Tropico 5: Penultimate Edition is a semi-democratic construction and management simulator which places you in the shoes of El Presidente who starts off with a colony under the British Empire and must declare independence and advance it through various eras. You manage a country and have to preserve it through the World Wars, Cold War and present-day challenges. Tropico 5 is a complicated experience which requires mastery of various aspects of your island such as understanding expenses and revenue, faction happiness and foreign relations. While the game isn’t as complicated as a title like Sim City, its blend of humor and accessibility makes it stand on its own as a great experience.
One of the most unique aspects of this game has to be the ability to influence the mindset of the populace by carrying out certain actions. You start off the game by having a limited mandate to govern. Building guard towers and meeting the demands of revolutionaries either changes the perception of people or brings individuals who support independence to your nation. Once you achieve 51% approval, you can proclaim independence. This gives you two choices: either pay the British around $20,000 or have them invade. Invasion opens up a new set of conditions because you can lose the war if you haven’t built enough army bases and other military installations.
It takes at least a few hours and playthroughs of the tutorial to fully understand the majority of Tropico 5’s mechanics and how to succeed. The tutorial could make accessing certain information clearer and more user-friendly. Some parts of the tutorial are woefully inadequate. For example, the most frustrating issue I encountered was when I kept on losing the election after declaring independence and allowing every citizen to vote. I couldn’t understand why my support kept on decreasing until I went on some obscure Yahoo! Answers page and read that I had to select Factions from one of the convoluted menus and see why certain groups were angry at my regime. However, even doing so proved to be problematic because once I knew why they were angry, I didn’t know how to appease them without experimenting with various actions. While I feel that my inability to apply logic to this game played some part in my frustration, having a more in-depth tutorial would’ve made it easier for me and, I imagine, many other players.
Going back to my example, the religious faction was angry at me for creating a secular state. So, to appease them, I increased the funding of the Catholic mission and built a new church. After this they were quite pleased and my approval went up, but maybe providing players with the minimum needed to accomplish these important tasks to win elections—if you don’t win you lose the game—would be a nice and helpful touch.
As the game progresses, declaring independence becomes the least of your concerns. El Presidente has to juggle foreign relations between the Axis and Allied factions in order to prevent any invasions. If one side becomes angry at you, they might invade when you’re so weak that you have no infrastructure to defend yourself. However, this is much easier to do than overcoming the initial hurdles present in the tutorial. The Cold War is quite similar as you have to walk a delicate path between supporting the United States and Russia. Lastly, the globalized modern era opens up new opportunities and only the most skilled players can succeed at this stage. Many other powers emerge and have plans for the future of your nation. It’s more complex and more rewarding at the same time. The amount of foreign aid you receive depends on how you balance these dynamics.
What I just spent countless words describing doesn’t even cover a fraction of what Tropico 5 has to offer. Just like other construction and management titles, you have to build your own nation brick by brick…or should I say building by building? There are dozens of different structures to choose from which offer you various benefits like ranches, mines, logging operations, newspaper outlets, barracks, taverns, restaurants, apartment buildings, mansions, houses and so much more. If you can think it, you can probably build it once you’ve reached that stage in the game or have enough in your treasury. How you strengthen your economy is up to you because you can either be an agriculture-focused nation or one that specializes in meat exports or metals.
Corruption also plays a major role in how Tropico 5 operates. There are certain objectives that require you to set up a Swiss bank account, bribe citizens and eliminate political opponents. While it’s not a serious implementation of political corruption, it still adds a new dimension to the gameplay.
The title offers you a variety of ways to experience it. You can play the campaign which is more like an extended tutorial to be honest. There are also select missions which offer a challenging experience. There is also a multiplayer mode which has you compete against other islands on a map to see who prevails at the end. Lastly, there is my favorite sandbox mode. All of these are pretty self-explanatory but sandbox mode has you make your own nation from scratch. It’s by far the best one out of them all. You should play through the tutorial, campaign and missions to garner enough knowledge to tackle this ultimate challenge.
Tropico 5 has a lot of charm and personality. Whether it be your trusted adviser Penultimo or the host of the local radio station, everyone is hilarious and a caricature. It makes playing Tropico 5 an absolute blast because even tasks like researching technologies never gets boring because there is always funny commentary around the corner.
The graphics are great though they do seem a little blurry for some odd reason. I don’t know if this is due to the resolution or antialiasing but I had to increase the sharpness on my television considerably to combat it. Apart from that there are some visual glitches when moving the camera around which cause artifacts to appear on certain buildings like plantations. Lastly, there are some menu glitches where certain items don’t select. Although these problems don’t detract from the gameplay, they’re still quite jarring to witness because apart from those the title is an extremely polished experience.
Summary
Even though I’ve told you about the major features of Tropico 5, I’ve probably missed just as many because it’s such an expansive game. You can even make it very easy or difficult depending on your level of experience. There is a whole system of issuing edicts to generate additional revenue through taxes or increasing happiness by giving citizens free rations. The options just go on and on. You have complete control over what you do. The level of freedom offered in the game is extraordinary to say the least. You can even play the campaign again with new parameters. The amount of replayability the title offers is truly phenomenal.
I’ve also spent many hours playing the PlayStation 4 version and love it. The Xbox One version comes with a lot of additional free content like The Big Cheese, Bayo del Ofato, Hostile Takeover, Generalissimo, Mad World and Joint Venture add-ons as well as five exclusive bonus maps. On PlayStation 4 it still costs $60 but the Xbox One version is $50. Not only do you get more content for free, it even costs less! I’ve already spent many hours with this game and I still feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface. I can’t recommend Tropico 5 enough. Do yourself a favor and buy this game right now. The accessibility makes it much easier to pick up and play than other such titles and the humor, combined with the amount of content, keeps you coming back for more.
When you play a good game, you always have this itch in the back of your head that keeps you wanting to play it even though you’re doing other things. It keeps on irritating you until you pick up that controller again. It’s very rare for me to experience that when it comes to titles but Tropico 5 is one of them. It’s just that good and addictive.
Asher is a games journalist, former News Writer (Gaming) at Windows Central. They contributed 1110 articles to ICXM between 2015–2017, focused on opinion pieces, game reviews, Windows and PC, and Xbox news: wrote over 1,100 ICXM pieces on Xbox news, hardware reviews, and platform commentary before joining Future plc’s Windows Central in 2017.