Once things start coming together, there's an enormous amount to keep track of. But you've got to wait for that, for trade routes to complete, for your own pirate raids to complete. There will be times where you're basically just waiting for things to happen, though you can speed up construction using quick build. Oddly, though, even when sped up to maximum (4x speed), it feels like everything takes a little too long. With multiple resources to manage and export, citizens to appease, pirates to fight off and – most importantly – money to make, this piecemeal approach to Tropico 6 is a very welcome way to learn the ropes and makes this game feel a lot less intimidating than it could have. The direction offered by said scenarios is also welcome, as in forcing you to work around limitations, you'll come to understand how to apply those skills to the main game. Both the sandbox and additional scenarios have this feature, which sees a novice player given the light and effective shepherding that they'll need to get to grips with the many, many systems. El Presidente (that's you) is bombarded with requests from various factions (such as, initially, The Crown, a not-entirely-flattering but also not-entirely-inaccurate take on Britain), which serve as useful direction in a game that can paralyse with its freedom. We personally found the easiest way to learn Tropico 6 was to simply play the thing. So much of it is intuitive that you could probably get your head around it even without the tutorial, but we're glad it's there nonetheless. In fact, it's impressive that even on handheld, it's pretty much effortless to get a game going.
Thankfully, it's easy to navigate these sensible and cleverly-crafted lists, thanks to a UI that avoids the Switch's usual problem of being weensy, with readable text and generally useful, clearly-written text. It's immediately quite daunting an experience, with menus nested within menus. The main attraction being the extensive sandbox mode, which offers you everything you could need to start exploiting your innocent citizens. What we have here are the tools to craft a banana republic of your very own. And, sure enough, there are compromises here – but far fewer than you may expect, and not to the game's real detriment. it's something of a recipe for compromise. A huge number of systems at play, an archipelago's worth of individually tracked citizens. You'd be forgiven for thinking that a city builder/sim game such as Tropico 6 might be a poor fit for the Switch. Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)