Tropico 4 is, in most respects, essentially the same as Tropico 3. Most of the mechanics, buildings, actions, etc. are the same. Many models are graphics are carried over from 3 into 4 (though I think most are spiffed up a bit for 4). The biggest additions to the Tropico 3 formula are a wider variety of natural disasters (3 only had hurricanes and earthquakes), and minor foreign powers in addition to the USA/USSR. All that said, why do I give this game 2 stars, when it's essentially the same as Tropico 3, which is worth 4 or maybe even 5 stars? Well, a few reasons. First, as I've already said, it's too much the same. Tropico 4 just feels like an enhanced rerelease of 3 (and to be fair, you could also say 3 feels like a rerelease of 1). Secondly, the proliferation of DLC. You'll note that, even here on GOG, you have to buy the 11 (!) DLCs separately (though bundled), for as much as the base game itself costs (!). I don't speak for everyone, but I feel that DLC as a business model is usually distasteful, and often (as in this case), the features the DLC adds are largely superfluous additions to a fundamentally sound game design. It feels like a dilution of the main game experience, rather than an expansion of it. Third- this is the most subjective- I feel that the tone of Tropico 4 (and 5) are simply wrong. Tropico 1-3 have a dark, omnipresent sense of humor, but they're still essentially seriously concerned with what life and politics are like in a banana republic. With Tropico 4 the series takes a definite turn towards the wacky over the realist, which 5 continues. All the characters have wacky caricature-type portraits (several traced from unrelated real-life figures), the overarching plot is wacky and implausible, and frankly in general it borders on being insensitive to the people of real-life Central American/Caribbean states. So, on the whole, a game that I feel is less than the sum of its parts, and definitively inferior to its predecessor.
Ironclad Tactics has a pretty cool concept and mechanics (trading card game crossed with turn-based tactics). It has really slick art, solid music, graphic novel-style cutscenes, giant steampunk robots, and a weirdly forgettable plot. I personally really like it, but it has a few issues that frustrate me, and which will probably put some people off of it altogether. First, turns play out in real time, meaning you have a finite amount of time per turn to play cards, and you may well end up not playing a card in time to save a unit or prevent the enemy from scoring a point. You also gain Action Points (used to play cards) in real time, gradually, over the course of a turn. I suppose this was meant to add tension to the game, but it feels unnecessary. Second, for moving so fast on that scale, the game plays surprisingly slowly: you gain AP relatively slowly on most levels, and will frequently end up going a turn or two without being able to play any cards. Single battles regularly last upwards of 50 turns. Third- and it may well be some people won't find this a problem- the AI often gets a faster rate of AP gain than the player, which feels kinda cheap as a way to make up for the AI not being as smart as a human player. All that said, I still really do like this game (enough to give it 4 stars, anyway). It just feels a little disappointing in that it's so close to being great, but falls short. A side note- the game has multiplayer in the Steam version, but the MP is stripped out of the GOG version entirely. AFAIK the Steam version uses Steamworks to facilitate MP, so that's not terribly surprising; but it's galling in that a) there are some cards you can only ever earn or play in MP mode, and b) the game has moments of loading in places you'd expect in an MP game, but which are irritating in an SP game- opening the map, looking at or editing decks, etc. So, if you wanna play this MP- don't get this version.
