Tropico 3 (PC)

Close, but no cubano.
10/29/2009 9:05 AM | 2 Comments | Page 1 of 2

If you didn't get your fill of the year 2000 with Majesty 2: The Fantasy Kingdom Sim, maybe you'll be satisfied with Tropico 3, a sequel to PopTop's 2001 city-management sim. Bulgarian developer Haemimont returns the series to its roots with a tone-perfect update of the original Tropico's banana-republic themes.

You play the local strong man/woman of a Cold War Caribbean island. As in all city-building games, your primary concern is to keep your people well fed and well cared-for. But where most simcities have you focused on keeping your municipal accounts in the black, Tropico 3 gives you a couple of other things to worry about. First, your final score is partially based on how much of the island's cash you can squirrel away in a Swiss bank account. Second, you can be fired by your people -- they will form rebel groups, the army can depose you in a coup, you can get killed in a riot if you get too close ... El Presidente has many things on his mind.

One of the great innovations from the original Tropico that is kept here is that every citizen has a unique perspective on the island. They aren't clones with identical desires and priorities. One corn farmer might be a raging communist that really hates his job, whereas his colleague could be a pious man who is content with his lot in life but really needs that cathedral you keep promising. Citizens also have different attitudes toward the various factions in the game, and their allegiance to a group will further determine how much they like you. Each faction has needs, each individual has needs, and the combined needs and desires paint a picture of a deep and fascinating island. There are too many citizens for you to really care what Juan Valdez might want, but the Tropico 3 population feels alive in a way that most other city-builders don't.

Unless you impose martial law, your wannabe kleptocrat has to face the voters every five years. Because the population is often little more than a nebulous network of likes and dislikes, though, elections are uninteresting affairs. You just need to look at the island's general religious rating or economic performance and pitch your campaign in that direction. The depth of voter interests just becomes another big number to obey.

An opponent is chosen from one of the factions, but you never really see any buildup to who the opponent might be until the campaign begins. Why is this unemployed senior citizen running for president? Since you never see your opponent campaigning or rallying support, he or she becomes yet another red shirt to cream on election day.

And you will cream your opponent. For most of the campaign and in every sandbox game I played, it doesn't take too long to get your economy in good shape -- and if you do run a debt because you pay the people too much, they don't seem to care. Once the money starts rolling in from oil or tourists or jewelry or furniture, then you can spend your way into your people's hearts. A couple of early elections may look close, at least up until you deliver your campaign speech, which will always bring votes in your favor. You only need to suspend elections or rig the vote count for fun; there's rarely any real danger of losing your position through the ballot.

Therefore, the bullet turns out to be a very unnecessary alternative. Since the rocking economy usually means the people are happy, only a few malcontents will bother rebelling. Only a halfwit would let his soldiers sleep in shacks, so the chance of a military coup isn't very great past the early game, either. The only real risk is that one of the superpowers will invade your island paradise. But it's not too hard to keep the eagle and the bear pacified.

All this promised threat and danger that rarely materializes makes Tropico 3 less a banana-republic sim than a Caribbean theme park. The music and the heavily accented radio announcer reinforce this mood of lighthearted farce, with dire warnings you never have to really face unless you are asleep at the switch. And there's nothing wrong with a theme park.