3 of 3 customers found the following review helpful:
 A Beautiful and Addicting Game, 2006-06-25
I am a big fan of computer games - I don't sit and play them all day, every day like a snob, but I do enjoy all sorts of games - 1st person shooters and strategy games mostly. After getting slightly bored of "Age of Empires 2," also a great game, I decided to check out Tropico. I was most certainly NOT disappointed.
Everything about this game - the box, the music, the main menu, and, of course, the island - is beautifully designed and appealing just to look at. Often, once I've got my island up and running, I'll let it be for a few minutes, to get some cash flowing in, and while I'm waiting I just look around town. It is so detailed and so realistic: rusty shutters on the tenements, old wooden planks on the dock, lush vegetation, harvested crops stacked up near the farms, and even the freighters and yachts and airplanes that arrive at the dock and airport.
The gameplay, too, is quite detailed (without the pain of micromanaging everything imaginable). You can decide to run the island in a variety of ways. If you're in a good mood, your island can be a happy place where workers get good wages, healthcare & education are readily available, there aren't too many soldiers prowling around the streets, and tourists come in and bring with them riches for your people. You could decide to keep the tourists out and have a purely industrial-based economy, with copious farms and factories and other blue collar jobs. Or, if you're in a bad mood, you could be cruel and oppressive with many guard stations, full jails, low wages, and no fun. This could get some other countries mad at you, or armies of rebels, but who cares! "El Presidente" will do as he pleases!
However you choose to play, Tropico will provide hours - even days - of entertainment. The diverse gameplay and beautiful design have had me hooked for months. If you're wary of the hefty price tag for the 'Mucho Macho Edition,' the original Tropico is much less and is still tons of fun. But I would recommend this game even if they charged more for it than they do now. Buy it. I guarantee you won't be disappointed.
And despite what other reviewers have said, Tropico is hardly similar to The Sims. It's also much more fun.
7 of 7 customers found the following review helpful:
 Addictive SIMS-style game with a salsa flavor, 2004-12-13
I really don't recall my first week owning the game - except that my people seemed to always oust me after about 20 years. Unfortunately, I am just too nice a guy - and it is difficult to build an economy, ensure proper housing, keep job satisfaction high, etc. So I kept trying, honing my strategies, trying different scenarios, and then building my own islands. I've had the game for several months now and I'm still hooked. I often think about strategies in my off time. But why is the game so appealing?
There is the fantasy aspect. As compared to the SIMS (a game I find boring), where things occur in suburbia, or at least a place readily familiar, tropical islands hold appeal for the average poor soul trapped in (my case) the midwestern U.S. Tropical islands are sexy, otherwise we wouldn't spend so much effort and money vacationing on them. The game does a good job setting up a tropical feel (the music, the scenery, the accent of the narrator/assistant.
There is the lure of power. The association of your dictator with Castro is intentional. Here is you chance to either become the dictator that you know him to be, or to make up for his sins and shortcomings. Of course, many of the aspects of game-play are configurable, therefore, one can determine which of these shortcomings you wish your dictator to possess.
The level of involvement. Dictators, whether benevolent or not, are involved in the day-to-day lives of their people. Here you can monitor conversations, political beliefs, happiness, etc. There is a lot of information at your disposal, though you must discern the useful from the useless.
The historical edge. As mentioned previously, the association with Castro seems intentional - after all, he is the most familiar dictator to many Americans. However, the game includes histories of several other dictators in its instructional pamphlet. Thus, you feel that you are learning something as you while away the hours.
Overall, I found the game entertaining, at the top of its genre. If you like SIMS-style games, I recommend that you give this one a whirl.
8 of 10 customers found the following review helpful:
Addictive, inventive Sim, 2004-06-20
I prefer this type of game, as it's impossible to get stuck. I get frustrated with games where it becomes impossible to progress, either because of a glitch, or because some obstacle is basically impossible to pass, even with walkthroughs. This doesn't happen with Sims.Tropico runs fine on my iBook G3 800 MHz with 640 MB, running Panther. I haven't had to adjust performance or anything. The game sets you up as President of a small Carribean island, and you have to decide what to build, what to pay your workers, how much to embezzle, within a tight budget. There is a lot of complexity - more than in the Sims, for instance, and I am still exploring all the possible options, after a month of playing with the game. I haven't got into building TV stations, or imprisoning my enemies, for example, as I haven't had to fine tune to that extent. Tropico is easy to learn, and there are three tutorial games included, which allow you to learn how some of the key parts of the game work. After that, you can either just run the sim as you want, or you can follow one of the 30 or so predefined challenges, where you have to build an airport, or embezzle a certain amount of money, or generate a particular level of tourist revenue, within a given time frame. These challenges are quite difficult, and require you to use all of the functions in the game. I find it easy to get hooked on a game in the evening, and it's very hard to put the computer aside until I've run through a scenario. The good thing about Tropico is that there are varying levels, so relative novices can run through a game with no problems, but that doesn't mean you get bored, as there are plenty of features to explore at more challenging levels. Definitely a keeper!
1 of 2 customers found the following review helpful:
If you like the Sims ... you will like Tropico :), 2004-05-17
I was hesitant when buying this game because the graphics looked great, and I was not sure if my pc could handle them. Although my computer is pretty old, Tropico runs quickly and efficiently. I have never run out of new scenarios, and find something new every time I play this game. I would certainly reccomend this product, particularly at this low cost!
3 of 7 customers found the following review helpful:
 Fun game, horrible port, 2004-04-18
This game is fun and addictive. However its performance leaves much to be desired. I have a PowerBook G4 667MHz, 768MB of RAM, with a Radeon 7500 32MB VRAM video card, and this game slows to a crawl when the population of the islands goes above 150 individuals.Its performance is just ridiculous. My computer's specs are way above the system requirements listed on the game's box, yet I can barely play the game most of the time! I have tried everything to boost the software's performance. I've turned off all of the fancy graphics features (I've even turned off display of trees and vegetation, ground textures, etc.). Just to see if the game would run any faster, I've even reinstalled OS 9 (I am running Panther right now) to run the it. Under OS 9, it does perform a little better, but not much. The game would run well for a bit, then it would freeze for a couple of minutes to do calculations before I can get on with the game again. This is unfortunate, because I really like the game play, but its performance is just not acceptable.
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Amazon Sales Rank:#15271