Review: Tropico 6

Political humor and tropical chaos

I confess that receiving a review code for Tropico 6 so long after its release genuinely excited me. Tropico is one of those franchises that marked my childhood and teenage years, even though today it’s common to find people who never had contact with its older entries. What’s curious is realizing how the series’ political humor has remained extremely faithful to its identity to this day.

Tropico has always treated the idea of governing a tropical island as something absurdly serious and, at the same time, completely surreal. From questionable political decisions to situations that border on the absurd, like sending an entire island into space, the game creates a parallel reality where satire is a fundamental part of the experience. This sets it apart from other city simulators that flirt with absurdity only occasionally. Here, it is structural, constant, and deliberate.

GAMEPLAY

Tropico 6 offers two main ways to play. Sandbox mode lets you freely choose from all available maps, while specific missions bring their own objectives for each archipelago. This structure is interesting, but it also fragments the sense of progression a bit. Instead of following a single island from start to finish, we get several independent experiences, each with its own demands and challenges.

The game’s central interface presents essential information such as money, population, and popular support, represented by the percentage of citizens willing to vote for El Presidente. Time control is flexible, allowing you to pause, speed up, and switch between city view and a full archipelago view. This can be done through dedicated buttons or by using the mouse, which greatly facilitates spatial reading of the map.

The main menus concentrate tasks, constructions, and the almanac, which works as a complete encyclopedia of the city. Overlays are one of the most intuitive aspects of the game, allowing you to visualize electricity, security, freedom, and other factors through colors on the map. This visual clarity greatly helps with quick diagnosis of island problems.

On the other hand, some interface design choices make it clear that Tropico 6 carries traits very typical of management games from the previous decade. The research menu, for example, is hidden at the end of the options list, when it would make more sense integrated into the core functions. Some citizen demands and building needs are represented only by unclear icons, making it harder to immediately understand what is missing.

The system of edicts, research, and incursions adds depth to management. It’s possible to send pirates to loot resources, create espionage academies, and even carry out special missions with the COMMANDOS, a direct reference to other Kalypso games. These mechanics vary according to the historical era, reinforcing the game’s temporal progression, even if that progression unfolds differently from what we see in other classic simulators of the genre.

The economy revolves heavily around trade routes. Coffee, sugar, tobacco, and many other products require trade licenses to be exported, and reliance on the port is absolutely critical. Poor port management compromises the entire island economy, making this system one of the central pillars of the experience.

VISUALS AND SOUND

Visually, Tropico 6 represents very well the identity of management games released around 2019. The interface, icons, and overall presentation convey an almost nostalgic feeling, as if the game embraces its roots without trying to over-modernize. Everything is functional, even if not always elegant.

The soundtrack is, without exaggeration, one of the franchise’s greatest strengths. With strong Caribbean inspiration, it creates a relaxed, ironic, and extremely enjoyable atmosphere during gameplay. It’s the kind of music that perfectly matches the rhythm of the game and the satirical tone of its political narrative.

After many hours, the soundtrack naturally begins to repeat. This doesn’t become a serious issue, since the quality of the tracks holds up, but it’s noticeable that the repertoire could be a bit more extensive for a game that easily stretches into dozens of hours.

ACHIEVEMENTS

Tropico 6’s achievements align well with the game’s proposal. They are tied both to natural progression and to specific management, economic, and political decisions. Many encourage players to explore different approaches, try less obvious paths, and deal with crisis situations.

They are not automatic or purely cumulative achievements. They require planning, a deep understanding of the systems, and in some cases a willingness to take risks that can put the entire island on the brink of collapse. They function more as a reflection of the player’s mastery of the experience than as simple rewards.

TRAILER OFFICIAL

FINAL TOUGHTS

Tropico 6 is a game that understands its own identity very well. It doesn’t try to distance itself from its origins or excessively modernize systems that already work within the series’ proposal. On the contrary, it embraces design choices that directly reference management games of the 2010s, with all their strengths and limitations.

The political humor remains sharp, management is deep and punishing when poorly handled, and the soundtrack continues to be one of the genre’s highlights. Despite some questionable interface decisions and a progression that is less cohesive than it could be, Tropico 6 delivers a solid, charismatic experience that is extremely faithful to the spirit of the franchise.

For those who grew up with the series or are looking for a management simulator that isn’t afraid to laugh at its own chaos, Tropico 6 remains a strong and memorable choice.

Review by Gamertag: Scoulz

SCORE: 79/100