Tropico 4 - PC Game | Political Simulation & Strategy Game | Build Your Island Paradise | Perfect for Strategy Gamers & Simulation Fans

I bought Tropico 4 having never played a Tropico in the past but found the premiss of the game interesting from reading reviews on multiple gaming websites a blogs.-Gameplay and Story-Basically, you take the role of "El Presidente" who is the active ruler of the fictional Caribbean island nation named Tropico. You are able to create your character, dress him/her in a plethora of political, military, or casual garb, and even give a bit of a background story to your character through pre-set options.For example, I named my little El Presidente after myself than gave him a nice tuxedo and red military-style beret as well as a Trotsky-like goatee. After I was finished with my character's visuals, an in game window prompted me to chose my background story. I set myself to have been a Leftist Author before I took power in Tropico by being elected as a Socialist.One that was done I had to set some personality traits for my character. I chose Diplomatic, Patriotic, and Well-Traveled.Note that there are literally dozens of options to chose from to make your dictator just the way you want him to be. Also note that if you do not want to make your own character, you can chose a pre-made avatar. The funny thing about the pre-made avatars is that they look and are named after real world leaders. For instance, there is a young Fidel Castro in there as well as a Mahatma Gandhi and I think I may have seen a Vladimir Lenin somewhere in the mix.After your done with your character you are put right into the game. I would suggest playing the tutorial before starting the story missions or going into sandbox mode if you have never played a Tropico in the past.From what I can tell, there are two main ways to play this game, Campaign and Sandbox. In campaign, you have to complete missions and tasks that are given to you by your governmental advisers in attempt to achieve your final goal of making Tropico the best place on Earth. There are 20 missions in total, each of which took me about 45 minutes to 3 hours to complete.In Sandbox mode, there is no story or rules to follow. You simply create your Sandbox island and start ruling it, making political or economic decisions, listening to the many factions of the island and trying to make them happy as well as trying to establish strong foreign ties to nations like the United States, the Soviet Union, the European Union, and more. I personally prefer Sandbox over Campaign mode because of the freedom to do whatever you'd like to you island nation without mission restrictions.-DLC and Addon Content-There are also many DLCs and Addons for Tropico which you can chose to buy and install for your game. These range from the "Modern Times" DLC which bring more modern architecture, industry, and such into the game but also more modern problems to deal with such as terrorism, to "Pirate Heaven" DLC which basically gives you the option to make a pirate state, or a modern day Tortuga of sorts.I have personally yet to buy any DLCs or Addons but know that I surely will in the near future becuase of how much I loved the vanilla version of this game-Performance and Visuals-Tropico 4 is not the most graphically intense game out there. With that said, it still is a very nice looking game that runs fairly well on any average modern PC. I have installed this game onto my home computer as well as my work computer (We have a LOT of down time) and I can ensure you that on both, this game works fine.Here are my home computer's specs for those of you wondering:Dell XPS 8300Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit OSIntel Core i5-2300 CPU @ 2.80GzAMD Radeon HD 6450 dedicated graphics1 TB Hard Drive, 6 GB RAMI run Tropico 4 on mostly High settings with a few Mediums here and there at about 55+ FPSMy work computer specs are:HP P7-1254Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit OSAMD A6-3620 APU @ 2.20GzAMD Radeon HD integrated graphics1 TB Hard Drive, 8 GB RAMI run Tropico 4 at about 45 to 55 FPS on mostly medium with a few Highs here and there.Over all, Medium settings on this game look just fine. Anything over is just eye candy and isn't really much in the way of visual improvement. I'd say as along as your computer has Windows 7 in it, this game should not be a problem frame rate wise nor a problem visually.-Conclusion-If you're a person that is interested in government, foreign affairs, or politics, this is a game for you. If you're a person who is interested in city/nation management games, look into Tropico. If you're a person who loves slower paced strategy games, Tropico is perfect. Though many people say Tropico 4 is nothing more than Tropico 3.25, the unique missions in Tropico 4 as well as the 3 new foreign nations to deal with and the overall visual and performance quality of this game is definitely worth a pretty penny.I thoroughly enjoy this game and still am enjoying this game and also am excited for any new installments into this series.