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Tropico 2: Pirate Cove
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Graphics & Sound:
Now who the heck doesn't love pirates? When I found out I was gonna get to
be a pirate king in this game, I was pretty stoked. Well it wasn't exactly
what I expected, but it was a fun ride all the same. Frog City Software's
Tropico 2: Pirate Cove has some problems, but on the whole it's hard
to not have fun when you're kidnapping, stealing, and building yet another
brothel so your lonely pirates will stop complaining.
Tropico 2 has to be the first real 'Pirate Sim' I've ever seen. For
the most part, the visuals are wonderful to look at, but there's nothing
flashy. Most of the game's visuals revolve around your island and what's on
it. Buildings don't tend to do much, visually, and the pirates and captives
wandering the island don't do much else but walk around. But that doesn't
really detract from the game much. It makes up for the lack of glitz in
other areas. The pop-ups and interfaces all look very nice. The game also
incorporates prerendered CG movies into the game, most of which show up
inside one of your interface windows when you issue edicts and commands.
The audio side of Tropico 2 is top notch. There's always a lot
happening on a pirate isle, and the sound effects clue you in very nicely if
anything's out of the ordinary, or if things are going smoothly. The sounds
of ore mining, drinking and carousing, and the cannon fire of sea battle can
all be heard. Thankfully, the brothels are all built with soundproof walls
so we are spared the sounds of a 'romantic' pirate evening. There's also
plenty of voice acting in this game, most of it very funny.
Then we have the music, one of the high points of Tropico 2. There's
a wide range of scores to hear, from steel drums to pirate drinking songs.
They were all very enjoyable to listen to. I, for one, never turned the
music off - something you almost expect to do after a short while in a game
like this. |
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Gameplay:
There are many different ways to play Tropico 2: Pirate Cove.
Campaign Mode gives you a series of interwoven scenarios with objectives to
complete. It eases you into the game concepts slowly, and you start fresh
each time with a pre-set initial island setup. So if you just barely got
through the last one, you're still on even footing. Campaign Mode introduces
things in a much better way than the 'tutorial', which I found pretty
useless. When you're done with the Campaign there are also more advanced
scenarios you can choose to play. There is also a 'sandbox' mode, which
eliminates any sort of objectives and starts you off from scratch in a place
of your choosing. It also lets you configure the world to a great degree,
setting things such as frequency of trade routes and the hostility levels of
different nations.
No matter which way you choose to play Tropico 2, the basic goals are
the same. You're a pirate king, keep your pirates happy, keep your captives
in line, and make lots of money. You keep your pirates happy by erecting
buildings to fulfill their various pirate needs. Some of these include food,
beer, women (I guess female pirates were just far more disciplined than
their aloof male counterparts), gambling, etc... You can also build
structures to make them feel safe, both from outside invasion, and from the
oppressed captives. Your captives on the other hand, well, you don't care if
they're happy. You just need to keep them in line. So you'll also build
structures to keep your captives fearful and content to accept their
miserable lot in life. Captives do most of the grunt work on your island, so
they'll usually outnumber the pirates.
As a pirate you'll also want some money. How do pirates get money? They
steal it of course. So you'll also have to maintain buildings to build your
ships and keep them supplied. Ships can do more than just raid other ships
however. They can explore or kidnap skilled workers, among other things.
You'll need some of those skilled workers to build more advanced buildings
like shipyards and churches. Why would a pirate island need a church? Well,
if the captives find God, they might not feel the need to find a way off
your island. There are tons of other things to do as well. You can ransom
wealthy captives, build more elaborate establishments for the more advanced
pirates, and more things than I can write about in one review. |
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Difficulty:
Sometimes playing Tropico 2: Pirate Cove can seem like a very
unpirate-like activity. You have to stay on top of things before they get so
bad and it's too late to fix them. During one of the earlier campaign
missions, I noticed that my captives were beginning to starve. I built some
more farms and chow tents for them to eat in, and they just kept starving.
I must have eventually had about 2-3 farms and 4-5 chow tents in every area
my captives were working, and yet captives from all over kept starving to
death. Eventually when most of my farm and tent workers had starved to
death, I knew something was horribly wrong and started the mission over. The
point is, there's always a lot going on, and sometimes one little element
you overlook could cause problems. I never did figure out why my captives
were starving. It's a fun game, but it's got lots of numbers in it. If
thinking and problem solving in this manner isn't your deal, you might want
to look elsewhere.
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Game Mechanics:
This is where I start having some beef with Tropico 2: Pirate Cove.
To start with, it has the worst mouse pointer I've ever seen. It's an
arrow with a skull on it, but the click point isn't around the tip of the
arrow like you would assume. It's at the base of the arrow, above the skull.
It's also a pretty big arrow, and many of the interface 'buttons' are
extremely small. Trying to click on the happiness and resignation meters on
the left side of the screen was especially irritating. It took me almost
half an hour to figure out that the click point wasn't the tip of the arrow.
It's just not something you'd think twice about, and neither the manual nor
tutorial addresses it.
The interface also isn't very intuitive. I'd spend 5-10 minutes on occasion
hunting for some piece of information I needed. Other times it's just
cumbersome. You'll be ransoming wealthy captives frequently. While the
ransom gets higher the longer they are on your island, they also use up the
pirate establishments. So often, when you get a large influx of them, you'll
be ransoming them off in droves. However, to ransom 'one' you have to go
through a 5 to 6 click process each and every time. It just took too long to
do. It isn't horrible however, and it certainly could have been worse. Also,
a small word of warning: the game defaults to a resolution of 1024x768. So
if your computer can't handle that, for whatever reason, you'll have to load
it up in 'safe mode' first.
Tropico 2: Pirate Cove might well be called 'Sim Pirate'. The content
is solid and very good. If you can avoid getting hung up on the
sometimes-aggravating interface, you should have a good time. |
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-Alucard, GameVortex Communications AKA Stephen Triche |
Minimum System Requirements:
Windows 98/ME/2000/XP, Pentium III 500mhz or AMD Athlon 64MB of RAM, 1.8GB
Hard Drive Space, DirectX 8.1 compatible sound and video card |
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Test System:
Windows 98, Pentium III 700mhz, 256MB of RAM, Sound Blaster Live 5.1,
GeForce 4 with 64MB of RAM |
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