Tropico 3 Gold Edition

This is the game that introduced humor into the Tropico franchise. It's not quite as refined as Tropico 4, but it's still enjoyable. And the graphics still look nice in the present.

Lots of fun and the graphics are an upgrade from Tropico 1 and 2!

So in Tropico you play the role of leader and need to fulfill certain objectives like building the economy, imrpoving the living conditions of your citizens, defending against rebels, etc. You get to build up the island you rule, issues edicts that add buffs, have citizens targeted through specific interactions and interact with the outside world best you can to gain some leverage for yourself. You can also choose a specific ruler when starting an insland to get certain buffs, which, depending on your mission, can be quite useful. You citizens also have starts of what they are good at and what they would like to have in order to be happy. It all sounds very fun, but there are some serious issues. The bigest one is building. It is very hard to have a reliable construction rate throughout the game. The longer the game goes, the more inefficient you construction workers get. It comes to a point that if you dont look after what they are doing you wont have anything built. Building more construction shops doesnt help. Another issues is lack of information. How much certain building produce, how much they use for production, how much they export. You only get to see if they are profitable or not. While the game gives you quite a bit of information that would allow you to micromanage your citizens, you dont have a lot of options of doing so. For example, you can fire anyone from their job, but cant assign them to another. He has to decide for himself. And there is no gurantee the fired person will go into the job you want him to, even if the pay is good. With the amount of things going on on the island, you wont be able to afford babysitting individuals citizens. The ledger where you can get an overview of the things you have is also somewhat unintuitive and it can be hard finding information you want/need. I enjoyed the game for what it had, but the issues outlined make it an average experience at best.

I really wanted to try this out, but I, like others before now, have been hit by the DX 9 incompatibility error which crashes the game as it tries to start. The fact that this has gone unsolved through a patch or update in over a year is disappointing to say the least. It sounds like the game doesn't support a number of integrated chipsets, so be careful when buying it. I have a Radeon HD 6xxxM card, if you do as well steer clear.

Tropico is a true player's game paradise.