Comments on: Starting From Scratch: Haemimont Games’ Tropico 5 Postmortem https://www.haemimontgames.com/starting-from-scratch-haemimont-games-tropico-5-postmortem/ Tue, 18 Apr 2017 11:12:49 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.0.7 By: Andrey https://www.haemimontgames.com/starting-from-scratch-haemimont-games-tropico-5-postmortem/#comment-249 Tue, 18 Apr 2017 11:12:49 +0000 https://www.haemimontgames.com/?p=268#comment-249 Thanks for interesting read! For me Tropico 3 was a very pleasant surprize, I saw a trailer of the game which showcased situations and moments that never actually happen in the game but game itself did so many great things that I was not disappointed in the end. I didn’t mind that Tropico 4 was pretty much an expansion to Tropico 3 (I disliked Quick Build though, it made game way too easy). Then came Tropico 5, bugs aside it was a big step backwards in terms of core of the game – building a city. Big grids and lack of any terraforming killed all fun of city planning, lack of variety in building variants killed all fun in making your city look at least somewhat realistic, I spent lots of time in Tropico 4 carefully selecting Tentements and Apartments heights and colors so it would fit their position on the island and look good near other buildings, if I had to place garbage dump somewhat inside main part of the city I placed it just a little bit away (one tiny T4 grid) from the roads so I can “hide” it by planting palms, I can continue forever discribing these fun moments of building the city in Tropico 4. This was also even more important back in Tropico 3 because you HAD to plan your city so that your builders and workers can satisfy their needs and have a rest as fast as possible and then continue their work, importance of this was cut down in T4 with introduction of Quick Build. There is almost nothing of this in Tropico 5, everything is bound to big grids, you just slap rows of identical buildings, then rows of gardens, church, clinic, pub and call it a day, not fun at all. Terraforming was a big issue in T3 and T4 but it was there and it was possible to achieve needed results using hacky approaches like leveling the land by placing and deleting garages or bunkhouses until you have enough flat land for needed building, I wish there were proper terraforming tools instead but nevertheless it was fun part of the game, I spent a lot of time preparing ground and laying roads so I can condense as much buildings as possible into some area. Again, nothing of that in T5, as soon as there is slight slope you can no longer build roads or any buildings. Boring.

Anyway, thanks a lot for Tropico games, I recently started playing again and realized that Tropico 4 is very-very fun after all these years and that Tropico 5 is just as sad as it was at released, I just wish Tropico 6 would focus on what made Tropico 3 and 4 fun – planning and building the city.

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