Tropico - The original dictator simulator. Now in its fifth iteration, has enough changed to justify another purchase, after facing criticism of a lack of real progress between numbers 3 and 4? Well, yes and no.
I'd like to get this out of the way right now: Tropico 5 is a great game. In fact it's probably the second most fun, humourous and complete title in the series, and having played it through on the Xbox 360, Xbox One and PC, I can say without hesitation this is the version to have, right here on Steam.
Gameplay hasn't really changed much from the last title, but some alterations have been made which both enhance and detract from the experience. First of all, international trading is much more involved and satisfying. Instead of going into your almanac and simply checking off things you'd like to import and export, you click on your shipping dock and work to the supply and demand of each nation. You can assign more than one ship to a trade route, so if for example you're trying to get a nuclear power plant up and running early and China have a good price on uranium, you can stick three ships on that route to bring it in as quickly as possible. You'll also find limited time export deals, so you can send your excess stockpile of coal or canned goods to a country which will pay double the going rate for a contracted time of three years. Again, just an example.
Another big feature, especially when playing on randomised islands, is the RTS style 'fog of war'. In Tropico 5, you have to send out your palace soldiers to scout the land, uncovering the fog to reveal the landscape. You can see where mines and different are through the fog, but the types of mineral they hold will only be revealed by clearing the fog. You can't build in fogged territory either, so it's a balancing act between uncovering land to build, or making a bee line for the nearest mine to get your production up and running. Like any real time game, this is only really important during the opening stages, but if - like me - you're constantly in the red for the first year or so, paying $1000 per time to reroute your scouting party can prove a costly excercise.
A further decent addition is that of having a proper family dynasty. El Presidente will have children, and you can form a dynasty of up to five members. Each of these dynasty members has their own traits which affect the overall balance of the game, and you can select which one to play as before every mission, allowing you to preempt the needs of the people during that mission.
Also, you now unlock research, Civilization style, which allows you to gradually uncover more edicts to write and more buildings to construct. Edicts are plentiful and have a huge impact of gameplay, allowing you to do everything from banning tobacco to providing social security for your pensioners. Of course there are fascist ones as well, such as putting the entire island under military control or completely banning emigration.
When you first start a new island, you'll be running it under the command of the British Empire as a colony,and you have a limited number of months to achieve your goals and gain total independence. When this happens, you get to decide what kind of leader you'll be by signing a US style Constitution, setting out the terms of your leadership and controlling everything from who's allowed to vote, to how the media is run. If you decide to run your island as a democracy, you'll find yourself at the mercy of the voting factions every year, and as before you can make promises to sway the voters before each election. You can only amend the constitution every four years though, so be very careful what you put in place!
Some of the micromanagement has been pared back, and to be honest it's not always for the better. The individual needs of your people are far less important than the groups as a whole. So, it doesn't really matter any more if a part of your community is outside the radius of a church or hospital - as long as the different factions on your island approve of you as a whole, you're not going to lose an election. Also, your happiness and approval rate are now separate stats, so again, as long as you are ok in the big picture you'll be fine. Direct control of your avatar has also been removed, so you can no longer visit your building sites and establishments to crack the whip.
Another simplified idea, which sounds good on paper, is the alteration of the island structure during the main campaign. Previously, you would manage a different island from scratch for every mission, allowing you to push yourself to meet the goals of that mission before moving on and starting afresh. Now, you have just two islands which you go back and forth between, with the idea being you play missions 1,3,5 etc on island one, and missions 2,4,6 etc on island 2. The mission goals change just as in previous titles, but your island is preserved as you left it. Again, it sounds like a good idea, as you have to think ahead about taking care of your people long term. But that's why it absolutely doesn't work: You have no idea what's coming next. Suddenly, you're out of space and you've built a carefully constructed military defence, only to have to tear it all down to meet the goals of the next task. The mission goals aren't structured to take advantage of the long term island system, so they may as well have left you island hopping as before. Half way through the campaign, you do get two fresh islands to start with, and it's a huge relief, but the same thing happens for the latter half of the game, moving between the two.
It's a good job then that the actual gameplay is still as robust as it ever was: Building and hiring workers is identical to previous releases, with a radial menu equally suited to mouse or controller. Yes, a city management game which arguably feels as at home using an Xbox controller as it does using a mouse, and it works straight out of the box, with the appropriate button commands displayed on the screens. The game still looks great, with fantastic detail on the buildings, allowing you to zoom right in and see the curtains in house windows, apartments with laundry hanging on the lines strung from wall to wall, and the gradual build up of goods in farms and factories waiting to be taken by your teamsters so the nearest dock. Individual garages have been removed, and people can now take their cars straight from any building with a garage to any other, and they've added a metro system, which you can place anywhere as a station entrance, essentially allowing pedestrians to teleport from any one to any other.
The disasters, complete with Penultimo's warnings, are back and are as destructive as ever. They have changed the voice actor for Penultimo, but when you get used to it he's just as funny and just as stupid as before. The great Latin soundtrack is back, and is as fitting and brilliant as ever.
Largely, the pros outweigh the cons in Tropico 5. Whilst I still consider 4 to be the peak of the series thus far, there's enough new, funny and outlandish content here to justify diving back in. With the whole collection being available for a good price, including extra missions and two extra campaigns full of new buildings and concepts, if you're a fan of the series you'll love it. If you're a city builder fanatic and have never played Tropico before, this is the perfect spot to jump right on in, but seriously consider picking up the marginally superior previous title as well.
4.0