The new wind power plants, for example, always have the same turning speed, regardless of where you place them and how much energy they produce. Some of the buildings show their activity through moving bits and pieces here or there, but you generally cannot judge their current efficiency. If you issue the new "National Holiday" edict, you will get a bit of a fireworks display over a large area around your palace, but that is about it. Sadly, I have to pull out my point of criticism from the original review here, again: Absolute Power does not add a lot in terms of graphical feedback at all.
Generally said, where T3 was very good already, AP adds more of the same quality for the new elements of the game. a pile of trash even the best texture quality would probably not change that a lot. For example, the pile of trash on the new landfill looks like. The textures remain at the same very high quality from T3. And the developers could also have gone and change some more of the original buildings as they have done with the palace (which has received 3 buildable upgrades that also change the visual look of it admittedly, the developers did re-use existing eye candy for this). It certainly is an improvement over the original buildings, but there could have been a bit more. On the other hand, you have the new "mega candy" buildings that come entirely by themselves and without too much extra candy included in it. The new Primary School has a playground for the children attached to it, while the landfill is (obviously) scattered with waste containers and bags of trash, just to name 2 examples. And contrary to popular belief, chocolade and cookies are not part of, nor are they important for, attaining absolute power. I want to make it absolutely clear that, apart from sugar, there is no ingredient for chocolade inside the game at all. So do not be surprised if I keep some sections quite short - that simply indicates that the previous quality from Tropico 3 is consistently kept up throughout the addon as well. That is why I am going to look for the improvements that it has brought to the original game, instead. As Absolute Power is a dependent addon, grading it seperately is rather pointless in my opinion. Now, on to the actual scoring of the game. While a very important factor for any potential player of the game (for me personally, the lack of extensive DRM/CP systems is the first and foremost factor I consider), it does not normally have an effect on the quality of the game itself, so as much as I would like to add some bonus points here, I will not. The game will automatically try to connect to the online service on first launch, but that is irrelevant for actually playing the game. You can even run the game without disc by default.
You can install it as often as you want and on as many different systems as you want and you do not have to have an online connection running. In times of an ever-increasing severity of DRM and copy protection systems, AP (and the basic game, of course), belongs to the category that basically says "I don't care about that rubbish" - you have a key and that's it.
For the same reason, the system requirements are the same as with the original game - if that one runs on your system, so will Absolute Power. The important thing to note is that AP is a dependent addon - you cannot play it without the original game Tropico 3 (unlike some other examples like the addons for Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War. Absolute Power, as an addon, naturally does not change the general idea of the game in any way, but it does add bits and pieces all over the game, expanding it by quite a lot of details.
Given the generally positive feedback to my original review of Tropico 3 (which can be found here) and the apparent interest in the series around here, I have decided on reviewing the new addon for T3 just as well.Īs you might already know, the basic premise of the Tropico series is that of the player dictatorially controlling the namesake backwater island nation, trying to build up the island's economy to make profits, as well as investing the money earned that way into infrastructure, habitational buildings, public services etc. DivisionWell, back we are on Tropico it seems. A good deal, isn't it? What, your island is unsuitable for bananas? My bad, I guess you will have to cope with it somehow." But do not despair, I can offer you a supreme package of Absolute Power for a low price of just 6000 tons of Bananas, payable in 1 year. You know, you simply lacked the power necessary to rule, in one way or another. "Hola, Presidente! You are back? I almost doubted that you would ever return, given that your last try at ruling an island did not turn out too good.