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Pirate Sim with Jaunty Pirate Tunes

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: February 16, 2008
Author: Amazon User

The sequel to the tourist resort management sim, "Tropico 2" takes the concept of running a tropical island and then goes back a few hundred years to when said islands were under the control of brutal, ruthless pirates.

As a pirate king or queen, you are given an island with which to make a profitable and well-defended secret pirate base. This will mainly be a shantytown of tents, wooden buildings, and the occasional masonry for higher-class establishments. There are two main groups you need to deal with. The first of these is the pirates; these are the people responsible for looting, pillaging, stealing, and plundering.

Pirates are the higher class of your society, the skilled labor, and the ones that you need to keep happy. Pirates' desires include alcohol, food, money, and various vices. Buildings must be constructed and maintained to keep the pirates from killing each other or killing you.

Captives, on the other hand, are taken from raids or shipwrecks, and are your prisoners; as such, they perform the more menial jobs, and simply need to be kept orderly and afraid. Most prisoners are unskilled, but some have particular abilities like being a cook or being a surgeon. These types of prisoners are necessary for certain jobs and will usually make your pirates happier. In general, prisoners respond well to order - that is, they will stay in line - and pirates respond well to chaos (so that they don't feel hemmed in or controlled, which would make them angry); certain buildings will radiate either order or anarchy, and thus it is best to try to position them near areas used by the correct group.

Your pirate cove is a haven of industry, as well; various crops and resources need to be harvested and converted into things useful for your pirate crews. For example, buildings are mostly constructed out of lumber, which first requires a logging camp. Haulers then carry the wood to a saw mill, which turns it into lumber. Both processes are time-consuming, which may result in a bottleneck if you have too much harvesting and not enough producing. Your industry creates everything from food and drink to buildings to ships to weapons. You can set priorities for each structure so they know how important their work is, depending on the situation.

The main focus of a pirate game will be, of course, piracy. You can make ships at boatyards or shipyards and moor them at docks. These ships have captains and crew, and can be sent on missions like raiding settlements, attacking trade routes, or masquerading as a particular country's ship to cause a war between two countries (which pirates then use to their advantage). Essentially, you give the ship an assignment and some parameters (how to engage and how much money the crew should keep for themselves) and send them off. As you engage with countries, they may find and attack your home base, so you can build forts and watchtowers to prepare and defend yourself.

The graphics in this game are vaguely cartoonish, and look pretty good. The design of the buildings is ramshackle, and appropriately pirate-themed; it looks a lot more "real" than if all the buildings were in mint condition. The interface and displays are all well-integrated into the pirate theme, as well. The sound is good, with some good, jaunty pirate tunes playing in the background.

As a whole, this game is pretty nice. It's a sim game, all right, but it has enough pirate themes to make it interesting. Even though it should feel like it's been done, it's still got enough going for it that it's worth the effort.

8/10.

Tropico2 could it be any more fun?

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: January 18, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I had my reservations about Tropico2 after loving Tropico so much.
I was pleasantly suprised. The gameplay is just different enough from Tropico 1 to feel like a different game. Very fun to play and of course Daniel Indart's musical tracks are every bit as good as in Tropico1. These games have turned me onto a whole new genre of music. You'll find yourself playing just to enjoy the great tunes.
Two thumbs up, mainly because I only have two thumbs. :)

Very Good Strategy Game

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: March 15, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I was a little late for the computer game market. Tropico was the first game I purchased. Tropico 1 and 2 are from PopTop; that's Railroad Tycoon, the best. At first, I didn't like Tropico 2 Pirates Cove. The game was quite limited in detail to Tropico. But then, in time, I grew to really like it, and I do continue to play it (as a strategy game). It has an aire of Risk, and gambling that the original Tropico did not have. This gave it more REPLAYABILITY.
I gave the game a lower rating than I would like to as I thought it could use some enhancement and improvement. Some game magazine have other versions. I hope this commment was useful.

This is not a mac product!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 16
Date: July 12, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Hi, I'm sorry to take up space meant for reviews, but this game certainly doesn't work on macs, even though it was listed as a best-selling mac game.

Starts out fun, gets old, then back to fun

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: November 02, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I love this game! It is such a blast to play. It's exciting, challenging (unless you want it easy, 'cause you can certainly do sandbox mode), and fun. If you like the original Tropico, you'll like Tropico 2. However if you are looking for a really challenging game, Tropico 2 may not be your best choice. While it can be a challenge, it's pretty easy- especially compared to Tropico. (This is excluding sandbox modes.) I also agree with the people who say the game gets old, but, honestly, what game doesn't??? Fortunately, unlike many games, if you take a break from Tropico 2 for a little while, the game will be just as fun when you come back as when you first started playing. Maybe more, you actually know what you are doing when you come back.

Crashes constantly

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: September 24, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I had to call tech support to even get this game to install on my machine. It turns out that if you have a hard drive named "Data" the game will not run. Who would have thunk? So, I renamed my hard drive and the game works ok, but it crashes about every 15 minutes, so get ready to save your game alot. Otherwise, its pretty fun. Its like sim city for pirates. I can see how it would get pretty repetitive after youve played it a few times.

Fun... but annoying after awhile

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 7 / 12
Date: March 14, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I've been playing this game for about two weeks (on and off obviously) and I've had a lot of fun with it. However, I can't seem to build up a large fleet of ships because every ship I have sinks the third time I send it out. Like clockwork, boom it's gone. And if I wait and build up my ships, the pirates get bored and restless. And I need a good number of ships for my economy to grow. But how can you build your economy if all your ships are sinking on the third voyage?! It's becoming very annoying. I don't know if this is a common problem, but be warned that it's something I've found to be wrong with the game.

Fun game if you have patience

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: February 24, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I love this game! It is very fun,I did have problems getting it to install and even more problems uninstalling and reinstalling but when i did get it to work i enjoyed it. You do need patience with playing the game too, it takes a while for you to build lumber up (with out cheating). Its challenging trying to keep your captives from escaping or starving to death (because with out captives you cant keep your island working) its also challenging to keep you pirates happy with wenchs, taverns, and gambling. This game is pretty challenging as long as your not in easy mode. Great game!!!

If you liked Tropico I RUN Don't walk to buy this one

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 10 / 13
Date: May 25, 2004
Author: Amazon User

How can anyone like Tropico I over Tropico II? Well in Tropico I you managed EVERY aspect of your citizens' lives. Each of them needed a house(Tenements would not do the job at higher difficulty levels) a job, access to religious facilities, healthcare, entertainment, liberty, safety,food etc. etc. Problem was the economy did not expand properly. Your people demand ever increasing wages but your economy cannot be ever increasing. At higher difficulty levels you have to pay your people the maximum wage rate after like 50-100 years to keep them in line. In fact the Caribbean region wage increase is pure garbage. Problem becomes when you have a limited amount of Freight ships coming in and tourist, it just gets boring too fast. The most idiotic aspect is when you hire a foreign worker and they come in and JOIN A REBELLION AGAINST YOU! Or they emigrate off the island. Demographically it is a disaster because people marry have children they grow up and need jobs as well and need housing etc... It is not well controlled and just too much micromanagement.

Why is Tropico II better? Nobody EVER asks for a wage increase period. Half your population does not get paid(capitves work 4 free hehe...) No babies, no families, just pure fun.

Here is a tip: Captive rebellion and escape are not really serious problems. WHY? Because you can "press gang"( turn into a pirate) all unskilled captives. Yep even the ones that are escaping... Furthermore, if you have pirates that are unhappy you can ALMOST ALWAYS prevent a coup by upsetting the balance of power- just create more pirates. All pirates that are brought into life by virtues of "press gang" start out as super happy. That is a temporary measure of course but sometimes you need more time.

Another tip, get UPSCALE eastblishments ASAP because your captains will quickly become enraged with anything less. And when they are enraged they always kill somebody because they cant lose a dueling match. They can also "kill" a "skeleton" which makes no sense but the game still allows it.

The game's production/distribution is slightly different. There are no teamsters, each building that takes an input has a hauler sometimes 2(dock) which creates problems if there is more than one imput. For example. I had a case where I had a papaya farm with an output of 750 and a bakery low on papayas. Certainly the game's code needs to be improved to allow the delivery of the most amount of supplies. There is alot more to this game but this is a review not a strategy guide afterall.

The game is MUCH superior to Tropico I although the passion subsides rather quickly...

A typical simulation

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 2 / 9
Date: May 09, 2004
Author: Amazon User

The game might seem fun at first but then after a while it gets old. All you have to do is build and wait. You can set ships on sail, however, but you don't have control of them and you don't even get to see them. So if your not a simulation fan skip this.

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