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While it technically has more buildings, that's about all that can really be said for T6. It lacks presidente backgrounds and customization traits, it lacks a campaign mode, it lacks individual tree and decoration placement, it lacks micromanagement of wage/rent and quite a few other things
There's 15 stand alone missions (the way T3 used to be ~ compared to T4 and T5 both of which had entire campaigns + stand alone missions). So overall content is lower, customization is lower, ability to control wage/rent is lower and so on
Overall the list of what's missing (for me) is longer than the list of what's included. Which is a shame because the engine itself is solid and functional. The framework for a good game is here but it's missing so much compared to T4 and T5 that it's just kinda meh
If this was Tropico 3 and the first attempt at rebooting tropico into a 3D engine I'd say they were on a good path, the problem is we've already seen what the series can evolve into (T4 and/or T5) but this is a dumbed down T3, a step backwards in many ways
Even the "new" systems aren't that special. T6 brings back "raiding" which was a thing missing since T2, the problem is T2's version had depth and was interesting. T6's version is a social media style click and wait timer, it's just a progress bar with no interesting choices to be made.
Bridges and tunnels are welcome additions, if it wasn't for the fact they just mask how tiny the islands are and how little room there is to do anything interesting with farming other than to follow the missions instructions and be done with it
There's not even workers skills or managers, it's just generic people with nothing special to think about or make choices over
If it continues in this direction T6 will be a hollow fish bowl of a city builder that has more in common with Anno than previous Tropico's aside from the music and location
The radio DJ and adviser commentary is not even that funny, it's just a couple of routine jokes all on repeat. T3, T4 and T5 all had more depth and humor
"Hi I'm a nun that swears!" That's great, I'm not sure that qualifies as a joke, but would you please stop telling me this every time we meet? Why is this your only line of dialogue?
Nonetheless, you can also get your own impression of the game, by simply getting through YouTube and Twitch for example, as the Beta has no NDA and can be Let's Play-ed and streamed by everybody, who is playing it.
Therefore, you should definitely have a look on your own, also in order to see, if the game meets your preferences and likings.
-cheers
I played T4 and T5 a decent bit and much like Metal Burr above, I was on the fence about buying this and I hadn't really seen it get much love on reddit and there was some iffy feedback so I was holding off. But, I ended up with some time off (wife had surgery) and I had 45 dollars so I pulled the trigger. They released an update today that was a whole bunch of balance changes, tweaks, and bug fixes including (but not limited to) increasing the impact of the presidente's traits and a whole pile of tweaks related to pathing and goods transport.
Well, it's a beta and, imo, visual customization and 30 minor background options are low priority additions that can be supplemented later on when all the important gameplay-related stuff is worked out. Systems have changed and things are different than how they were in 5 at least. Swiss bank money has actual, short term in-game uses now (through 'the Broker') instead of leveling up your background and there are currently 8 different 'Traits' to choose that are just at full strength and have a decent impact from the start. I say 'currently' because, again, it's a beta and the menu looks like it's got plenty of space on it for more. They've given some options to play around with and will likely add more on down the road. Same goes for visual customization. You can customize your presidente's race, sex, face, hair, beard, hat, sunglasses, outfit and the colors of all those things with at least a handful of options in each category. Seems like the kind of thing that would be pretty easy to add more to later.
This is true. There are only 5 available missions right now but there are also 10 missions that are locked and we have no idea what they are or how long they are. It's a picture of a map with a big padlock on it and no description. As it stands, the missions that are visible are fairly simple, contained within 1-2 eras, but that doesn't mean all of them are that way. Also, there are 16 other maps (31 total) that are in sandbox mode and haven't been made into missions yet. Seems like the kind of thing where they gave us a taste for the beta and would be pretty easy to add more later. Or allow for user created content in the workshop.
Personally, I'm not that big of a 'missions' guy anyway. I usually play the campaign just to see it and, once in a while, I like a game with a specific focus or purpose, but I've always preferred the more free-form game modes in basically all city builders and strategy type games. I can see the appeal but I'm content to make head-canon for my world if there are a bunch of maps to play on and enough settings to alter things here and there. My motivation is to make a sprawling metropolis and collect that sweet sweet fake money.
Also, I might be wrong on this one, but I'd wager that they don't want to release a major story arc during the beta. That's what I'd do if I were them at least.
I mean, there are 9 different decoration tiles. A 1x1, a 2x1, and multiple 2x2, 2x3, and 3x3 parks and a fountain. And each of those tiles has at least 1 additional variation that you can access by holding down alt and scrolling on the mousewheel like the tooltip suggests. If literally individual tree placement is a dealbreaker then deal broken, but I've been happily enjoying making these nice little communal open space park areas in my housing developments. T4 and T5 didn't have tree placement I don't think... did they?
I can tell a worker that he makes 4, 6, 7, 8, or 10 dollars. That's poor, lower middle class, middle class, upper middle class, and wealthy. I don't think we need to bring change into this. You can't set what the rent is on each housing structure, but you control that by what you choose to build and you can also issue housing welfare in case you want to let people live in housing above their means. I don't think T4 or 5 had wages/rent that was more granular than that. I know T5 didnt, it's been longer since I played 4. I never played 3, but I don't think I would want it more granular than that.
I sort of agree here, the raiding doesn't really seem like its got a lot of meat on it's bones as a mechanic but, as a person who didn't experience it in T2, I'm actually alright with it just being another semi-passive resource generator. You can select what the raiders are going to do (i.e. "persuade" new colonists to join, search for a few different sets of resources, search for treasure, find blueprints, or plan a heist for a world wonder). That's fine with me and hasn't felt like it detracts from my enjoyment. Every once in a while you choose what they do and every once in a while they come back with something potentially useful. Like, what is this series besides making a decision, configuring things in a way, and then letting time play it out?
Ok, look, I've been to Aruba, Trinidad and Tobago, Puerto Rico and Jamaica as well as a couple places on both the Gulf coast and Pacific coast of Mexico. Islands aren't always big like the Dominican Republic or Cuba. Aruba is only like 7-8 miles tip-to-tip, I drove around the entire island in a day, on a four wheeler. You know how many farms are there? A handful. It's not like the US where there is a billion square miles of fertile farmland right in the middle. Like a quarter of the entire place is a nature preserve/national park. It's a 3.5 hour ferry ride to go from Trinidad to Tobago or you have to get on a plane. Bridges are a luxury.
I personally hope there's a scenario that is "no bridges, archipelago" and everything has to be transported by boat or plane. I find it enjoyable to find ways to deal with the imperfect-ness of it. It's realistic to try and do the best with what you've got and remember that an endeavor can be profitable even if it isn't "optimally" profitable and that's the way the world is. Sorry you can't build a 1,000,000 acre sugar farm with 20 rum distilleries lined up next to it like you might in Factorio or something. The whole point is that you're supposed to use this entire imperfect space to create a thriving ecosystem as best you can.
Honestly, that's way more than I wanted to write on a steam forum but I got carried away. I haven't owned it super long but I've put a decent chunk of hours in on account of being at home. It has been enjoyable. The gameplay is similar to the ones I've played, but also a bit different. I like the new trade menu and I find that most of the statistics-related menus are fairy informative about what's going on. The graphics are pleasant -- temporal anti-aliasing is good, the shadows and lighting looks good, it seems stable with everything cranked to max at 144hz. The menus and controls are snappy and responsive.
Most importantly, for me at least, they are actively communicating and trying to make it better by repairing bugs, making mechanical tweaks, adding QoL things (I'm pretty sure keybinds for the menu bar weren't in there yesterday... I was pissed off about it but maybe I just didn't register them when I was looking).
Which is the only reason I'm still here. They get 10 to 20 hours of testing and feedback from me every week for the last 6 months. I could list you 200+ things they've actually listened to and fixed. There are many things that were straight up bad or broken, but it's a beta and believe me I am more than forgiving of bugs, glitches and things that I know will get fixed with time.
I'm still going to note the things they missed that were important aspects of previous Tropico games.
Buy it and play it for yourself has always been my position, but people still ask for comparisons.
I will say this: for people who just want a fish bowl city builder (anno, cities skylines, etc) they are likely to be satisfied with Tropico 6 once it's finished. For those who wanted the RPG aspect of "being presidente" it's currently lacking compared to both T3 and T4 in depth of background and island decoration.
Can it be added later? Maybe, but these are core systems that I currently dislike from the ground up in their design, these aren't functional flaws, they are design decisions that limit the game compared to previous Tropico's
I don't personally care that much about visual customization of el presidente. What I do harp on (endlessly) is the lack of background and multi-trait choices.
The choose a single-trait mechanic is borrowed from Tropico 5, but with T5 you had an entire dynasty to flesh out your family and additional traits.
The comparison of T3/T4 is you had a fully well rounded background for your presidente or you had T5 with a dyansty and a family of traits.
T6 lacks both and that's not a positive for a series like this to be removing established expectations from the overall brand. 1 trait to pick? I don't even like most of the choices, that they increased their effect is meaningless to the overall design.
No comment (we can talk in private if you really want to get into details on missions)
T4 absolutely did. You had dozens of trees, small planters, decorations and customiztion options of small things that let you customize your island.
I would line my main road sidewalks with swinging trees. I'd place little benches and lights on corners. I'd place extra trucks and sandbags near watch towers. The amount of customization items in T4 was extensive and the bulk of it was not grid locked so that it could be added freeform to really customize an area
T5 was a step back (and got a lot of complaints for it), T6 is an even bigger step down with even less options
That's my biggest complaint and it shows in many areas of the overall design. T6 despite being a very nice engine is missing core elements of the older games, and while T5 missed some of them, I can't be happy to see T6 missing even more
You simply don't remember. T1, T2, T3 and T4 used a system where you could set wages and rent with precision. If you wanted a flat communist system where everyone was paid identical, you could do that. If you wanted a farmers paradise where your farmers were rich and your college workers were low pay, you were allowed to do that. (you might suffer emigration, but then you could turn off emigration and be an evil dictator if you wanted to)
That's a huge part of what's missing in both T5 and even worse in T6: you are forced to pay in a tiered system. It's dumbed down, stupid and forces you to be at least skewed towards capitalism and being a reasonable somewhat nice ruler
Why is this removal of options being accepted as a positive thing for the game?
This series used to give you the freedom to be any kind of ruler you wanted to be. T5 took away some of that, T6 takes away even more.
Less and less options in a franchise is not a good thing. What's next with T7? Will it just play the game for you without any decisions to make?
T6 already has your hands tied with the very fundamental wage/rent basics to limit you to a very narrow selection of options, even more so than T5 (and that was one of the worst aspects of T5)
The earliest beta did not have any keyboard controls at all, trust me I'm more than aware of QoL and control changes. Even the amount you can pull back has been adjusted, early beta was nose-to-the-ground you couldn't see more than one building on screen at a time.
But again, I don't post and complain about those kinds of things, I'm fully invested in this as a beta and those are the types of functional tweaks I expect (and have seen) throughout the process
As an engine and a functional game I have almost no complaints. The devs are going to put out a functional game, of that I'm certain.
But as a long time fan of the series that can dissect for you the minutia of actual game systems from one to the next over the last 20 years, I'm not happy with core systems being dumbed down with less options than previous games in the series
T5 did this with some systems but added others to make up for it and at least at the time there was hope some of the missing systems might come back in the future, those hopes are gone with the change of developers
T6 takes on the missing systems of T5 and removes even more. This stripping of control and customization makes T6 a functional but not necessarily fun experience, unless what you are looking for is a stripped down city builder
Unfortunately that's not what Tropico used to be. It used to be a dictator simulator. The point was to rule how you wanted, customize your background, control your rent/wages, decide exactly how your people will live and how much control you will place over them and then see if you could keep them from rebelling from your decisions
Somewhere along the line that was forgotten and now it's just build a city and watch your ants be happy
I don't particularly like Annoy, Sim City, Cities Skylines or the rest with that type of playstyle. I play Tropico for the dictator sim and the humor, both of which are sorely lacking in T6.
When I can list you things from T1, T2, T3, T4 and T5 that the franchise previously included I have to wonder why so much is missing from T6 at a very core level
I'll say it again: for those who want a fishbowl city builder and play primarily sandbox, you may not even notice the difference
For those that played Tropico to have a dictator sim with the freedom to be any kind of dictator you want to be, that's largely missing along with most of the jokes
If you ask me, I liked Tropico 3 Vanilla more than Tropico 4 Vanilla, by Vanilla, I mean without DLCs. And part of the reason for this is single player missions. I did not like Tropico 4's story mode as while it had a story, it is a repetitive mess. If you recall, you played in the same map twice from scratch. This is why I still think Tropico 6's single player missions will be better than Tropico 4's story mode. If Tropico 6 had the same story mode as 5, which is amazing, I'm okay with that too, but quite frankly, I'm not fond of the plot from the Richard Nixon thing to the time travelling. And I don't think I'll expect an amazing story in Tropico 6 so I'm actually quite pleased that Tropico 6 will sport single player missions instead.
End of the day, it's about preference. I haven't played the beta in quite a while, but I think I'm gonna check again and see if it's good. And I would say that we can still look forward to the modding.
We have confirmation that there will be at least one DLC.
There's been no mention of size or any hint of more beyond that
regarding other factors...
I could give a rats a** about what el presedente looks likes. I think making that customizable was a waste of dev time that could of been used to add previous core features. I don't like the grid aspect. Not having that is what made tropico unique as well. And i love the ability to modify wage/rent for every single building. I cant believe they dumbed that down. There is so much missing from newer tropicos that they dont even interest me anymore. I am curious what the reviews will say after while of the game being released now. Will people be furious that they are continuing in this direction or do they want it dumbed down? Ive now categorized this game as a cautionary buy, so i will read 100's of reviews good and bad before footing the money for this game now.
ps: who still misses some phrases from T1 "Soooo sad!!!" or "Presidente, I believe some of your people may be calling for elections next year".
Tropico 1 was great for it's core concept
Tropico 2 was an interesting twist in another era using the same basic design that introduced a raiding element and honestly one of the best features that the series has been missing ever since: personal plots of land that the owner upgrades over time based on their growing wealth
Tropico 3 an attempt at remaking T1 in 3D and modernizing it. Overall decent job as an upgrade and further expanded on the presidente backgrounds
Tropico 4 took the series from satire into parody, introduced an ongoing campaign mode and really went all out on individual trees and decoration placement. Even ignoring the campaign it was still mostly an upgrade over T3 with more variety
Tropico 5 was an attempt to remake the engine itself (which had been used for all the previous games) due to inherent flaws in the way it actually worked. More here:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/237667/Starting_From_Scratch_Haemimont_Games_Tropico_5_postmortem.php#tophead
T5 was missing a few things, notably the wage/rent micromanagement and full presidente background. What it brought new was the dynasty and a broader era structure along with sweeping improvements to core functions (like how farms are placed).
Having played all of them I was not a huge fan of T5 but I could still appreciate what they were trying to do. The hope was they would bring back some of the elements they missed in rebuilding the engine; but we'll never know because that dev team is now gone
----
Tropico 6 is a new team and another new engine. To me it's the shell of Tropico 3 without the soul or the humor and with the dumbed down parts of T5 simplified even further
Tropico 6 has an incredibly solid engine, I could really write praises for the functionality of the game all day long which has been improved with every step of the beta, non stop. But I can't tell you anything new that it brings to the series that isn't just sort of tacked on.
And the list of what's missing is based on having actually played all 5 other games in the series for 20 years.
Every time I want to do something special it just isn't there. I can't be a particular style of ruler, I can't decorate my island to be mine, I can't treat my people how I want to treat them.
Even visually it's hard to praise the game much, it's not that it's bad it just isn't vibrant. Everything is sort of pastel and bland and the buildings all look very similar.
This is the first Tropico in 20 years where I actually have to look closely to tell the buildings apart because most of them are just not distinct or eye catching.
It all just sort of blends together into a pastel time waster.
Tropico 2 kinda took a sideways step, was improved in some areas and added the pirates thing, which apparently everyone has wanted back since.
Tropico 3 was like tropico 1 done properly, and dragged into 3D, at a time when all games had to be dragged into 3D. But for Tropico, it worked well enough - it was great to see your island with more freedom and realism. A damn, damn good game!
Tropico 4 was like Tropico 3.5, good but not much new, could arguably have been an expansion pack (even allowing for it's own expansion packs).
Tropico 5 was interesting as it was both a sideways step again, in some areas, but also another genuine modernisation. The graphics were updated, the gameplay was refreshed and a very strong, if whacky campaign mode was offered. T5 lost/simplified some elements that were missed by many, but in it's own right it was an extremely playable and addictive game.
Tropico 6 has modernised graphically once again, courtesy of Unreal Engine 5. But it has also simplified the gameplay further than T5, without having anything like the gameplay depth of T5, or in fact any of the previous games imo. The soul of Tropico has been bent and tortured through each release in the series, but in T6, it's been released from that torture. The soul, simply isn't there anymore. But it does have more buildings! If you literally just want to build, then I reccomend you buy LEGO. I mean, um.. Tropico 6 ;)
I could not agree more to a review. In 20 years it is the first time that I play a new Tropico game series and did not get addicted. Even Tropico 5 being a step back from 4 and also silly and too easy for me, it still looks that Tropico 6 will be a step back from the 5. Please devs, add more "tropican" soul to this game.
Thanks