Tropico 4

Tropico 4 was on sale on Steam recently. I tried the demo a week before the sale, and I've played one of the previous version so I decided to get it. -75% is nothing to sneeze at.

The graphics aren't anything amazing even when I cranked them up for screenshots, but the details and the sheer liveliness of the island is good. At any given time you have you people living their lives, going to their jobs, trees swishing about in the wind, waves lapping at your sand beaches, hot air balloons flying in the sky etc.

After playing a full career in sandbox, with a lot of quesswork involved as the tutorial was what it was. I'd rate this game 'I'll probably play this game again, someday'

As the island is gridless, you can pretty much build as you wish, limited only by the elevation of the ground. Which is silly. Hillside building is an old thing. When you've got a dirt hill that's preventing you from building, you get to play carousel building as you sping it and try to find an angle that works. Luckily the lowest bumps just slow down the construction speed. Which is still annoying.

The most annoying feature I can name is the road. It's a finicky auto system where you get to try several times before you get the road to go where you want it. Or you don't. I had several dirt crossroads as the AI decided that crossroads were unnecessary.

Despite almost all the DLC's that came with the complete pack, Tropico 4 is just another building game. Yeah, you get a pretty island, you're a dictator and all your friends are communists, but just another building game. And why almost all? They published another DLC a couple of days after the sale. *sigh*