Tropico was an excellent romp through a small-scale Civilization that was honestly, just a lot of fun. Getting to play God on a small scale such as this, while perhaps not entirely good for my mental health, undoubtedly brought with it some of the best fun with a videogame I've had in a while. Where most modern games aim to impress with their stunning graphics of complex stories, Tropico goes the route of its earlier forefathers and gets down to the very basics of what a game should be: fun. To Tropico, there is nothing that matters more than fun, so if I really wanted to, I could just turn on sandbox (which I did with reckless abandon) and absolutely screw with the local ecosystem and economy to build my dream city of a shining metropolis with golden statues of myself every twenty feet.
Where Civilization used its narrative to honor and celebrate history, Tropico takes any available opportunity to laugh at it. Lord Oaksworth is a delightful British stereotype, as well as your bumbling assistant Penultimo, who is a hilarious caricature of every incompetent Latin American command structure ever. Throughout the game, as you encounter different representatives from different factions, they, too, are boiled down to their basest stereotypes in order to inspire a few laughs, and being the suburban-raised fool that I am, I obliged happily. Tropico excels in never taking itself too seriously, as if it knows that the player is just there to make their chosen dictator wear a funny hat while they pressgang an island's population into building a six-story tall paper mache pyramid painted with gold leaf, and also maybe accidentally create a marvel of infrastructure and civil engineering along the way.
If you're feeling particularly merciful, you can even do your level best to make life on your island actually pleasant, or give up on that partway through and settle for "halfway decent". For instance, in my run I built and entire housing market for my citizens... after forcibly evicting them from their hovels and not providing nearly enough jobs in favor of foreign labor. While also being a lesson that no one should let me anywhere near a public policy decision, it's honestly just fantastic that I can make those kinds of decisions with no ramifications other than watching tiny cranes move at ridiculous speeds on the screen.
On the topic of use in a classroom, this is one of those rare cases where I'll say YES, absolutely use this in a classroom. It seems like the kids can have a lot of fun with this and learn whether or not they have what it takes to run a city and navigate global geopolitics from a safe, fun environment,as if they were watching a movie. Everything is distant, but still has an impact, and thanks to the satirical nature of Tropico, it provides a good vehicle for students to laugh at some of the stupider things we've done as a species. I think one of the greatest ways to be introduced to history is humor, because humor is far less polarizing than the tales of doom and gloom that usually permeate the historical narrative. It's one of the most frustrating things in the world to me; sure, there's evil in the world, but that doesn't mean we have to focus on it all the time. Australia once lost a war to flightless birds, Germany once had to send an ambassador to the micronation of Sealand to negotiate the release of a mercenary group that tried to take over said micronation, the British once made a sticky grenade that backfired so terribly because it kept sticking to their soldiers' hands before they could throw it. There's so much wacky, off-the-wall stuff that's happened throughout history, and not enough people take the time to laugh at stuff that really deserves to be laughed at. Luckily, Tropico is here to ensure that no matter how bad things get, we are always reminded that somewhere out there, someone is laughing at us.
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