By Jim Rossignol on September 11th, 2009 at 4:24 pm.
A lovely sunny demo has arrived on the shores of the internet: it’s for banana-republican management sequel Tropico 3! It’s 1.1gb in girth, and can be downloaded from here. As in previous games, you take the mantle of a benevolent dictator of a small island, and try to make the wheels of monopolistic money practices turn for both you and your citizens. The demo contains the tutorial and two missions from the full game, so it should give you a decent taste of how the full thing pans out. Have a play, let us know your thoughts.
11/09/2009 at 16:28 Gap Gen says:
Hooray for Tenuo-pun!
11/09/2009 at 16:32 Heliocentric says:
Benevolent? I win elections, not hearts. Its hardly my fault all of the other candidates are in prison, missing or dead… Except in all the ways it is my fault of course.
11/09/2009 at 16:45 Geo says:
Downloading now … 394 megs, not 1.1 gigs.
11/09/2009 at 17:08 ad_hominem says:
Filefront seems to be claiming it as 394 mb, but the German mirrors seem to agree with the 1.1gb size already stated. Both can’t be right, surely…
11/09/2009 at 17:13 jti says:
Says 1.1gb on my download.
11/09/2009 at 17:16 JJ says:
Says this for me: File size: 359.76 MB
11/09/2009 at 17:17 Kanamit says:
Ah, just the thing to distract me from my country’s current inane political discourse.
11/09/2009 at 17:18 Kanamit says:
I’ve got 395 MB, btw.
11/09/2009 at 17:21 Christian says:
Hmm..the first German mirror doesn’t seem to work, the second German mirror wants to charge me € 2,50, the Dutch mirror produces a 1kb-file and the US-mirror wants me to download the next 3 hours.
This seems..strange.
I think I’ll wait for the demo to appear on Steam or as a torrent..
11/09/2009 at 17:25 ulix says:
More Mirrors (from demonews.de):
http://www.4players.de/4players.php/download_info/Downloads/Download/53018/Tropico_3/Demo.html
http://www.exp.de/download.php?id=17469
http://www.gamers.de/download/2105/Tropico_3/Demo_de_Presidente.html
http://www.jeuxvideo.fr/jeux/tropico-3/#demo
http://www.clubic.com/demo-jeux-video-13682-0-tropico-3.html
11/09/2009 at 17:33 Christian says:
Thank you, ulix.
And the last mirror also explains the size-difference: The multi-language-version is 1.1GB, while the specific single-language-demos have a varying size. Nice touch :)
11/09/2009 at 17:34 jsutcliffe says:
Ooh, will have to give this a go tonight. This kind of game seems like exactly what I’m in the mood for.
Either that, or I should find someone selling Republic as a download.
11/09/2009 at 17:40 theleif says:
@Christian
On the second mirror, there is a gray download button at the bottom of the screen.
11/09/2009 at 17:45 Christian says:
@theleif:
hehe, silly me. You’re right :) But the french mirror works like a charm, so everything’s fine.
I’m quite excited about this game, loved the first one. The only game I could play for hours with the music turned on without it getting on my nerves. I don’t get that too often, in most games I disable the music after an hour or so of playing. The second version (the one with the pirates) didn’t do so well..that game, although mostly fun, had some annoying music (which I turned silent after 2 hours of playing..a bit like Mount&Blade’s music).
I hope they got this game right..loved the concept.
11/09/2009 at 17:45 Vinraith says:
Please oh please let this be good. The original Tropico (and its expansion) was one of my favorite city builders of all time, and probably my wife’s favorite game of any stripe. The sequel was a disappointment, albeit still a decently fun game. This release is something I’ve been both anticipating and dreading.
Downloading with fingers crossed…
11/09/2009 at 18:23 Wolfox says:
@jsutcliffe: your wish has become true.
http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/republic_the_revolution
11/09/2009 at 18:49 jsutcliffe says:
@Wolfox
Well, there goes my weekend. Thanks!
11/09/2009 at 18:50 Blast Hardcheese says:
I don’t wanna give you my thoughts, that requires thinking!
I want you to tell me yours so that I can judge the game without looking at it.
11/09/2009 at 19:12 MWoody says:
Downloaded the 395Mb version, and it errors out when run due to a checksum fail. Anyone else confirmed it to be broken?
11/09/2009 at 19:24 AllyC says:
Yeah, the 395mb one is broken. Just finished downloading and I get
‘Installer integrity check has failed’
11/09/2009 at 19:27 Sartoris says:
Yep broken for me too. And it took it 2 hours to download. Boo.
11/09/2009 at 19:45 Mad Doc MacRae says:
Broke for me, trying the second to last download link (the french one) and getting a pretty good speed.
11/09/2009 at 20:06 Heliosicle says:
Been looking forward to this, hopefully its not terrible >:(
11/09/2009 at 20:08 Karry says:
Why did the devs stopped writing system requirements on their sites ? What, is that a national secret or something ? I dont care about any features if t turns out i cant run the game, dont you think ?
11/09/2009 at 20:11 lumpi says:
“Benevolent” might be one of my favorite words. Especially when followed by “dictator”.
11/09/2009 at 21:03 Sartoris says:
Looks very pretty and quite true to the original. Still, I prefer 2D prettiness, and the radio guy’s comments are annoying. But I’m still looking forward to trying the whole game.
11/09/2009 at 21:20 DMJ says:
Of course I’m a “benevolent” dictator.
The “Vote For DMJ And You Won’t Get Dragged Away In The Middle Of The Night For Beatings And Eventual Execution” Party is elected on the strength of our one-issue election pledge: Vote for DMJ and you won’t get dragged away in the middle of the night for beatings and eventual execution.
It’s a simple policy, but it’s one that the working man can grasp and really get enthusiastic about.
11/09/2009 at 22:03 JonFitt says:
What’s that in Peggles?
11/09/2009 at 23:19 Ivan-Assen Ivanov says:
The One True Demo is 1.1 GB, dunno how the 400 MB file came to be. It includes English, German, French, Spanish, Italian – there are no individual language versions (they would save less than 100 MB, and produce lots of confusion instead).
Minimum system requirements: 1 GB RAM, a decent CPU (e.g. a fast singlecore, or any dualcore), and a SM3.0 DX9 GPU (meaning NVIDIA 6600 or higher, ATI x1300 or higher). Doesn’t run on Intel integrated video chipsets, sorry.
12/09/2009 at 02:31 pirate0r says:
You can also find the demo at gamershell.com and fileplanet.com
12/09/2009 at 04:56 Thants says:
Played the demo a bit. The 3D graphics are quite pretty. It definitely seem true to the original, I don’t know if it’s too true though. As far as I’ve played it, everything is exactly the same.
Although a new version of Tropico with some of the flaws fixed up won’t be such a bad thing.
12/09/2009 at 05:02 undead dolphin hacker says:
I liked Tropico but am averse to downloading 1.1gb at the moment. Is the 3D tasteful or is it some kind of crazy camera-swinging mess where half the keyboard is dedicated just to directing your view point?
12/09/2009 at 05:33 Snall says:
Good game, quite like it, runs well, looks good.
12/09/2009 at 06:19 SmokingKipper says:
http://www.gamershell.com has a link, downloaded it in 9 minutes, yeh for 6am internetz traffic!
12/09/2009 at 06:39 Wisq says:
I only played the first one when news of the third one came out, and while I liked it quite a bit, I did find that trying to provide housing got out of control pretty fast, and the Sims-style “every citizen must actually go through their routine and physically walk everywhere” seemed not to scale very well up to larger islands.
That said, I’m looking forward to the third, regardless of whether that issue is resolved or not.
12/09/2009 at 07:37 Plopsworth says:
The biggest (and only really disturbing) problem with the original was the building-time. If you wanted an airport constructed you had to start 15-25 years before you wanted it complete. Which may be realistic, but certainly not fun.
+1 Download.
12/09/2009 at 07:44 Vinraith says:
I agree with some others here that, so far, it looks like a refinement of the original with snazzier graphics. That’s just fine by me, the original was a brilliant game that really only needed its rough edges smoothed and its graphics updated to be a great modern game. I’ve not tinkered much, but I’m encouraged so far.
12/09/2009 at 08:00 Low Quality Beard says:
I never played the original, but from the little while I was able to play I am quite impressed, it seems like a great deal of fun. I’m also very happy it’ll be available through Steam too!
12/09/2009 at 10:22 jti says:
It’s a lot like the original Tropico, but there seems to be all kinds of little changes everywhere that make this game better. Everything seems to work a bit more smoothier and it really seems like tons of fun. Can’t wait to get my hands on the whole game.
12/09/2009 at 10:48 Javaguy says:
It is up on gamershell, by the way. http://www.gamershell.com/download_50826.shtml
Downloading now. Looking forward to this.
12/09/2009 at 10:50 Javaguy says:
Oh, just noticed that was linked before. Sorry!
12/09/2009 at 13:23 Severian says:
Very excited about this, and about people’s comments that it’s basically Tropico 1 with updated everything. I adore Tropico (still fire it up periodically) and really was hoping they didn’t mess with the formula too much.
Is it running well on low-medium rigs?
12/09/2009 at 13:58 MikeTheGerman says:
regarding the “Installer integrity check has failed” prob…
switch off your Firewall and run the exe as administrator.
12/09/2009 at 15:11 cowthief skank says:
Had never even heard of Tropico before. Got this installed, will play very shortly…
12/09/2009 at 15:22 Mad Doc MacRae says:
Had a lot of fun with the demo, never played the others. Took a bit to get the hang of it (particularly in providing enough good housing for people). I probably played it longer than I would’ve because of the excellent (if generic) latin soundtrack.
12/09/2009 at 16:17 Wilson says:
I’ve just played the tutorial and first mission, and I like it a lot. It is very similar to the original – which is a good thing – but there seem to be a lot of small changes that make it more fun. Stuff like being able to rotate buildings better (if still not perfectly) the roads being proper roads now, and of course the improved graphics, which run very nicely for me. Though I have a quite powerful machine.
Looking forward to trying the second mission.
12/09/2009 at 18:24 Harlander says:
Did anyone else get severe graphical strangeness when shadows and/or post-processing were enabled?
12/09/2009 at 18:50 Fumarole says:
It is every bit a good as the first, music included. Huzzah!
12/09/2009 at 18:54 cowthief skank says:
I think I need to play the tutorial… My dudes started to rebel and eventually blew up the palace. Some dictator I would make :-(
12/09/2009 at 20:07 Mad Doc MacRae says:
Cowthief – you probably aren’t providing enough jorbs for your citizens. Go to the almanac -> lists -> people by job and see if you have lots of unemployed. If you do, try and build stuff. Teamster shops and construction factories provide lots of jobs that are very useful. If you have lots of those, farms aren’t a bad bet.
If people have jobs, make sure they have decent housing. It’s too bad they don’t seem to have a list of people by housing quality so you could see how many live in shacks/shanties etc. A mix of tenements and apartments usually does nicely, with some of the nice houses next to your higher-education workplaces.
13/09/2009 at 16:50 terry says:
Loved the first game, and this seems virtually identical. Will buy.
13/09/2009 at 17:36 ants of the sky says:
After playing the demo, it’s pretty fun and I might think about buying it. It looks similar in premise to Anno 1404. Could someone whose played that compare the two of them?
14/09/2009 at 11:02 Ginger Yellow says:
Stuff like being able to rotate buildings better (if still not perfectly)
Rotating buildings with the mousewheel seems completely borked. It’s overly sensitive, so it’s impossible to get the proper alignment. Using the keyboard works fine, though.
It looks similar in premise to Anno 1404. Could someone whose played that compare the two of them?
It seems like Tropico 3 games will be a lot shorter than Anno 1404. There’s arguably no better city builder around than Dawn of Discovery, but it does mean a huge time investment (easily 12+ hours for a scenario). Obviously we’ve only seen the first couple of missions, but Tropico seems to be broken down into much smaller chunks.
14/09/2009 at 11:03 Ginger Yellow says:
Oh, and on a more mechanistic level, there seems to be much less resource management than in the Anno games. You need to meet your citizens’ needs, but (for the most part) you don’t need to produce and shift around specific goods.
14/09/2009 at 15:26 ants of the sky says:
No Anno 1404 for me then. If I want to spend 12 hours on a campaign, I’ll spend it on Civ 3. Why spend that much time building a city when you can build an empire? And I prefer to leave the resource management to the pure strategy games and leave it out of the city building games.
14/09/2009 at 16:14 Ginger Yellow says:
Fair enough if it’s not your thing. But it’s that whole supply chain thing that I love most about city builders.
14/09/2009 at 21:12 Clovis says:
I liked the supply chains from Caesar better than Anno. Of course you didn’t get to directly handle the trade routes, but actually reaching the best housing in Caesar was a big accomplishment. It seemed really easy in Anno (based on 1701).
Tropico was definitely a favorite of mine, so I’m really excited. It did always seem to be a bit rough around the edges when your island got too big, so if they fixed some of that and it looks pretty I’m sold!
I actually loved the fact that each individual had to do all the walking and waiting at line. Instead of just showing raw numbers on how your factory or clinic was doing, you could just follow people around to see what was working or not. I really thought the “smart citizens” of Tropico would become a city builder standard. One thing I didn’t like about Anno was that the residents were just numbers. The little people walking around my city didn’t mean hardly a thing. Caesar was better for this, but Tropico (and CotN) handled it the very best. Every sprite is an actual person. Awesome!
15/09/2009 at 15:29 Ginger Yellow says:
The walker model seems great on paper but it can cause some serious problems (I remember the hoops you had to jump through in Caesar to get them to do vaguely rational things, but I never played the original Tropico). Anno’s unusual in that while it takes a lot of time and effort to get to the top of the supply chain, the economic model itself is very stable. It’s rare to have the sort of death spiral that things like Sim City or Caesar would throw at you. So in that sense it’s easy. The challenge mainly comes from trying to get the most space efficient production system to support the largest number of high level people. In 1404, it can be pretty tough to get enough people in your main city to meet some of the scenario requirements, especially if you’re not aggressive in settling supply islands.
18/09/2010 at 15:04 Notebookfraek says:
Dieser Beitrag gefällt mir sehr gut.Ich habe schon lange danach gesucht.Vielen Dank dafür.
Gruß Notebookfraek