Sunday, August 5, 2012

Tropico 2: Pirate Cove Review

Tropico 2: Pirate Cove
Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)
I have been playing Tropico 2 for two days now and find it very enjoyable. It is another game that you'll spend many happy hours playing, staying up well past 3am in the morning. The other reviews I have read so far are fair and right on the money
though.
Summary: Wonderful game! BUT! This game contains some possibly distasteful content as you can expect from a game about Pirates, so if you are a parent or someone of a more sensitive disposition, you might want to demo this or watch a friend play it before you decide to buy.
Some Praise:
1. Do you know how many games I've bought that don't even work out of the box or crash to desktop every five minutes? Well, don't worry about that here. GODgames and their associates are _wonderful_ in releasing games that are so refeshingly free of game-crashing bugs that it can spoil a gamer. I am yet to have Tropico 2 crash to desktop or even have a fatal bug of any kind. I am having some sort of problem with my cursor but it seems to be a problem with my video card (compatibility issue) but that's about it.
2. Wenches! I mean, women! I mean, you can now play and hire female characters. My girlfriend was glad to see this. I know there were probably all of three female pirates in all the 17th century, but after Stronghold (which didn't even have females voicing the females), its nice to have women around other than in the wenching houses. Arg.
3. All in all, the game is very enjoyable. The parts all fit together seemlessly. The engine is time proven and works well, it does what its advertised to do.
Some Criticisms:
1. The game really should have been rated "Mature" instead of Teen. There are some rather adult content in the game in the suggestive area. Its rather disturbing to click on a 'wench' at work in her 'place of business' and hear her plead and cry out "let me go!". The comments they think in their head are often adult and somewhat disturbing, although they tried to make them humorous. Not a game to play if you are a sensitive person who finds things that Pirates may or may not do offensive.
2. The music is not as good as Tropico 1. Then again, the music in Tropico 1 was award winning and I still listen to the soundtrack CD in my car to this day. Pirate Cove's music is functional and passible, and there's at least one tune that I enjoy, but mostly it just doesn't seem to catch the 'pirate' theme for me. Mostly its a sort of calypso/spiritual backbeat with french or spanish lyrics. I haven't even heard one hornpipe! There was an ancient game called "Colonization" by Sid Meyer set in the same time period. Although incredibly dated by our standards, the midi music in it was much more of what I was expecting in Tropico 2, not some strange dirges that almost stray into Spring Break nightclub.
3. Lastly, just a personal quibble: I would have loved to be able to control my ships in battle. As it is, you play the part of Admiral Doenetz, sending your U-boats out to prey on merchant shipping, and all you get to do is tell them what to do, where to go, then sit on pins and needles hoping they come back alive. (Sorry, played too many WW2 games! But hey, you can even 'wolfpack' your ships in Tropico 2, if you send more than 1 to a sector, they'll help each other in battle.) I would have liked to have had some sort of battle mode where you could actually direct and lead your ships in battle (ala 'Ancient Art of War at Sea' or those simular naval wargames).
4. In 'sandbox' mode, your ships don't seem to find prey as often as they do in the Campaign mode. This can really make an 'easy' game in sandbox much harder than an easy game in Campaign (where more encounters are probably scripted).

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As an all-powerful Pirate King, players must manage a seventeenth century band of buccaneers in Tropico 2: Pirate Cove. To attract the most frightening of history's sea-faring bad boys, Pirate Kings must keep their charges brave and well-supplied between voyages. The island's "yo-ho-ho's" must stay at a feverish pitch in order to keep the King and his buccaneers satisfied with drinking, wenching, gambling, feasting, and the best in pirate accommodations.
Success in Tropico 2: Pirate Cove depends on careful management of the pirate population. As dead men earn no plunder, the King must keep his pirates well equipped for potentially lethal missions. Sea dogs require muskets, cutlasses, cannons, and the skills to use them when they venture forth to plunder the Spanish Main.
Tropico 2 features several major innovations to the original Tropico game. The traditional economic model is reversed: the player maintains their wealth not by production of materials, but by plundering merchants on the high seas and bringing the victims back to the island as captive workers. In addition, the pirate characters show a great deal of individual personality, so that the player becomes truly vested in the characters' well-being. The island is also zoned so that richer pirates may sequester themselves in their own booty-filled mansions, which automatically upgrade as their standards of living improve.
Tropico 2: Pirate Cove stars Blackbeard and other pirates based loosely on historical figures, organized in a campaign that takes the pirates through 100 years of pirate action. Along with dozens of their fictional counterparts, these legendary fellows are readying their old sea legs for the game's release this fall. --Amazon.co.uk

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