Tropico 5 – Complete Collection Review

Have you always dreamed of being in charge of your very own tropical island? Well if you have, this is your chance to become El Presidente of your very own island. Tropical 5 is the newest instalment in the series. It’s a semi-democratic construction and management simulation game. It has been devolved by Haemimont Games and published by Kalypso Media. Tropico 5 allows the player to create and manage your very own island. As you play, you face building your new empire as you travel through the world wars, the Cold War, right up to the present. You will have to make some tough decisions that may not always be favourable to the citizens of your sunny island; but these decisions are vital if you are to end up with a well-oiled city.

So let’s see, before I get into the actual gameplay and whether it’s a good game or not. Let’s talk about how it looks etc. Tropico 5 does look pretty nice. The colours are vibrant, just to remind you that you are in a beautiful part of your virtual world and not stuck in rainy Scotland where you have all the seasons in one day. I have to admit I haven’t played any of the other Tropico games before this. So please bear that in mind that I am looking at this game as a complete newcomer. The music and sound effects are pretty average are pretty normal and as you would expect from a strategy game. Tropico 5 has some background music that does become annoying after a while. Your point of view is from above like most strategy games. Also the controls are pretty much what you. I will however mention they can be a bit fiddly to get used to as for some reason to pan around the screen you use the cursor keys as default instead of the usual W S D A controls. However, you can choose to change this in the options if you like. You can play with your keyboard and mouse or even a game pad if you would prefer. I chose mouse and keyboard as that is what I am used to. I find playing a game like this with a gamepad pretty hard.

Starting off you will begin with the tutorial. This includes building structures and slowly starting to grasp what needs done to become the almighty El Presidente. You start of as a governor in the Victorian era and travel through time with all the various wars and hard times. Slightly strange I thought as you will be very old if you are starting off in the Victorian era, but who am I to complain; this is a game after all. After the tutorials you can start one of the three campaign’s available.

This review is based on the complete collection, which means you have three campaigns to keep you occupied as you have access to all the DLC packs; which include around fourteen extra DLC add-ons for your enjoyment. The two extra campaigns available are ‘Lord of the Pearl’ and ‘The Maltese Toucan’. You don’t seem to have to finish them in any order as you can jump straight into any one of the three campaigns that you wish. There are also quite a number of individual missions and a map pack at your disposal. Having all this included makes Tropico 5 a very large and challenging game, which is great to see.

You certainly get value for money here. Along with all these goodies you also have the usual sandbox mode, and a mission editor is also included where you can create your own missions with tasks you set. I like this mode as if you are struggling with a certain task you can create your very own mission with the task you want to learn better. For example, if you just want to try everything to learn about all the buildings and construction etc., you can give your self-loads of start-up money. Also for the first time in this series you have multiplayer. You can play cooperative and competitively with up to four players. The players can create and build on the same island at once. Working against each other or with each other. Sadly, I did not get to test this part of the game as I have no friends and the thought of playing a stranger that would no doubt destroy me was just too scary. The game is pretty enjoyable to play. I started playing and then realised it had been 4 hours before I took a break.

Tropico 5 – Complete Collection is good fun, but does become very challenging. However, it’s not perfect in any way. I would say if you are into politics and want to see how hard it is to be in charge of a whole city then this is the game for you. If, however you are looking for an easy laid back game then you may want to look elsewhere. There is a lot to take in, but don’t let that scare you. If you put the time in, you will soon start to enjoy yourself. So the final question is, do you rush out and buy this game? I will leave that decision up to you. The only reason I haven’t given this game a ten out of ten score is because of the learning curve. It’s like reading a book, but it does get better the deeper you go.

REVIEW CODE: A complimentary PC code was provided to Bonus Stage for this review. Please send all review code enquiries to press@4gn.co.uk.