Since 2001 the Tropico series has distinguished itself among similar city building and management sims as an in-depth, challenging and yet still fun game. Yes, it required a great deal of rock-paper-scissors balancing and keeping an eye on pages of stats. But, after each completed mission, you felt a sense of satisfaction and achievement that many city builders lack. Tropico 6, the latest offering from Limbic Entertainment, follows in the same vein as its predecessors.
As always the focus is on turning your backwater, banana republic of an island into a thriving and profitable economy. Oh, and lining your pockets as much as possible in the process. Tropico 6 comes with some 15 missions, all of which focus on a particular feature of the game. Many present challenging restrictions or conditions – for example being forbidden from building townhouses and forcing everyone to live in shacks or increasing the populations happiness to a certain level – but all are designed to teach you more about the game and how to beat it.
The level of detail in Tropico 6 can be somewhat daunting to anyone new to games in this genre. There are reams of pages full of stats covering everything from factory production efficiency, population happiness, crime rates to wage levels. The in-game menu system is, as always, very well implemented. But there’s a lot to familiarise yourself with. And, if that’s not enough, everyone on your island paradise belongs to a faction. And, if you want to see yourself being re-elected you’ll have to work increasingly hard to balance the competing demands of each faction. For example, the capitalist needs of the industrialists versus the more egalitarian desires of the communists. Sometimes a foreign power such as the US will make demands on you. In one instance reducing the crime rate around their embassy. This will require more police, watch towers and reduced civil liberties. Rock, paper, scissors. Quite often we’d opt to bribe and assassinate civilians along our road to election. But, sadly, this only increased the level of guerrilla activity on the island, ushering in our early demise.
Luckily, given the demanding level of detail. Limbic Entertainment have ensured you’ll have your hand held through the early stages with a useful training mode that walks you through most of the basics. Tropico 6, however, can be an unforgiving challenge. As in Tropico 5, we often found ourselves running out of money and heading for bankruptcy without really understanding what we were doing wrong. A handy hint system here would have worked wonders. Graphically, Tropico 6 is a gorgeously rendered lush and colourful offering. The buildings are highly detailed and you can zoom in and out enough to recognise individual citizens. Excellent.
The developers have also included the previous game’s option to speed up or freeze time, allowing you pause the game and really soak up the tropical splendour of your surroundings. Alternatively, if you find you’re wasting too much time waiting for buildings to be constructed, you can speed up the game by up to four, so that days become minutes.
There’s tonnes to do in Tropico 6. Once you’ve mastered the 15 missions on offer, there’s also a sandbox mode which comes packed with pre-made maps and the ability to generate randomised ones at will. All in all, Tropico 6 offers some 20 – 30 hours of gaming time which is a bargain for its asking price.
The only minor niggle we had with Tropico 6 was the limited selection of music on offer. Luckily, after a few hours, we were able to switch the up-beat Calypso down and opt instead to pipe our own tunes from Spotify. Apart from the tiny gripe, Tropico 6 is a hugely demanding, challenging and rewarding title. Easily the best city builder available on any platform, Tropico 6 will satisfy your urge to rule at least until Tropico 7 is announced. Go buy.
