IS IT WORTH TO BUY Tropico 5 - Complete Collection

[oagrimsrud]

ON SALE WHEN IT COMES?

[Kunovega]

on sale yea, there's enough campaign length and missions (all the DLC add stand alone missions, 2 of them add mini campaigns) for 100+ hours of gameplay

if you're a sandbox only player, you might like tropico 3 or 4 better, but if you play out the entire game, there's some value to 5 despite its flaws

[oagrimsrud]

ok what is the game about ?

[Kunovega]

Originally posted by oagrimsrud:

ok what is the game about ?

So, you've never played a tropico game then... OK...

At it's core the franchise attempts to be a pollitcal simulator focused on running your own caribean island. It mixes some city design with basic politcal decisions, it likes to say you can be a dictator or a president, but functionally you are generally going to be a president "for life" and if you fail at getting elected (for decades in a row) you will fail (and trying to run it as a military dicatorship under martial law with no elections is somewhere between difficult and impossible except for short periods of time)

Each game is stand alone (aside from some jokes that carry over). The original game had a somewhat serious tone, it was a pardoy of being a dictator (any dictator, though Castro was probably the most fitting of the ones you could choose and Cuba the closest pardoy of which island nation you were sort of playing)

The 2nd game took you further back in time and made you a pirate king running your own caribean island.

The 3rd game was a reboot of the first, still a bit serious with some jokes thrown in. This is probably the best of the sort-of serious tone games in the franchise. In both 3 and 4 you have some amazing customizations of your president and a real variety of ways to approach your missions starts.

From 1, 2 and 3 the game was all stand alone missions, lots of missions, you had a goal, you achieved that goal and then you started a new map with a new president. (there was sandbox as well where you set your own goals)

With 4 they introduced storyline and the game became a full on comedy. Instead of a serious take on being a president you were now a time traveling super president that ran a series of islands throughout time. Your advisors go with you from one time period to another. It's the best running, most variety and funniest of the series. There's still some stand alone missions as an option and sandbox. But rather than being a parody of castro/cuba, 4 is a parody of the past 3 games.

5 is from the same team that made 3 and 4, but they built a new engine (the previous 4 had been evolutions of the same engine over the years). 5's new engine makes the game run really well, and there's a lot of functional improvements, but they also managed to forget a few things and if I'm honest it feels like a dumbed down (and much easier) version of what 4 might have been.

5 is very much an (attempted) evolution of 4, it's a parody of a parody where you play a president for life of a small caribean island only this time, you aren't playing 1 person anymore. You have a dynasty (that you grow) of up to 7 people, any one of them can be president from election to election, each has their own skill set they are born with that you have to level up. Whoever isn't president can be assigned as a manager to a building and improve it's function.

And it carries over the time traveling wierdness of 4 to an even stranger degree. Instead of playing 1 island at a time through the ages, you bounce back and forth among several islands (often going back to previous islands in a new era of time that still contain things you built there). So while the game wants to tell you that it's a political simulation of a caribean president, you are really a time traveling family of wierdos trying to be super heros and save the world (yes it gets that freaking wierd) going back and forth through time repeatedly accross many islands as their rulers.

The story is entertaining but not nearly as funny as 4, the city building is simpler and more straight forward than ever and much of the customization of your president is gone in favor of "having a dynasty" as your traits are now spread accross 7 people (that you collect and level up over time)

The main campaign is long and covers several islands, all of which you play several times in various era's of time. The 2 mini campaigns added by DLC are similar but shorter with their own set of goals. The other DLC add individual missions (that play more like tropico 3 used to). And of course, there is sandbox (though it feels more constrained than in the past for some reason)

Every game in the series has something to offer, 2 being the only one where you play a pirate king, 3 being the most serious straight forward take on the concept, 4 being the funniest and 5 being the most mainstream attempt at shorhorning in a story where it kind of wasn't needed

5's a good game, it's flaws are that it's not as funny as 4, not as hard as 3, and not as cool as 2

I'm not even sure how much you'll appreciate 5 without having played the previous ones, I'm almost going to recomend starting with 3, then 4 and then 5 just to see the franchise evolve (1 and 2 were awesome, but they are super old and unless you can stomach old school games, they may be too old as a new player)

Anyway, if playing a caribean president/slash dictator sounds interesting, pick one of the games in the franchise and give it a try. Tropico 6 is coming soon and none of us has any real idea what to expect with it. The publisher (that owns the games rights) has fired the studios that made tropicos 1 through 5 and hired a completely new development team and they are using a new engine entirely that none of the past games have used, so no one knows whats coming next

[battlezoby]

Tropico 5 only has one main campaign without DLC, consisting of 6 missions.
The two more expensive DLC's, the Waterbourne DLC and the Espionoge DLC I think, each have additional campaigns of 6 missions each.

So if you're not going to do multiplayer, which most people don't, you're doing to want
those because you will be doubling and trippling the number of missions/campaigns.

If not for sales and bundles, I'd say get the game and then add those on.

I think the bundle normally cost about the same as the game with just those two DLC sold seperately, so you might as well get it.

Also, if you are going to trying multiplayer, you don't want to turn down someone else's game (because it's hard to find someone to play with) so it's best to get all the "standard" DLC's that steam offers in the bundle so that you'll be playing the same Tropico as the majority of the people. :-) [Btw... you can always turn off DLC on the "Library" page of Steam, just uncheck them by scrolling down below the "Play" button.]

Keep in mind though that some of the DLC's are quietly sold as "pay to win"... they make the game easier. If you want maximum enjoyment, try the game without the DLC's loaded, and then you can add them in to make the game easier/most-updated.

Keep in mind, the original players (I'm not one of them, I loved Tropico 4 so much I waitied on Tropico 5) got the experience of playing without DLC's and then getting a fresh experience as each came out. You may or may not want to take the time to recreate that experience for yourself.

[Smecol]

€ 9.19, and it works!
On CDkeys, just search for Tropico 5