cut, swaying public favor to your side. If you’re in the partying mood you can set up Mardis Gras, or for the more conservative minded you can ban contraceptives or request a papal visit. Those in need of cash might consider letting a superpower test a nuke just off the coast. What you decide is entirely up to you and how you wish to run your society, be it a Big Brother-eque dystopia, communist state or liberal democracy.
He looks small, but El Presidente is larger than life.
Beyond the top down city-builder view you can also get down to the ground level with your people, and not just to see what your workers are thinking. El Presidente can be a man of the people, roaming the city to visit farms, factories, docks, etc. This can provide a boost to production or construction speeds but it can also serve a larger function. Like everything else you can be Mr. Niceguy or you can get down and dirty by firing members of society, bribing officials, setting up ‘accidents’ or outright ordering them to be killed. There’s really a lot you can decide between and because of that you won’t find yourself bored anytime quick.
There is a ton of information to process but the game does a decent job at telling you what you need to know through annual updates, land overlays and an almanac that shows everything from people’s happiness, faction respect levels, and economic figures like top exports or price standards. One issue I had with this was just how small the writing was. On a 52 inch screen you wouldn’t think this was a problem but I found myself needing to be up-close to be able to read everything.
Visuals in the game are quite impressive, offering realistic touches that help balance the over the top nature of some of your choices. I did find some framerate issues popped up, oddly more when I was zoomed out than in, but it generally runs smooth. Close to the ground you can check out player animations which are more than serviceable, but it’s at a medium level that you’ll see the best quality. Beachfronts and forests offer real beauty to the island and city buildings look believable.
Counterpoint to this is the entertaining, but at times overwhelming audio in the game. A radio jockey will comment on your progress and current events every few minutes and he can’t be considered understated in any sense of the word. When he’s not yelling into the mic or talking about a llama trying to eat your hat, you’ll hear Caribbean music playing over the bustling that’s city that is fine enough sounding, but it all blends together after some time. There’s a nice touch when down close with the sound effects of buildings or people, and an even better performance by El Presidente himself when giving speeches.
Tropico 3 is a solid city building game that boasts fifteen campaign maps and a ton more sandbox versions without win conditions. Depth in your freedom of choice goes a long way to keep things fresh, but without patience the game can be quite dense. While it’s forgiving in many cases, some unclear goals might make players feel at a loss for how to approach their tasks. Furthermore, the speed of the game can be a real issue, forcing players to be patient and thoughtful and restraining some of the god-like tendencies they may carry into it. Still, the political influences and the vast array of approaches in strategy make this game something almost anyone can enjoy, and considering the budget price tag of $39.99 it easy to justify.
Beachside Paradise!
GRADES:
HOW DOES IT LOOK? Tropico 3 looks good up close and far away, and there really is a lot of to look at. Framerate issues do pop up, but it’s nothing most building games don’t run up against. 8.3/10
HOW DOES IT SOUND? Voice work is strong by everyone, but gets repetitive. The soundtrack is perfect for the setting, but doesn’t go beyond that. 7.5/10
HOW DOES IT PLAY? It should go without saying the PC trumps the console here, but it controls better than almost any strategy/builder games I’ve seen on the 360 to date. It’s easy to use, but does take some time to get used to just how to control all of it. 8.8/10
HOW LONG WILL IT LAST? Each individual campaign map can be anywhere from a couple hours to four or five, and there’s 15 of those. On top of that, there’s about as many ‘Sandbox’ game modes which allow you to play under your own conditions. 9.5/10
HOW IS IT PRESENTED? The tutorial is thorough, but if you’re new to the game it’s going to take some time. Furthermore, the text in the game is tiny to the point of frustration if you’re over ten feet from the tv (I play at about 18 feet). Some of this is tapered by the quality of the information, which is very valuable. 7.5/10
OVERALL SCORE: 83%
OVERALL SCORE IS NOT AN AVERAGE BUT A RATING OF THE ENTIRE GAME