In addition to making money and keeping the peasants in papaya, you have to play the USA and USSR off each other so you aren't invaded make nice with homegrown factions so the communists or nationalists don't depose your ass give balcony speeches to rally citizens and make policy edicts about minor matters, such as education and littering. Everything involves a tricky balancing act. Playing a self-made man of the people who womanizes and loses big bucks to a gambling addiction isn't as cool as you might expect. Each leader comes with four character pluses and minuses that affect such things as dealings with the US, gaining the respect of island intellectuals, and so forth. Every game begins with you either creating your own despot or picking from a list of history's finest leaders, which includes Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, and even Eva Peron.īeing El Presidente isn't easy, though. Here, you not only construct the typical roads, houses, apartments, farms, factories, churches, and the like, but you also role-play a stereotypical Latin American dictator during the height of the Cold War. This presents a few problems for those without previous Tropico experience-and even for veterans of other city-building sims-because the game adds a political overlay to the standard build houses/create jobs/make money formula common to the genre. So, the abbreviated tutorial mission doesn't touch on many of the game's core concepts and, instead, spends more time explaining worthless instructions, such as swiveling the camera, than dealing with island economics. Because Tropico 3 is more of a remake of PopTop Software's original than a sequel to the rather odd second Tropico game that moved the setting to a fantasy pirate island, the developers seem to have gone in with the belief that players already know what to do. Perhaps the only real barrier to enjoying all of this fascist fun in the sun is a relatively steep learning curve that isn't flattened at all by the tutorial. It also gives it a life beyond the nuts-and-bolts economics that turn too many entries in this genre into exercises in city planning and spreadsheets.Īny self-respecting banana republic dictator would feel positively naked without his sash and cigar. Being able to play a tanned tyrant instead of the usual nameless bureaucrat makes the gameplay as potent as a fine Cohiba cigar.
Haemimont Games has nicely resurrected the Castro-esque spoof of the first Tropico, dishing out a sunny city builder with personality and politics. Fortunately, this little bit of historical revisionism is one of the few complaints you can make about this city builder. Life in a Cold War banana republic probably wasn't as much fun in the real world as it is in Tropico 3.