Tropico 5 Reviews
Tropico 5 really wants you to win the hearts of your people as dictator. Well, maybe a little.
Taking control of El Presidente and ruling over a sunny paradise used to be a unique guilty pleasure for RTS fans. Tropico 5 retains some of that, and newcomers might appreciate the gameplay alterations, but overall the franchise seems to be slipping.
To play Tropico 5 is to look behind the cult of personality surrounding iconic leaders throughout history—who are both lionized and loathed—to understand the rationale behind both their atrocities and their good deeds. The loopy dictator is only as loopy as the world that made him; his brand of insanity merely combats the surrounding insanity. Tropico is an open invitation to either revel in it or understand it.
If you already own Tropico 5 then the lack of new content means that there is little reason to purchase the title again but if you a newcomer and are looking for an enjoyable RTS game on the PS4, look no further than Tropico 5.
The developers at Haemimont Games have taken their series apart and reassembled it in a whole new way, and while the result is riddled with flaws, it's also charming, funny, and welcoming to newcomers and veterans alike. As aimless steps away from stagnation go, that's a pretty solid one.
I really enjoyed my time with Tropico 5. As a total package, it's a great starting point for new players. Gameplay mechanics like diplomacy have been simplified, so it's pretty easy to understand for newcomers. It'll help to have some working knowledge of similar sim titles, but even without that background, the campaign does a great job of easing you into the basic functions of city-building. The simplification isn't always in the best interest of the game, as I found when attempting to stave off exports of much-needed resources. While trade routes are a great addition, not being able to have direct control over which goods I export and import was often problematic. Issues like this are few and far between with Tropico 5, making it an overall positive and very fun experience.
The continued popularity of the Tropico series has something to do with the relative lack of old-school city and country management games on the market and the inability of the teams at Maxis and Electronic Arts to re-launch SimCity in any meaningful way.
Dialing the difficulty up also provides a real test of anyone's management abilities. So look past the satirical elements of Tropico 5. The humour is there, and it's funny, but the real strength of this series - especially with Sim City falling off the map completely in recent years - is that it plays so, so well.
That's by no means a bad thing; despite its similarity to its forebears, it's still a welcome escape from other city-building franchises, and is a deep enough experience to keep players engaged for quite some time. One can't help but feel like it's shackled by its presumably-slim budget, though, as its lack of radical improvements and its mediocre overall production value will make it a hard sell for people who were indifferent to previous Tropico games.
'Tropico 5' is less of a sequel and more of an update for the franchise, as could be said of its immediate predecessor. It is more accessible to a grizzled 'Tropico' fan, but the gameplay is still as addictive as ever. The limited multiplayer and lovely sandbox mode give the game legs, even if it's hampered by some visual and tutorial issues. Deep city building mechanics and a sardonic sense of humor make it stand out in the sparse field of simulation titles on the 360.
Loads of replayability, but way too much paid DLC
The end result is a good game that is held back by the very thing strategists come to this genre for: the freedom to use your own planning and tactics to win the game.