Oh sorry. Ok I posted somewhere else about this. I put in 30 hours and probably done
The political model is interesting at first but very weak. If budget good, 95% of decisions will pass. There’s a handful that are difficult to pass without political influence: mainly the healthcare issues.
So what you’re left is a simplified city builder where you control districts as opposed to an individual square as in Simcity/Skylines etc. It would be fine, except the economic model seems … strange and difficult to wrap my head around. Even after 30 hours I can’t tell if there’s some sort of population-demand curve linked to the year or not.
I had fun figuring out the economic systems but it’s frustrating because of the lack of transparency.
It already struck the iceberg. And sank. The bodies have been collected, the search called off and fish have shat on it.
The Steam ratings were only at 50% or so after the first week and the lack of a patch has them dropping further. At this point I am not sure I would pay one tenth of the current asking price.
Just a mess of a company, a trainwreck of an ongoing consumer/business strategy. Time and again this company does this stuff–interesting game concept, flawed execution, abandoned code.
Compare them – unfavorably – to Paradox, especially Paradox circa 2006 or so. Both companies release interesting-sounding games with flawed execution. In the case of Paradox, however, they continued to iterate and patch their games. Did that make HOI 1 or Victoria 1 great games? No. But because they didn’t abandon those games and worked them, Paradox built this incredible fan base that they were able to tap into to refine their game designs, UI, AI, and overall game presentation. Paradox used those experiences to learn how to make better games, and now they’re raking cash.
Kalypso just shoves stuff out the door, and then abandons their games to the detriment of consumers and dev teams alike. There’s no game publisher I’m more actively rooting for to fail and go bankrupt than these weasels.
Right, thus the “unfavorable” comparison. I wasn’t trying to show what they were most like, which is JoWood, but rather why they didn’t need to be that way and could follow another European publisher out of the deep weeds.
I love Tropico. I still think they need to give the series a rejuvenation shot after 5, but I’d be onboard with 6. I keep crossing my fingers for a better Patrician too.
It’s totally broken, so if you’re looking to actually enjoy it as a game, it’s worth closer to $0. They had a lot of interesting ideas, so maybe it’s worth paying a little just out of curiosity, but don’t expect that any of those ideas are actually implemented in a way that works.