14 DAY TRIAL // 
The first time I chuckled in Tropico 5 – Waterborne was when one of the quest givers launched into a long and very furious rant about the kingdom of the sea and its ability to destroy the plans for those of us who prefer dry land.
Shortly after, I was intensely frustrated by the actual quest that I received and by the unfair competition the development team was asking me to complete in order to get to the end of the mission and progress to another one.
The moment sums up Tropico 5 – Waterborne very well, revealing its nature as a game that has solid narrative moments that often turn to frustration when the actual mechanics do not alight with the quests that players need to tackle.
Story
Waterborne for Tropico 5 is designed to introduce an entirely new campaign for the strategy title, which means that gamers will have to found a new dynasty and try to deal with the objectives that are being offered by a familiar cast of characters.
There are 6 missions to get through and they are pretty solidly designed, with a difficulty level that will pose some problems to all those who do not have experience with the core campaign or have forgotten how the core mechanics work.
Gamers will be able to use buildings that are designed to use the resources associated with coastal areas, and there are also more events linked to the theme, most of them designed to throw new challenges at players.
Waterborne also introduces some new Avatar costumes to Tropico 5, although they feel entirely unnecessary and do little to add personality to the game.
When it was released, the title was advertised as a way to role-play a tropical island leader, with more humor and less violence than in the real world, and that concept is still present and solid.
Players can choose how to evolve their dynasty in the long term, and they have the option to either install a tyranny that will seek to control society by any means necessary, including election rigging and violent reprisals against rebels, or they can try to bring democracy to the masses, holding frequent elections and creating a Constitution that leans more towards utopia.
Determined players can use Tropico 5, with or without Waterborne, to role-play a cartoonish version of today real world strong men, but sometimes the game feels too bright and cheerful given the themes that it deals with.
Gameplay
At their core, the mechanics of Tropico 5 are almost unchanged, players are still asked to balance their resources and their objectives to create a thriving island economy, to place housing and businesses, and to deal with trade and research.
The various water-based structures are designed to be alternatives rather than replacements for other elements of the game, and they unlock relatively slowly as the player progresses through the era.
The pearl farms come into play as soon as the new campaign is started and they seem fundamental because of the high price their products can fetch when they are exported, able to keep an entirely island economy in the black without any need for diversification.
The nuclear submarine is also very cool to create, but arrives very late in the game and requires a bit of work, while the water-based offices and apartments are both useful and futuristic looking.
The missions that Waterborne adds to Tropico 5 are new in terms of tasks offered by the various characters and there are islands introduced to add to the variety level.
But the core mechanics of the title will be familiar to all fans and they often feel like busy work rather than exciting problem solving.
There are no new edicts to spice things up and no new ways to tweak the Constitution in order to try out new approaches.
“A solid export-driven economy is necessary at first and gamers need to pay little thought to the well-being of the inhabitants of the island or their democratic rights.”
Pearls help here and it’s important to get another expensive item in production early on, and once that’s done, players have a decision to make.
They can decide that they like the humorous take on tyranny that Tropico 5 offers, which means that the future lies with the Axis, controlled elections, a lot of repression and swelling coffers in Switzerland for the ruling family, while the population lives in relative squalor.
Or they can aim for democracy instead, allowing citizens to vote at certain intervals, while trying to get their support by making sure that they are well-fed, adequately treated by doctors, and get some quality entertainment.
Both approaches are equally valid, but unfortunately for Tropico 5 – Waterborne, neither of them is very exciting, mostly because the expansion does not tweak the core game mechanics in any interesting ways.
Graphics and audio
The graphics quality of Tropico 5 is not affected in any significant way by the addition of Waterborne and the game now looks a bit dated, especially when the player uses a middle distance camera to survey their city and its inhabitants.
The new buildings that are introduced are consistent with the rest of the experience and it’s still nice to look at the tropical paradise that you can mold however you see fit on a sunny day.
But the speed of Tropico 5, even on the highest setting, feels too low and that means I was often bored by the look of the game, and I would have loved to see the events of the title unfold faster than they were.
The soundtrack of the Waterborne expansion manages to be exciting and it does offer some solid takes on the music that we traditionally associate with the idea of holiday paradises and tyrannical rulers, although it’s hard to know which tracks are new and which belong to the base experience.
Multiplayer
The Waterborne expansion does not change the core mechanics significantly and that means multiplayer remains largely similar to the core Tropico 5.
The biggest problem is that, at the moment, a limited number of players are available for matches, even if there’s a wide variety of options that can be customized.
Tropico 5 remains a largely single-player affaire and future content for the title will probably focus on this area of the game.
The Good
- New missions and buildings
- Some humorous moments
The Bad
- Some unfair challenges
- Limited changes
Conclusion
There’s a chunk of new content for gamers to explore and the missions that are introduced can be both challenging and engaging at times.
But the game continues to be too slow and too easy some times, basically asking the player to just watch the action as money piles up, and much too hard at other moments, with unfair situations and disasters that can cripple even the best managed island.
Waterborne can offer hours of new excitement for those who loved the original Tropico 5, but most gamers are better off picking the title up when it goes on sale and then deciding how they feel about it before exploring the idea of extra content.
