Review: Tropico 6 is a mixed bag of paradise and economic hell

Tropico is one of the best sims out there. It has a sense of identity and personality, it’s not trying to replicate something like Civilization. It obviously has elements of that series but it sets out to be its own entity. Tropico 6 continues to do all the things that make the series great but struggles to keep its balance.

There’s a significant issue with trying to maintain economic balance. One second you’ll be rolling in cash, a second later you’re plummeting into debt and struggle to climb out. In a snap of a finger, you Now, this is a huge issue because money is really the name of the game. If you aren’t at least keeping your head above the economic waters, you can’t make any real progress because you quickly become unable to build anything new.

It would be easy to chalk this issue up to the player just being terrible or bad at managing money (which I am, both virtually and in real life) but it’s deeper than that. Your money will rapidly drain and there’s no way to quickly identify why you’re not making any more money and solve the problem. There are menus that give you stats and analytics but sometimes by the time you’ve looked at it, it’s too late.

You end up just sitting there with your arms up just waiting for some miracle to come in and give you a cushion to save you which is immensely frustrating. This isn’t reserved just for your bank account performing a Houdini-esque vanishing act, there are a lot of other problems that aren’t easily communicated to the player.

Sometimes you’ll realize certain exports aren’t being produced at all despite the fact you have all the necessary elements to produce them. Specifically, I was trying to make rum but my rum distilleries weren’t producing any despite having enough sugar. I went to the distillery to check things out and there was just an image of a cardboard box with a red circle around it above it.

Now, as someone who has played many hours of The Sims, I’m used to having to figure things out by identifying images like this. However, this was so vague that I had no idea what this meant and tried a number of things to fix the issue but nothing was working.

With so many systems at play in a game like Tropico 6, you’re not going to be able to just jump in without some confusion. To help you out, there are both your standard tutorials but also a mission-based “story” mode to guide you through scenarios that help you understand all the mechanics.

This is a great way of ensuring you really understand the game before trying to survive multiplayer or sandbox mode. Not only does it guide you carefully and give you a great understanding of how Tropico 6 works but it’s really entertaining with its whacky characters and interesting scenarios. It prevents you from getting too bored by the standard by the numbers nature of tutorials and makes you actually want to continue playing the mode.

Sometimes these missions can feel like they’re artificially extending the time by making you have to wait for things that are largely out of your control to be fulfilled like population numbers, exporting high volumes of products, and more.

Sometimes it can also force you to turn your island into a bit of an unorganized mess by making you put a number of the same business/buildings across your island to accomplish something. Whether that be achieving an objective or raising the standards in a certain area (health/militarization/etc), it can make your island look out of control and chaotic.

The Verdict

Tropico 6 continues to excel in being a series that oozes personality but can struggle in its efforts to be a fairly balanced sim. Its frustrating lack of sometimes easy to understand problems and communication can make for an experience that will cause permanently raised eyebrows. If you’re looking for a new city-building sim, you will still enjoy Tropico 6 but at the expense of sometimes being easily confused or having your progression halted.