Tropico 3's Fidelismo Fun might not be revolutionary, but the bullets, bananas, and ballot boxes will keep you busy.
never got around to playing the earlier installments in this series. from what we've gathered it's graphically a step up, but no big leap in terms of gameplay. suits us just fine. of course there are things that could have been improved upon. the island topology tends to be a little annoying placing buildings, could have made some of the political management tools more significant, gameplay could have been a bit more varied.
couldn't help but compare this game to evil genius, another stylistic tycoon-esque management game. would have liked to have seen some of the management tools borrowed from there. as it is in tropico, there are a lot of options that really don't matter all that much.
they give you access to this data so you could see who's running against you in an election. you can do all sorts of stuff like send them to prison, get them religiously persecuted, kill them off, bribe them, but none of which has any impact on the game you're playing. there's some super micromanagement possibilities with trying to get skilled workers situated in the best profession, but they sort of auto do that anyway. the drive of the game is to get a high score, but it's a solo game. we're not planning to show off our maps or scores, so the online component comes across as too contrived for our tastes. it'd be tough to make city building strategy interesting & competitive.
some of the edicts included sound interesting, but aren't given any sort of special animation and quite a few carry a trade off for positive/negative effect that can just be avoided entirely. why waste money on marshall law when it slows your production and takes away money that can be put into building up your army or whatever's bugging your citizens? or setting emigration guidelines? same goes for inquisition.
love the custom avatar set up, choosing attributes, giving a little uniqueness to the experience. great idea. would have been nice to have at least had the full assortment of avatar wardrobe the other tropicans have in game.
the us and ussr relations idea is novel, but it could be better. the gameplay style doesn't seem to differ too much because at any given time you'll be trying to maximize tropico's relationship with both.
don't get us wrong, this is a game that plays well and will keep you playing, but its style trumps its substance and you'll wish for more. its not unlike any other sim game in that once you've seen all the buildings there's not much else. would have been nice to have advisers or more characters or something more to break up the monotony of starting the island from scratch each mission. they try a bit with scripted events, but they're just text or an often repeated voice over from tropico's DJ and not overly interesting.
now that we've had spent even more time with the game, (accomplished dictator over here) another problem springs to mind that is going to hurt the probability that we'll be interested in ever reinstalling this game when we're finished with it. as fun as it is right now, every map kinda plays the same. early on you'll be rushing around to boost the population and production, but you'll reach a point pretty quickly where you'll have more than enough resources to do whatever you want. following this one simplistic strategy of boosting immigration and industry exports right away you'll never have any real problem with completing objectives or maintaining rule.
we'd love to see an expansion, but we won't hold our breath. haven't played around with the online content yet, but it looks like more of the same. it's the style and charm that ultimately sets this city building political strategy apart. wish we could give the game a higher score, but we feel we're already pushing it. it is what it is and it's still good.
viva el presidente!
+ 20 Nationalists
- 10 Intellectuals