Tropico 3 is a mixed bag. You'll be frustrated when its hard and bored when its easy, but its fun nonetheless.
1. If you don't have an HD tv, you'll not be able to read ANY of the text on the screen. For real. However, once you play for 10 hours and look a lot of stuff up online, you wont need to since almost everything you need has an icon associated with it. Frustrating but not game-ending.
2. Tropico is frustrating when things aren't going well. When you're behind, its darn hard to catch up, whether from lack of monetary income, natural disasters, rebels, etc. You'll feel like you're always running to catch up, which isn't really that pleasant of an experience for hours on end. Inversely, when you've got everything under control, you'll likely end up bored of playing because at that point is just about island design and racking up more points, in essense, the game looses its appeal and becomes dull.
3. While Tropico 3 is a lot like Sim City plus politics, strangely enough the politics only play into how you build your city, or what buildings you make. Its virtually impossible to flat out ignore any constituency, and of course you have to have money regardless. So in the end either everyone is happy with you or you'll have a failed state. Its hard to be in-between. I wish there was more political stuff going on - its way too easy just to ignore the US and USSR.
4. There's virtually no tutorial about how to make anything work on your island for such a deep sim builder. So you'll spend a lot of time online, thankfully nothing much has changed from the old Tropicos, so those work just fine for strategy FYI.
5. Tropico, despite all i've noted, is actually quite a fun and addicting game. the framerate suffers sometimes, but its not a huge deal. overall, if you pick it up used say for $25-$30 i'd think it worth it. definitely a game you can leave and come back to again and again. So sorry if the review makes it feel like a downer, its just dont expect to be blown away. its a fun game if you like civ building for sure.