Recent reviews by Eric

I beat this game in only 8 hours. It's short but sweet. The combat and environments are great, of course.

The only con is that the last chapter's story is way too concise. You suddenly figure everything out without any buildup at all. The game's story ends up feeling very front-loaded as a result. I also didn't like how many times we had to revisit the Funhouse.

This series was the first computer game that my brother and I really liked. In retrospect, it's fairly simple for the time, and it pales in comparison to other diablo-likes/clones from the time, like Dungeon Siege or Sacred (imo), but it still served as an excellent introduction to the RPG genre for kids back then, and in that sense is similar to the Fable -> Oblivion pipeline that existed back then.

Was it popular and important at the time? I think so, but honestly, only because Wild Tangent was the game store app that came pre-installed on a lot of prebuilt computers (in our case a Dell) in the 2000s, and it was either this or Polar Bowler. Most of the people who played this game were probably kids and other people who had never even heard of Diablo before. We certainly were kids. The target demographic certainly shows in the game: Kid protagonist, cartoony family art style, simple gameplay, etc.

Don't bother with the sequels; they are pretty buggy.
The game is extremely short. I beat it in 10 hours on the hardest difficulty. As long as you clear every level and always turn in each quest for a new one before going down to the next level, you should be able to do it on the first try as well unless you get really unlucky with enemies spawning. You can keep going down after beating the main boss, and the enemies will continue to get more difficult, although the only way to increase your character's power late-game is to repeatedly restart thr game to make your heirloom more powerful.

This series's greatest contribution was serving as the training grounds for the dev who ended up making Torchlight. Torchlight keeps the family/kids flavor of the game, but scales up the targeted age a bit and makes things a bit darker.

A really sweet, nice, fun little game that can be beaten in an hour. Really fun and low-stress. Probably the most fun I've ever had with a short game before. I highly encourage you to try it out. It's such a small time commitment that I doubt you'd regret it. The combat is fun, the art style is really nice, and the boss fights are a lot of fun. It's a fun, relaxing, chill game. It was a relic of a long-past era of gaming, even at the time when it was released.

Not as good as the original FATE. Really half-assed. Glitches everywhere. Both towns are lazily designed. Hardcore mode is a miserable grind (by level 3 the enemies are level 30+), so good luck getting all the steam achievements.

So my recent obsession with this game was enabled at least in part by my unemployment (rip). For the first week or two that I owned this, I played it for at least 10 hours a day pretty much every day. It was the most fun I had ever had with a game in a long time.

This game doesn't really feel like a true Paradox game. It's kind of like a mix between Paradox games and Civilization in space. The key to success in this game is prioritizing expansion and research. You need to expand quickly to avoid getting boxed in because playing tall isn't very strong. You will use planets that are rich in resources to fuel your industry, which you will build up on worlds that are poor in resources. You also need to prioritize research, because the faster you reach the late-game technologies, the better -- the AI does terribly in the late-game, so you want to get there faster than they do to press your advantage.

Let's look at the pros first. Even though it didn't take long to understand the pattern, exploration was really exciting for me for the first few games. You are setting out into the vastness of space to colonize, explore, and expand your dominion. The diplomacy and economy mechanics are good. Lots of micromanagement of the economy, which I like. There is a fair bit of RP potential in this game, especially if you grab some mods, although I have difficulty RP'ing in strategy games like this because they feel very depersonalized to me compared to, say, CK2.

Now the cons. The AI is terrible, the war/military side of things is quite lackluster at the moment, and the game is terribly optimized. There is a lot of late-game lag. Also, if you're coming from other Paradox strategy games, then you might find this one to be a tad bit on the easy side. I wouldn't say that this game has the best replay value, either, personally. The gameplay becomes too predictable once you get the hang of it. That aside, I'd say that it's still worth buying it. The game becomes better with mods, for sure.


I would say that it's worth trying out. I'm not really interested in playing this much anymore, but it was a lot of fun when the game was still fresh.

I would recommend this game only for casual players and people who are new to citybuilders.

I remember playing this game as a kid. I struggled with it then because I didn't really know how to play the game. Being about ten years older but still interested in the tropico franchise, I decided to get it when it went on sale.

I heard a lot of people say that this game is ridiculously easy once you know the basics. They're not kidding, unfortunately.
The game really has such an odd approach to a learning curve. People who haven't played games like this before will probably find it very difficult -- as I did as a kid -- because they don't know how ridiculously OP industry (rum factories in particular) is. In other words, the game is challenging until you look up a guide and spend 5 minutes reading. This really is not a good thing, because it will draw experienced players away from a genuinely good game.

Still, this game (the entire series, really) is a great take on a citybuilder. If you're deciding between T4 and T5, I would say that both of them are great games but Tropico 5 is a little bit more challenging than Tropico 4 if you compare them on max difficulty settings.

Overall, Tropico is probably one of the best introductions to the citybuilder genre you could give someone, but if you are experienced then I would stay away from this because you will almost definitely end up getting bored quickly.

I'll just make a simple, short review: It is a very good game but not worth playing without DLC. Paradox has never been known for convenient purchases.

Pretty sure this was one of the first games I ever bought on Steam. How did I even find this?

Anyway, as other people have said, the game is too simple and it's not really worth a purchase.

While it is true that this game was extremely buggy and annoying to play at release, that is no longer the case. It is a really solid game with interesting mechanics and as far as I know all bugs have been fixed since then.

I really enjoyed playing through this game, definitely check it out if you're looking for something funny.