Tropico (PC) review "How many games can you play as Fidel Castro, or create your own dictator that may be rightous or a lieing sneak. You can send your money to the Swiss Bank accounts and retire in richness, if you last long enough before the citizens of Tropico force you off the island by a military coup. Create your own military, this is definitely a true simulation game, in which you control what happens, however your own mistakes might lead to your pallace being taken down, and your rapid retreat. "

How many games can you play as Fidel Castro, or create your own dictator that may be rightous or a lieing sneak. You can send your money to the Swiss Bank accounts and retire in richness, if you last long enough before the citizens of Tropico force you off the island by a military coup. Create your own military, this is definitely a true simulation game, in which you control what happens, however your own mistakes might lead to your pallace being taken down, and your rapid retreat.

STORY (5/5): You can create your own story, like most simulation games. The dictator you pick, or make by yourself will have various characteristics, such as Womanizer, Drunk, or even honest if you so choose. You will create your own industrial island, or hide in the forests like the Contras. A pretty entertaining game definitely.

GRAPHICS (11/15): Pretty blah, but all the buildings do look different and the forests surrounding it look nice. All the people look the same though, or at least to their respective class. However really there are thousands of people so what should they have done?

SOUND (6/10): The same tropical music throughout the game. I am not saying it is bad music, but a game with only one piece of music can only get so high a rating.

GAMEPLAY (52/55): First things first you can assasinate people if they get you mad, or you can always bribe them off too. Its just like real politics :-> It kind of resembles SimCity as you have a budget and you construct buildings of all different types to please the people, or to always protect yourself. For more realistic views you can either side with the Western country of the US, or good ol' communist Soviet Union. You can request funds from them, but they will try to gain some control also. Basically you are a newly civilized island in the Carribean during the Cold War, in which everyone wants to sneak a bite into you. Befriending United States will get USSR mad at you, and vice-versa. There is alot of strategy required in this game, such as what people do you please, what people you kill, and whether or not to fix the upcoming ballet. It's so realistic, it's disturbing.

REPLAYABILITY (9/10): If you can learn how to survive you can be thriving on that island for a long time, and try to last the whole year plan so you can retire with your money (if you were corrupt). And that doesn't mean you can't start a new game, with a whole new strategy. Tropico has millions of dictator stories to tell, and if you
wish you can tell them all (well not really).

DIFFICULTY (2/5): I could not give this a good rating. This game is extremely hard in the fact of surviving through a whole term. Sooner or later the people will get mad, and they make outrageous demands. If it weren't for the difficulty I would have played this game much more, but I can only do so much when the people are always up in arms, and want to get rid of you as president of Tropico.

OVERALL (85/100): The idea for this game is ingenius, and should have been thought of sooner. However while the idea and how it is put into action is very good the simple things were missed. Mediocre graphics, repitive sound, and an unrealistic difficulty (well actually fairly realistic, but way too hard for a simulation). However no matter with those faults this idea in itself makes it definitely worth a pickup. You can do so much with it, that you will not regret it too easily.

Community review by ratking (June 21, 2002) A bio for this contributor is currently unavailable, but check back soon to see if that changes. If you are the author of this review, you can update your bio from the Settings page.