Tropico 5 on PC: Fantastic, easy to understand, funny, city building greatness

in #gaming4 years ago

I say "PC" in the title even though it was / is available on Playstation and Xbox. However, I find that almost all games like this can only be truly experienced with a mouse and keypad and find them annoying on a console with a controller. I can't really understand how anyone possibly could enjoy them using a controller - but if you do like that sort of thing I think you are a weirdo but whatever floats your boat!


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Released originally in late 2014, Tropico 5 has a strong following to this day and has been ported to modern-day consoles as well. Today's simplest basic laptop has more than enough power to play this game so it is a fantastic choice for people who normally avoid PC gaming because of system requirements.

It seems a bit like Age of Empires (but with less combat) or Sim City (but with less road management) and unlike both of those titles this game focuses a lot on having a sense of humor.


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You play the role of "El Presidente" and it is your job to build and manage an island banana republic. You import a population (and then later have to play games with immigration to curb population growth) and basically rule with a humorous iron fist. You can cheat at elections, inform the police to kill any rebels, or make odd laws like only the college educated or your friends are allowed to vote.

It is necessary to manage your economy by choosing which types of crops to grow, what kinds of ore to mine, and later (pretty soon in the game actually) what you export becomes a very important part of how it is that your country can grow.


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Your military doesn't play a big role in the game until later and if you are at all like me you probably waited too long to develop it the first time you are invaded and easily get wiped out, then later you overdo it and have entirely too much of it. Don't worry, I think everyone learns this way.

Basically, this game is as complicated as you want it to be but if you simply enjoy balancing how many banana vs cocoa farms to have and don't want to focus on the politics a great deal you can do that in the sandbox version of the game that doesn't have any real campaign. It isn't a terribly difficult game but due to the humor and easy gameplay, I found this to be one of my favorite city builders of all time - actually, it is my favorite and even though it is nearly 6 years old now, I still return to play it on a regular basis.

This game can be picked up routinely for 5-10 dollars these days and I think it is likely one of the best cheap games available today. I can all but guarantee that this game is one that you will definitely get your money's worth out of. At such a discount I think that even though you CAN steal this game and probably know how to (I originally did) it is such a great game that I felt bad and went and bought a real version of it in order to support the developers.

Have you played it? Did you like it?

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LUL! The whole series up to date was a bundle one time on humble bundle and i yet to play a single version. I may have a few extra copies cause some of the games did come with other bundles.

all of them were together on a humble? That's pretty fantastic but i guess it is pretty old. I've never played 6 but i can't imagine them improving upon 5 other than the combat, which was pretty dumb. Either your side totally overwhelmed any invaders or the opposite happened.

I looked into my purchase history. I got tropico 4 as part of a strategy bundle and a few days later on steam tropico 1 2 and 3 were a bundle since i think 4 was still new at that time. This was done back in 2014. If you look at Fanatical right now https://www.fanatical.com/en/game/tropico-trilogy you can get the 1st 3 in a trilogy pack. that exact pack wasn't the same one i got back in 2014. It just happend the 3 games had a discount if you got them in a bundle. Speaking of steam bundles this is the current bundle pack for the whole series up to date https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/1583/The_Tropico_Bundle/ - It has all the games and their DLC's but for some odd reason game 2 is not listed? You may be lucky to see 1 - 4 in a bundle from time to time on humble. Fanatical did have bundles like that too but i don't visit that website as much as i used to. It used to be known as Bundle Stars and when they changed their name that is when i stopped visiting.

I don't stay up to speed on any games but I really did like Age of Empires. If this is just 5 bucks it could be the distraction i need right now.

I think it is a good choice for casual gamers. There really isn't anything to remember such as buttons and what not because the entire thing can be done with a mouse.

casual gamer is a good way of describing me. I'll give it a look, thanks.