Tropico's designers did an excellent job with the game's graphics. The
islands are lush environments with a very nice tropical feel and the buildings
themselves all have a very decided Caribbean look to them. You'll also see
clouds and storms float across your island, and see their shadows move across
the land. Tropico also will allow you to view your island from afar or to zoom
in and watch the individual islanders going about their lives.
This game is the decided frontrunner for best music in a game for 2001.
Lively tropical music plays throughout the game without ever getting repetitive
or annoying. The music is of such high quality, that it will do more than put
you in a tropical mood while playing, it will have you humming the songs long
after you have played. In fact, the soundtrack would make excellent music for
the next tropical-themed party you throw.
One of the nice things about Tropico is the high degree of control it gives
you in setting up the game. Tropico can be quite challenging, so it's a good
thing that players can tweak the economic and political models to make the game
a bit easier while learning to play it. You can also control the size and
elevation of the island, its initial population, the size of your initial
treasury, and more.
The game also provides the player with a wealth of information while playing.
You can get reports on the profitability of individual buildings, a look at your
economy on the whole, population and faction statistics, and more. You can even
find out what your individual citizens think and feel and follow them around as
they go about their day.
One thing missing, though, is some sort of survey tool which can be used
before placing a building. Constructing a building on a slope or in an area of
vegetation requires your builder to do extra work before beginning the
structure. Since you have no idea how long this will process will take (before
or during this phase), buildings sometimes take a mysteriously long time to
create. This is compounded by the fact that you can not specify the exact order
in which to build your structures. While you can set priorities among them, you
may find your self waiting a long time for a building on a slope to be created
while others that could be built quickly just sit and wait their turn.
Another thing that was a bit frustrating was that it was not always obvious
which buildings depended upon each other. At first I would sometimes build a
factory and watch it sit idle while I sunk money into its payroll before I
realized that it was missing some sort of natural resource. This problem is
compounded by the fact that the manual is not much help and is full of obvious
mistakes.
Despite these flaws, Tropico is a lot of fun to play and brings a new and
unique experience to gamers. I definitely recommend giving it a try.
In The End, This Game Hath Been Rated: 90%.
A hearty "¡Viva Tropico!" for giving gamers such an innovative and
fun game to play. While play may get a little repetitive during long game
sessions, you'll definitely want to come back for more before too long.
System Requirements: 200 MHz Pentium II CPU; 32 MB RAM; 4 MB
Video RAM; 4x CD-ROM; 820 MB Hard Drive Space; Mouse.
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