Tropico 2: Pirate Cove is a city-building game developed by Frog City Software and published by Gathering in April 2003. It is the sequel to Tropico.

Tropico 2 was a commercial success, with sales above 300,000 copies. The review aggregator Metacritic designated the game's critical reception as "generally favorable". Following the acquisition of the Tropico license by Kalypso Media in 2008, that company published four sequels to Tropico 2: Tropico 3, Tropico 4, Tropico 5, and Tropico 6. The first three sequels were developed by Haemimont Games, while Limbic Entertainment developed Tropico 6.

Gameplay

Tropico 2 is a city-building game. Anarchy measures the level of disorder in an area and mostly comes from entertainment buildings. Captives are prevented from escaping through the fear mechanic, which is maintained by special structures. Escaped workers may report to other monarchs and cause uprisings. Pirate ships may be built at boatyards or shipyards, and are used to plunder other islands or board enemy ships to steal gold with which the player can build a greater pirate base and occasionally wealthy captives, who do not work but have a ransom that increases as they use entertainment buildings. There are also several challenging scenarios in which the goal is to survive in harsh environments, from angry pirates to escaping captives.

The game offers fewer choices for development compared to its predecessor. In Tropico, the economy could be focused on industry, tourism, military despotism, commodities, or a combination of all four. In Pirate Cove, the player is more limited in scope and path, and will end up building many of the same buildings every time with few additions, which means Pirate Cove does not have the emphasis on spreadsheets and statistics that its predecessor did.

Tropico 2 is the first game to have a campaign in the series, in which each scenario has a goal to be accomplished within the time limit. Goals can range from constructing certain structures, having enough money in the treasury or personal stash, ensuring overall pirate happiness is above a certain point, achieving harmonious relations with a faction, and having a certain number of ships on the island. The campaign follows a pirate king whose traits change as the campaign goes on.

Development

Origins

After PopTop Software completed the original Tropico, its president Phil Steinmeyer was uninterested in developing further games in the series. However, the game's publisher, Take-Two Interactive, requested an expansion pack to capitalize on Tropicos success. but it was unavailable due to scheduling conflicts. During their talks, the possibility of Frog City's developing Tropico 2 arose instead,

According to Steinmeyer, the teams agreed that "there just wasn't enough material" to develop a second "Castro-style game", and so Frog City began to consider alternative settings. Eventually, the company's Mark Falange suggested a piracy theme, of which Frog City, Steinmeyer and Take-Two Interactive all approved. PopTop also created the game's cutscenes. Frog City chose to reuse PopTop's game engine from Tropico, However, the engine went through a "major rework, and was essentially broken" for the project's initial six months, Steinmeyer explained at the time. This made it impossible for the team to display Tropico 2 and receive public feedback, an aspect of game development that Steinmeyer considered important.

Frog City's initial goal was to produce a "playable build" by March 2002, in preparation for a May announcement and fall release. While the preview received positive feedback and energized the team, Frog City was inspired by fan comments to expand the game, especially with regard to pirate captains. This necessitated a delay past the holidays and a budget increase of "several hundred thousand", according to Steinmeyer. However, he was able to negotiate the new schedule and budget with the game's publisher. Spieth described Tropico 2 as a "reverse economy", since money and workers are stolen and expended on the player's pirates, instead of earned as in Tropico. In addition, Tropicos composer, Daniel Indart, was hired again to score Tropico 2. To design the historical pirate leaders, such as Blackbeard and Laurens de Graaf, the team studied tales of their exploits and crafted the characters' strengths and weaknesses accordingly. For example, they were inspired by de Graaf's hatred of Spain to make him unable to work with that country in Tropico 2. The team strove to keep Tropico 2 lighthearted and comedic despite its piracy theme; Steinmeyer remarked that this concern persisted until near the game's release: certain spectators called Tropico 2 too much unlike Tropico, while its "sales, marketing, [and] overseas offices" considered it to be too similar to sell. He believed that the latter problem was caused by the game's reuse of terrain visuals from Tropico, which led the team to create new tree models, and to edit the "colors and textures" of Tropico 2s reused water and earth graphics. To appease those who found Tropico 2 too different from its predecessor, Frog City increased the game's emphasis on city-building, which had previously been marginalized in favor of pirate raids.

Tropico 2 reached gold status on April 2, 2003. It was released in North America on April 8. releasing in North America in North America on May 19, 2005,

| IGN = 8.4 out of 10

| PCGUS = 62%

| GI = 8 out of 10

| CGW =

| EuroG = 9 out of 10

| XPlay =

| rev1 = PC Format

| rev1Score = 78%

| rev2 = Computer Games Magazine

| rev2Score =

In the United Kingdom, Tropico 2 sold poorly during the first half of 2003. Kristan Reed of GamesIndustry.biz wrote that it was "struggling to sell upwards of 5k", and speculated that software piracy could be the cause. According to former members of Frog City employed at Sidecar Studios, Tropico 2 sold over 300,000 copies worldwide and was commercially successful. The review aggregation website Metacritic designated Tropico 2s critical reception as "generally favorable". Conversely, Jason Cross of Computer Games Magazine called Tropico 2s interface superior to that of Tropico, but he felt that the game featured "too much interface and busy work." He found it dated compared to current strategy games, and concluded, "Tropico 2 doesn't come through with enough swashbuckling, ship-boarding flair." The game was released in 2009. Afterward, Haemimont Games developed Tropico 4 (2011) and Tropico 5 (2014), both published by Kalypso. Tropico 6, developed by Limbic Entertainment and published again by Kalypso Media, was announced in June 2017. It was released for PC on March 29, 2019.

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