Tropico 3 reiterates a good theme with better graphics. A good attempt, but just more of the same.
The game, to those of you unfamiliar with the series, is based on building a successful Cold War era Caribbean island nation, complete with competing interests in the United States and the USSR, rebel factions, and tourism.
One of the best features in the game is the tool to create your own "El Presidente", using a multitude of costume choices, hair styles, and hats. You get to choose the dictators rise to power, traits and faults. These affect the way your people and the superpowers treat you in the game.
There are multiple game modes in Tropico 3, not unlike the previous titles. There are full fledged tutorials dedicated to teaching new players basic concepts of the game. Unfortunately for some, the tutorial may be a little too basic, not allowing players to pick up on some of the subtleties of the title. The next aspect are the scenarios. Each scenario has a different goal. This goal could be to ship $5000 worth of bananas, ship $10000 worth of iron, or have a tourism rating of 80, or any other multitude of basic goals. In the custom game mode, you can choose from one of the islands from the scenarios, or create your own custom island, choosing foliage levels, altitude, size, and amount of mineral deposits. This can either raise or lower the difficulty percentage, which affects how easy it is to score points.
In the long run, the goal of the game is to stay in power as long as you can. If you don't maintain a peaceful society and healthy relations with the superpowers, you may risk being invaded or overthrown by your own people.
Deep in the gameplay, there are factions of people on your island that can affect the way the island's economy and support for you rises and falls. These factions include the nationalists, religious, militarists, communists, capitalists, and intellectuals. You can appease these people by building certain buildings and staffing them accordingly (with high school or college educated people) and issuing edicts that support their cause, like issuing a Papal Visit for the religious faction.
Industry in this game is multifaceted. There is the mining industry, which involves building a mine near a mineral deposit on the island, and shipping it. There is a lumber industry, which can run pretty deep, involving cutting the wood, processing it into lumber, and processing that lumber into furniture. The oil business can be booming as well, allowing for building oil rigs on land and off the coast of your island (this can be VERY profitable) and processing it at a separate dock. The farming industry is very complex, allowing you to build farms to farm everything from tobacco, to corn, to sugar, in order to make products to ship, or simply to feed your island. However, many crops are picky on where they can be grown, and a helpful shader map shows where is best to plant the crops.
Last but not least, there is a tourism industry. This may be the most lucrative industry in the game, opening your doors to foreign tourists. You have the opportunity to build hotels, resorts, and entertainment facilities to help facilitate a rapid influx of money into your coffers.
This game, for players of the series, is nothing but a rehash with better graphics than the earlier titles. However, for newer players, this can be a problem, because the game's learning curve is steeper than most. It may take longer on this game to get to the level of mastery you can find in other games like Sim City or Civilization.
Graphically, this game is nice, even at the lower graphical settings. It features water effects, weather events, and terrain clearly and in a crisp fashion.
As far a replay value, this game is remarkable because of the many ways you can customize your island and leader. This can have an effect on how you run your island and how you deal with your people (and visa-versa).
The entire game is laden with Latin samba music and great rhythms, however it can be grating. The same music repeats over and over again.
Overall, this game is a good concept, but it becomes grating to play after awhile and fades in it's quality after a few sittings.