This is a positive review with a giant warning.

The short version: This is a good game, but it's missing some things you might expect if you are a long time Tropico fan.
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The long version:

I've played every version of Tropico over the past 20 years with 1000's of hours in the series (long before I had any of them on Steam). What Tropico has always been in the past was a Dictator Sim that happened to let you build cities. Tropico 6 is a city builder that happens to let you be a dictator. That's a subtle but distinct point that only long term fans will truly grasp. The vast majority of new fans seem to think Tropico is "just a city builder", that's never how I've viewed this series.

What's new? Groups of small islands that form one nation. The ability to build bridges and tunnels. The ability to steal monuments from other nations. The broker that lets you spend your Swiss bank account on short cuts.

What's returned from previous games that was missing for a while: raiding, immigration office, ministry building and a few other things.
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What's missing from previous Tropico games?

1. There's no real campaign (compared to T4 or T5) both of which had a campaign and stand alone missions. T6 is 15 stand alone missions, much in the style of T3. Some people may prefer this, but they can feel a lot like simply doing 15 sand boxes with slight goal variations instead of one long interconnected story where your choices early would effect you later.

2. Complete lack of island customization. If you've played T4 you had 100's of individual trees and decorations to pick from that could be placed. I used to like lining my main sidewalks leading up to the palace with palm tress. T6 uses grid restricted parks and no individual decoration placement. This works as a city builder, but it's lacking that personal touch of T4.

3. No dynasty system. T5 let you build a family with various global bonuses, that's gone.

4. No presidente background depth. T2, T3, and T4 all let you customize el presidente's background traits or pick from various dictator styles. T6 has a single trait to pick. A big step back for the series if you're into the role playing aspect of being presidente.

5. The islands are mostly small. There's a couple of big ones, but overall these are much smaller than what most Tropico's have presented. ~ edit: over the course of a year they added a couple additional larger islands to the sandbox options.

6. The radio DJ is generic and repeats the same lines in every mission. This is primarily because there is no campaign. T3, T4, and even T5 had DJ's that commented on what you were doing, kept track of your long term achievements and were aware of the progress over time. This DJ just resets with each new mission and says the same generic lines.

7. deleted complaint ~ 8 months later, version 7.0 they've added social security and several new edicts in a free update.

8. Micromanagement of wage/rent is still missing. T1, T2, T3 and T4 still have the superior wage/rent system. T5 and T6 use a blanket "building budget" that presets the wages and rent and then classifies people into wage tiers for what housing types they can afford. It's really a dumbed down system. It's what you would expect from a city builder for dummies, not what you would expect from a detailed dictator sim like this series used to try and achieve.

9. They disrespected the Tropico Llama by making sheep wool equal to llama. In the real world llama have superior wool. In Tropico's past the llama is a respected animal much prized for its wool, just like the real world. Somehow Tropico 6 has managed to ignore the real world and disrespect Tropico's past. Is this a minor complaint? Probably, but it's an example of 100 more minor complaints that show how little respect this game has for its own franchise.

10. Gone is any depth to the raiding system. Yea, it's back, but Tropico 2 did it better in every possible way. The new version of raiding looks and plays like a bad facebook social media game. Click a box, watch a timer and wait.

11. Housing options are limited, disjointed and make no sense for which era they are unlocked from.

12. Building managers are gone

13. Worker skills are gone, no more people specializing at specific tasks. It's just generic education level

14. We were told before launch and at launch that "full mod support" as well as "island editing & scenario creation" would be added soon EDIT October 2023: It took nearly 4 years, but the game does finally have a full suite of mod tools to create maps and mods. However, these tools must be downloaded from another site and the mods managed through mod io. Steam workshop support is only for trash random maps.
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So why the hell is my review even positive?

The game is functional. The engine (assuming you meet the requirements) is very well built. It's a good looking, good playing game, overall. Honestly this engine is so good that I'm just annoyed that they didn't fully flesh out the game to be everything it could have been.

If they just add what's missing from some of the previous games, a little more depth, a little more respect for Tropico, this could be the best Tropico ever. The foundation for it is "right there" and then they just kind of simplified it and dumbed it down.

Well, for the idiot masses, it's a functional game and I can't bring myself to thumb it down.

But as a long time fan it's also really hard to hold in that they just didn't bother making it better. I still love this franchise, and maybe just maybe they'll flesh this out to what it could have been with time.

There was so much effort put into this game and it shows; but at the same time it's like they just changed some things for the sake of change without thinking about whether it was actually better or even respectful of the series overall. EDIT: It's been almost a year. They do keep patching bug fixes and small additions, but it really just shows the game could have used another year in beta. Changes are coming but far slower than would be expected in a game at this price.

TLDR;
Compared to 4 or even 5 it lacks depth of personalization. 6 is a generic city builder with a vague dictator theme. Compared to 1,2,3 or 4 which were dictator sims that happened to let you build a city or 5 which was a dynasty builder with a much grander plot development.
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EDIT: December 2020 The dev team for T6 (which was new to the franchise) has been fired and yet another new team brought in. So far Realmforge (which took over from Limbic) has been super busy with much needed bug fixing and massive quality control fixes, the game is much more playable and less problematic even in just the short time since they've started working on it.

EDIT: October 2023 Realmforge has been good with supporting the game and bug fixing and the DLC have been much more interesting from them than from Limbic. The games in a good place, especially if you get it on sale.

It won't ever be perfect, but it's still a lot of fun as-is.
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Bottom line: If you are on the fence and that $50 is make or break for you, the rest of the series is cheap and offers as much or more to play through. You can always buy this later once you finish those.
---

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Want to read all of my reviews and not just the curated ones?

This is a positive review with a giant warning. The short version: This is a good game, but it's missing some things you might expect if you are a long time Tropico fan. --- The long version: I've played every version of Tropico over the past 20 years with 1000's of hours in the series (long before I had any of them on Steam). What Tropico has always been in the past was a Dictator Sim that happened to let you build cities. Tropico 6 is a city builder that happens to let you be a dictator. That's a subtle but distinct point that only long term fans will truly grasp. The vast majority of new fans seem to think Tropico is "just a city builder", that's never how I've viewed this series. What's new? Groups of small islands that form one nation. The ability to build bridges and tunnels. The ability to steal monuments from other nations. The broker that lets you spend your Swiss bank account on short cuts. What's returned from previous games that was missing for a while: raiding, immigration office, ministry building and a few other things. --- What's missing from previous Tropico games? 1. There's no real campaign (compared to T4 or T5) both of which had a campaign and stand alone missions. T6 is 15 stand alone missions, much in the style of T3. Some people may prefer this, but they can feel a lot like simply doing 15 sand boxes with slight goal variations instead of one long interconnected story where your choices early would effect you later. 2. Complete lack of island customization. If you've played T4 you had 100's of individual trees and decorations to pick from that could be placed. I used to like lining my main sidewalks leading up to the palace with palm tress. T6 uses grid restricted parks and no individual decoration placement. This works as a city builder, but it's lacking that personal touch of T4. 3. No dynasty system. T5 let you build a family with various global bonuses, that's gone. 4. No presidente background depth. T2, T3, and T4 all let you customize el presidente's background traits or pick from various dictator styles. T6 has a single trait to pick. A big step back for the series if you're into the role playing aspect of being presidente. 5. The islands are mostly small. There's a couple of big ones, but overall these are much smaller than what most Tropico's have presented. ~ [i]edit: over the course of a year they added a couple additional larger islands to the sandbox options.[/i] 6. The radio DJ is generic and repeats the same lines in every mission. This is primarily because there is no campaign. T3, T4, and even T5 had DJ's that commented on what you were doing, kept track of your long term achievements and were aware of the progress over time. This DJ just resets with each new mission and says the same generic lines. [strike]7. deleted complaint[/strike] ~ [i]8 months later, version 7.0 they've added social security and several new edicts in a free update.[/i] 8. Micromanagement of wage/rent is still missing. T1, T2, T3 and T4 still have the superior wage/rent system. T5 and T6 use a blanket "building budget" that presets the wages and rent and then classifies people into wage tiers for what housing types they can afford. It's really a dumbed down system. It's what you would expect from a city builder for dummies, not what you would expect from a detailed dictator sim like this series used to try and achieve. 9. They disrespected the Tropico Llama by making sheep wool equal to llama. In the real world llama have superior wool. In Tropico's past the llama is a respected animal much prized for its wool, just like the real world. Somehow Tropico 6 has managed to ignore the real world and disrespect Tropico's past. Is this a minor complaint? Probably, but it's an example of 100 more minor complaints that show how little respect this game has for its own franchise. 10. Gone is any depth to the raiding system. Yea, it's back, but Tropico 2 did it better in every possible way. The new version of raiding looks and plays like a bad facebook social media game. Click a box, watch a timer and wait. 11. Housing options are limited, disjointed and make no sense for which era they are unlocked from. 12. Building managers are gone 13. Worker skills are gone, no more people specializing at specific tasks. It's just generic education level [strike]14. We were told before launch and at launch that "full mod support" as well as "island editing & scenario creation" would be added [i]soon[/i][/strike] EDIT October 2023: It took nearly 4 years, but the game does finally have a full suite of mod tools to create maps and mods. However, these tools must be downloaded from another site and the mods managed through mod io. Steam workshop support is only for trash random maps. --- So why the hell is my review even positive? The game is functional. The engine (assuming you meet the requirements) is very well built. It's a good looking, good playing game, overall. Honestly this engine is so good that I'm just annoyed that they didn't fully flesh out the game to be everything it could have been. If they just add what's missing from some of the previous games, a little more depth, a little more respect for Tropico, this could be the best Tropico ever. The foundation for it is "right there" and then they just kind of simplified it and dumbed it down. Well, for the idiot masses, it's a functional game and I can't bring myself to thumb it down. But as a long time fan it's also really hard to hold in that they just didn't bother making it better. I still love this franchise, and maybe just maybe they'll flesh this out to what it could have been with time. There was so much effort put into this game and it shows; but at the same time it's like they just changed some things for the sake of change without thinking about whether it was actually better or even respectful of the series overall. EDIT: It's been almost a year. They do keep patching bug fixes and small additions, but it really just shows the game could have used another year in beta. Changes are coming but far slower than would be expected in a game at this price. TLDR; Compared to 4 or even 5 it lacks depth of personalization. 6 is a generic city builder with a vague dictator theme. Compared to 1,2,3 or 4 which were dictator sims that happened to let you build a city or 5 which was a dynasty builder with a much grander plot development. --- EDIT: December 2020 The dev team for T6 (which was new to the franchise) has been fired and yet another new team brought in. So far Realmforge (which took over from Limbic) has been super busy with much needed bug fixing and massive quality control fixes, the game is much more playable and less problematic even in just the short time since they've started working on it. EDIT: October 2023 Realmforge has been good with supporting the game and bug fixing and the DLC have been much more interesting from them than from Limbic. The games in a good place, especially if you get it on sale. It won't ever be perfect, but it's still a lot of fun as-is. ---- Bottom line: If you are on the fence and that $50 is make or break for you, the rest of the series is cheap and offers as much or more to play through. You can always buy this later once you finish those. --- [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/38232109/]While you are here, would you consider following my curator page?[/url] [url=https://steamcommunity.com/id/kunovega/recommended/]Want to read all of my reviews and not just the curated ones?[/url]