Tropico 2: Pirate Cove

by 2K Games

Product Features

• Create and control your pirate haven through 16 swashbuckling episodes filled with shady mates, landlubbers and talking parrots
• Fuel your island's economy by plundering wealthy merchants, then take captives to use as a workforce
• Keep the buccaneers satisfied with rum, gambling, women and feasts
• Try to lure legendary pirates like Blackbeard, Henry Morgan, and Black Bart to your island -- they'll expand your influence and treasure chest
• You can even build parrot aviaries to produce the perfect pirate companions

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00007M9ST
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 5.5 x 1.2 inches ; 9.6 ounces
• Media: CD-ROM
• Release Date: April 8, 2003
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #14,864 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)

Product Description

Platform: PC

Product Description

As an all-powerful Pirate King, players must manage a seventeenth century band of buccaneers in Tropico 2: Pirate Cove. To attract the most frightening of history's sea-faring bad boys, Pirate Kings must keep their charges brave and well-supplied between voyages. The island's "yo-ho-ho's" must stay at a feverish pitch in order to keep the King and his buccaneers satisfied with drinking, wenching, gambling, feasting, and the best in pirate accommodations.

Success in Tropico 2: Pirate Cove depends on careful management of the pirate population. As dead men earn no plunder, the King must keep his pirates well equipped for potentially lethal missions. Sea dogs require muskets, cutlasses, cannons, and the skills to use them when they venture forth to plunder the Spanish Main.

Tropico 2 features several major innovations to the original Tropico game. The traditional economic model is reversed: the player maintains their wealth not by production of materials, but by plundering merchants on the high seas and bringing the victims back to the island as captive workers. In addition, the pirate characters show a great deal of individual personality, so that the player becomes truly vested in the characters' well-being. The island is also zoned so that richer pirates may sequester themselves in their own booty-filled mansions, which automatically upgrade as their standards of living improve.

Tropico 2: Pirate Cove stars Blackbeard and other pirates based loosely on historical figures, organized in a campaign that takes the pirates through 100 years of pirate action. Along with dozens of their fictional counterparts, these legendary fellows are readying their old sea legs for the game's release this fall. --Amazon.co.uk

Product Description

In Tropico 2: Pirate Cove, you're the ruler of a land full of scurvy sea dogs in the 17th century! Build your own galleons to create your own pirate fleet, and watch your back -- rival pirates will try to assassinate you!

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

80 of 83 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Another hit from the makers of Tropico and Stronghold, May 2, 2003

By 

T.Velasquez (Beaverton, OR, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tropico 2: Pirate Cove (CD-ROM)

I have been playing Tropico 2 for two days now and find it very enjoyable. It is another game that you'll spend many happy hours playing, staying up well past 3am in the morning. The other reviews I have read so far are fair and right on the money
though.

Summary: Wonderful game! BUT! This game contains some possibly distasteful content as you can expect from a game about Pirates, so if you are a parent or someone of a more sensitive disposition, you might want to demo this or watch a friend play it before you decide to buy.

Some Praise:

1. Do you know how many games I've bought that don't even work out of the box or crash to desktop every five minutes? Well, don't worry about that here. GODgames and their associates are _wonderful_ in releasing games that are so refeshingly free of game-crashing bugs that it can spoil a gamer. I am yet to have Tropico 2 crash to desktop or even have a fatal bug of any kind. I am having some sort of problem with my cursor but it seems to be a problem with my video card (compatibility issue) but that's about it.

2. Wenches! I mean, women! I mean, you can now play and hire female characters. My girlfriend was glad to see this. I know there were probably all of three female pirates in all the 17th century, but after Stronghold (which didn't even have females voicing the females), its nice to have women around other than in the wenching houses. Arg.

3. All in all, the game is very enjoyable. The parts all fit together seemlessly. The engine is time proven and works well, it does what its advertised to do.

Some Criticisms:

1. The game really should have been rated "Mature" instead of Teen. There are some rather adult content in the game in the suggestive area. Its rather disturbing to click on a 'wench' at work in her 'place of business' and hear her plead and cry out "let me go!". The comments they think in their head are often adult and somewhat disturbing, although they tried to make them humorous. Not a game to play if you are a sensitive person who finds things that Pirates may or may not do offensive.

2. The music is not as good as Tropico 1. Then again, the music in Tropico 1 was award winning and I still listen to the soundtrack CD in my car to this day. Pirate Cove's music is functional and passible, and there's at least one tune that I enjoy, but mostly it just doesn't seem to catch the 'pirate' theme for me. Mostly its a sort of calypso/spiritual backbeat with french or spanish lyrics. I haven't even heard one hornpipe! There was an ancient game called "Colonization" by Sid Meyer set in the same time period. Although incredibly dated by our standards, the midi music in it was much more of what I was expecting in Tropico 2, not some strange dirges that almost stray into Spring Break nightclub.

3. Lastly, just a personal quibble: I would have loved to be able to control my ships in battle. As it is, you play the part of Admiral Doenetz, sending your U-boats out to prey on merchant shipping, and all you get to do is tell them what to do, where to go, then sit on pins and needles hoping they come back alive. (Sorry, played too many WW2 games! But hey, you can even 'wolfpack' your ships in Tropico 2, if you send more than 1 to a sector, they'll help each other in battle.) I would have liked to have had some sort of battle mode where you could actually direct and lead your ships in battle (ala 'Ancient Art of War at Sea' or those simular naval wargames).

4. In 'sandbox' mode, your ships don't seem to find prey as often as they do in the Campaign mode. This can really make an 'easy' game in sandbox much harder than an easy game in Campaign (where more encounters are probably scripted).

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good but not great, May 5, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Tropico 2: Pirate Cove (CD-ROM)

What makes a game enjoyable to me is the open-ended factor. I rarely, if ever, buy a game that is strictly mission & end-game based. That's why I enjoyed Tropico so much. It was diverse & enjoyable.

Tropico 2 is different. The sandbox mode gets boring relatively quickly & my interest has waned in it. It lacks the immersive quality that Tropico had. It was like Tropico Sims. You could watch your family expand & settle down into their homes to live out their lives. That quality isn't really available in Tropico 2. Your pirates run around & do the same things over & over. Same with your captives. The gameplay has always felt a bit shallow to me.

However it is enjoyable - you do get wrapped up in island production & the like. The lewd aspect isn't offensively done & I sincerely doubt anyone's kids will suddenly go & build a wenching hut instead of a treehouse. That's just me though.

Overall I give it 4 stars. The music is great, the graphics are good, the interface is easy to learn. It will keep you entertained for awhile.

20 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars If the demo is anything to go by..., February 22, 2003

By 

Griswel (Rochester, NY) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Tropico 2: Pirate Cove (CD-ROM)

This game is fun.

I enjoyed the original Tropico and the expansion. This game is simpler, easier to get into, though the Demo does not let you know everything you will be able to do in the full game.

It's not suitable for younger kids, however, as the theme is more Piratey than Pirates of the Carribean (though that used to be a bit more risque, itself). Wenching and lynching are part of the game, and pirates like anarchy, which is provided by sordid amusements. Very appropriate for the time period and topic, but it still limits the kids who ought to be playing it.

Try the Demo (warning it's 130 megabytes so no dial-up), it's the best way to find out if you agree with me.

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