emphasis on keeping track of the citizenry and
visitors on Tropico. Like The Sims, you can read the often-humorous
thoughts of each distinctive individual person on the island. This
"Miss Cleo" ability can be a big help in plotting out your
next course of game actions.
Visually, the game retains the high level of eye-pleasing graphics that
were in the original game using PopTop's S3D engine, although the
buildings are less colorful than the character models that make up the
islanders and visitors. There also is a better frame rate present in the
expansion pack because even though I was using the exact same computer
as when I reviewed the original game, there was none of the slowdown or
choppy breakup this trip to Tropico during the playing of the cut-scenes
or when too many buildings and people were on-screen at one time.
Being a city-builder game at its basest level, Tropico: Paradise Island
expands the already large selection of available structures from the
original. Most of these new buildings are naturally geared towards
attracting those desirable money-spending tourists to your land. You now
have a tennis court, miniature golf course, movie theater, marina,
duty-free shop, beach villa, conservatory, nature preserve, and a
sure-fire tourist attraction, El Presidente's childhood home. Other new
structures are the all-important army base and an undeveloped fort that
can be converted into
an artifact dig site, museum or a dungeon for all those not particularly
supportive of your leadership. Many but not all of the Tropican
buildings can now be rotated different angles on the map to optimize
their placement to both fit better to the landscape and your desired
location. Whatever you need to erect a thriving Caribbean nation for
your islanders and visitors is only awaiting the construction orders,
with the stipulation that you have enough money in your reserves to
build them.
Other great additions are the new edicts included for your issuing
pleasure. Edicts are the laws and ordinances of the land of Tropico as
you see fit to decree. In Tropico: Paradise Island, these edicts can be
more malevolent and dastardly than in the original. Those foolish enough
to oppose you can now be captured and thrown into jail or simply
assassinated. These choices will require a strong military, and there
are edicts to strengthen the Tropican army too. You can declare martial
law and start military modernization to keep the troops doing all your
dirty work happy. Ordering military conscription builds the army from
the native Tropicans instead of having you hire foreigners to stock your
troop supply. Other edicts assist in
increasing the Tropican tourist trade.
You still have the services of your "loyal" adviser helping
you with hints as to what you may want to focus on during the game. For
instance, if you aren't building churches for your people's religious
needs, the adviser may give you a warning. If you fail to heed enough of
his warnings, you face the possible revolt and uprising of your Tropican
people who will make a quick end to your island regime. Having a
adviser, even one with questionable loyalty really comes in handy,
because after you read the initial description of each scenario's
objectives and you start the game, you can sometimes get confused as to
the easiest way to accomplish a successful
scenario completion because you can't re-read the original description
during a game in progress. You instead have a condensed version that
isn't as helpful as the initial details, so pay attention to your
adviser's advice because his survival as a high-ranking official is
directly tied to you staying in power.
One feature that has been a plus in both the original and the expansion
pack is the award-winning musical score provided by The Daniel Indart
Project throughout the game. Numerous game sites and organizations named
the original Tropico's music the best in-game music of 2001's PC titles
for good reason. The Latin-inspired tunes are again the perfect match in
Tropico: Paradise Island for your many hours of gameplay. The full
amount of music provided for the expansion pack now totals over two
hours, and you'll still be humming the soundtrack melodies long after
you have turned off your PC.
While there are many new great options available, Tropico: Paradise
Island has a few tropical storm clouds gathered above it. The worst
problem the game has is that again the building of Tropican structures
takes way too long, and if you need to have a structure up and ready to
go as soon as possible to help meet your scenario objectives, forget it.
It's going to take about ten years passing in the game before one
structure usually will be finished, particularly when it come to the
larger types such as the power plant. That's an improvement over the
original, but can still be a point of frustration while you are playing.
There is a cheat around this, though.
Holding down the control key and typing "rapido" gives you the
ability to instantaneously construct a building. With enough money, you
can have a whole island of Tropican buildings completed in a half-hour
of gameplaying and can focus on population management and the scenario
objectives. If you need some more money, again hold the control key down
and this time type "pesos" to get $20,000 deposited into your
coffers each time you do it. And yes, this only works in the game, not
when you are online checking your real-life bank account balance.
Believe me, I tried.
Adding the inclusion of natural disasters, especially hurricanes and
tropical storms, was a good idea. It was an attempt by the developer to
give some more realism to the game and throw a little chaos into the
mix. But this is a good addition in idea only, not in actual
application. Storms hit your island at random times. You can set how
often the random events occur before you start the game. My
recommendation is to select the lowest setting. When a storm hits, it's
just a bunch of clouds passing over the island for about 30 seconds,
leaving behind a crumpled pile where one or
more of your structures had been before its turbulent onset. The problem
here is that unless you have photographic memory, you'll have no idea
which building was there before the typhoon annihilated it. It may take
you a few years going by in the game before you realize that the
building wiped out unnoticed by one of the past's terrible tempests was
a necessary component to a successful scenario ending. This isn't a
crippling gameplay feature if you set the random generator to its lowest
setting because the chance of being clobbered by more than one storm in
one particular game isn't a high probability. There are also other
random events that could pop up from time to time like an economic
fluctuation in export prices for one of your products that you may be producing on your island such as cigars or rum.
As before, you must really put some thought into your gameplay
decisions, because every building built and edict issued will either
positively or adversely affect the way your Tropican government is
perceived and treated by not only the Tropican people but also the
outside world. By the outside world, I'm talking about either the United
States or Russia. Depending on which way you want to swing your
government, you can either align with a democratic power (United States)
or a communist power (Russia).
What's different than the original is that before, you just allied with
a superpower and that was really all there was to it. You got their
support, they built their military base on your island and occasionally
threw some monetary enticements your way. But now in the expansion pack,
instead of just gaining support of a political and military ally, you
must keep them satisfied with the way you operate your government. If
you upset them in any way with the treatment of your people or the
edicts that you choose, they will stop giving their support or at least
curtail it until you start heading your gameplay choices back towards
the liking of your foreign
political backer.
Each and every decision you make during the game has some type of
influence on how successful or unsuccessful your current game plays
itself out. In the Triassic Park scenario, you need to eliminate
Tropicans to clear way for your planned dino park. But if you try and
accomplish this by assassinating a big number of the overcrowded
populous of the island, they will flee en masse into the very tropical
forest you plan to develop into your dinosaur park, making the chance of
you favorably completing the scenario's objectives a much tougher task.
You have to be carefully selective in your strategy, because every
action causes a positive or negative reaction to how well your game
finishes.
From the new gameplay and scenario options to the additional building
choices and award-winning music, Tropico: Paradise Island delivers more
of everything good to the promising original game. You will find that
all the added features of the nicely-priced expansion pack provide an
absolutely enjoyable and unique city-building gaming experience that
will keep you entertained each and every visit you make to the sunny
beaches that make up the sultry and sometimes dangerous paradise of
Tropico.
- Lee Cieniawa
(March 5, 2002)
