Cartel Tycoon

As much as I'd love this game to be developed into something bigger and more interesting, it's never going to happen. It's another case of abandonware, unfortunately. The game dev studio went bankrupt and the studio owning this title only sells DLCs but doesn't put out any updates. For those who still thinks "it looks fine and there are some positive reviews so it cant't be that bad" I'll explain. Graphics, aesthetics and music in this game are amazing. Dialogue is cheesy but deliberately so. That will make you enjoy the first couple hours (at best). BUT The problem of this game is that devs didn't have any time to work on balance and game mechanics beyond "it doesn't crash". Once you establish your first production -> smuggling route, you've basically beaten the game. At that point you have an infinite money printing machine and other game mechanics don't do anything to provide any challenge whatsoever. Even on hard difficulty. There's no world simulation, other clans won't expand or even build, the entire map is static. So it's only a matter of time to achieve control over different regions. There are random events which happen quite often but they only pose a challenge initially, while you are not familiar with different game mechanics. Once you understand how those mechanics work, events become completely toothless. Some of them don't harm you at all (there are even some positive early on) but in most events you can choose the worst option and it still won't cause significant harm to your economy. On top of that there are some bugs which multiply the more you play, most are just annoyances but they don't go away and keep piling up. Some mechanics were not given much afterthought and not just allow you to cheese, you will do it unless willingly restrain yourself from doing so. To be fair, none of that is gamebreaking so it could have been fixed with patches. And that sours the taste even more, especially for early access backers like myself. R.I.P. Cartel Tycoon.

Dont buy, scum publishers

3/10 installs a tinyBuild launcher tries to get past my fire wall thats a no from me fam start the game from launcher get not one but two blocking popups for dlc's need to close both before starting game the amount of time you spend setting up and moving things sucks all the fun out of this game 30$ is WAYYYY TOO MUCH for what little this game has also got $57.93 worth of dlc....

[h1][i]«Это уже не крошки, а целый пирог»[/i][/h1] «Cartel Tycoon» — это ваш личный мастер-класс по созданию настоящих латинских империй, где наркобары развиваются не хуже, чем кофейные плантации в Колумбии. Если вы когда-либо мечтали стать могущественной фигурой среди темных делишек, здесь ваш шанс — кулинария из бандитской жизни ждет вас! Готовьтесь построить свой собственный картель, контролировать незарегистрированные маршруты и смешивать нехитрые экономические стратегии с диким риском, вроде того, как десерт в недорогом ресторане: иногда сладкий, иногда с привкусом шампанского одновременно с грязью. Вам предстоит не просто управлять масштабным бизнесом, но и строить печально известный бренд. С помощью своих стратегий вы сможете превращать простых производителей в мега-картели, как будто они проходят через фокус с креслом-качалкой в хипстере. «Cartel Tycoon» позволяет вам собрать команду журналистов, ялда на кухне с поварами и, конечно, ненадежных бойцов, чтобы ваши конкуренты познали, что такое настоящая опасность на улице. Графика напомнит вам о старых фильмах с наркобаронами и их безжалостными рейдами: все выглядит ярко и симпатично, но помните, что за этим зефиром стоит настоящее пекло! Каждый район, где вы ведете свои дела, имеет свою атмосферу, которая меняет не только визуальные элементы, но и игровой процесс. Вы научитесь тому, что «ока-ока» нельзя есть слишком много — это потом еще придется убирать! Геймплей включает в себя создание инфраструктуры для вашего картеля, где вы развиваете свои каналы поставок и защищаете свой бизнес от враждебных конкурентов. И не забывайте: вингер пельменем не смажешь! Каждое ваше решение — это шаг к тому, чтобы стать новый бароном или шепотом скромного наркоторговца на углу улицы. В процессе вы столкнетесь с дилеммами, которые ставят под сомнение вашу мораль — как сделать так, чтобы ваши «соседи» не чухались, когда вы решите проверить их авторитет? Покупка новых участков, регулирование маршрутов и планирование поставок стали не только экономическими, но и настоящими тактическими действиями. Если у вас закрадывается такая идея — заняться маниакальным бизнесом, вам придется серьезно поработать на благо своего «семейства». Находите нужные кадры, шлите шутки по радио, чтобы сбить с толку врага — а если надо, отложите газету для своих «соперников»! К сожалению, в «Cartel Tycoon» нет места доброте и свершениям установленной морали. И хотя сама игра это делает с большим удовольствием, важно помнить, что поведение, показанное в ней, не стоит копировать в реальной жизни. Здесь нет места глупым шуткам, где зло и добро могут сталкиваться в каких-то детских соревнованиях — только настоящие выборы. Таким образом, если вы готовы взяться за создание своего картеля и дойти до утреннего кофе на костях ваших конкурентов, «Cartel Tycoon» ждет вас с открытыми объятиями. Станьте экспертом в мирной женской гильдии наркоторговцев и спроектируйте свой имперский бизнес на собственных условиях — но не забывайте, что это всего лишь игра! В реальном мире все немного иначе, и, лучше оставить искусство картелей на виртуальных улицах. Автор полностью осуждает все события показанные в игре. 10 снежков из 10

played it since first EA release and I have to say it developed in a less fun direction than I hoped for (core game mechanics etc.): - enemy factions are just there so they exist and contribute nothing to the game (other than raiding you, which has little to no effect on you, despite being annoying) - weird mechanics to keep the player from being to powerful (warehouse penalties to keep you from filling them up, Lieutenants being pissed off if they DON'T GET A RAISE EVERY 5 SECONDS) And last but not least it is always a joy to see and early access game which I bought for 20€ TRYING TO SELL ME DLCs FOR 45€. Overall it is not a bad game, but I was hoping for a different product when I first played it in early access.

Well, I bought the game on sale for 10€. For that price, it's really good. Probably one of the best 10€ games you can get. But if someone pays more... oh boy. The game is ANNOYING. I mean it exactly as I say it. The story mode is a "Free Play" with a tutorial upfront. I eventually started clicking away the dialogues because the German translation is really poor and, as a stylistic choice (fitting the setting), it's interspersed with some Spanish talk. Since I don't speak Spanish, it's just incomprehensible gibberish to me (which is not translated into English or German, so you don't know what was said). This wouldn't be a problem if the texts weren't so endlessly elaborate. Every text bubble, every dialogue, everything in the game is like a small book (like this review :P). In essence, it doesn't matter because every quest in the game boils down to "bring X goods to location Y." It gets tedious after 5 minutes. The difficulty level is, de facto, non-existent. The game practically bombards you with money, and it never stops. After 60 minutes, all my underground bunkers, villas, airports, and ship harbors are bursting with money, so I went through phases of just demolishing all buildings and letting the game run in the background at full speed to launder black money into legal money. The game has absolutely zero balancing. Annoying point number 1: The enemy AI is just there to annoy you. The cops are just there to annoy you, always in pairs. That means if you mess with a hostile gang, you can bet money that in the background, the cops will disable your operations, even if you have 0 attention. And if, like me, you have no buildings left because you're waiting for black money, then it becomes apparent how poorly scripted it is. Because the cops still come even when you're practically doing nothing. If they don't have production facilities to raid, they'll take something else that belongs to you. Whether it makes sense or not doesn't matter. The main thing is they always come when you have trouble with a hostile gang. Annoying point number 2: When you demolish buildings, a piece of road always remains. You then have to painstakingly demolish it separately. With 200 buildings, you have 200 small pieces of road hanging at the entrance road. Have fun! Annoying point number 3: The granularity of this game is so annoying. You build a new warehouse, and it automatically connects to everything within reach. You then have to manually disable it in every supplier. If, like me, you build super compact, the list can be 60 points long. And this "generate extra work" aspect really permeates every aspect of the game. Whether it's a quest where you have to manually bring counted goods somewhere or buy TVs and game consoles manually in a bar menu, of which you can only buy very few at a time because... well, there's no reason except deliberately making it annoying. Annoying point number 4: As mentioned in point one, the AI is only there to annoy you. In plain language, it means they neither build production buildings nor do anything else. Enemy gangs occasionally send a troop by, that's it. And you don't even have to react because they just go bang bang a bit and then leave again. Just like that. But what's even more annoying is that the cops only annoy the player. As mentioned, they always come when dealing with gangs and occasionally without any understandable reason. But only to the player. The enemy AI never has to deal with the cops. Coupled with the fact that they always come together with the enemy, it creates the impression that there is no difference between gangster and police. In terms of content, the game only consists of putting farms side by side. You then choose which drug to produce there and may need another one to four buildings to refine the drug. All of this is then provided with the two always identical logistics buildings (logistics office and warehouse), and that's it. No matter which drug you produce, the process is always the same. But why even change the drug? There's no reason. Regardless of the drug you choose, the profit margins are so absurdly large that there's no reason to optimize anything. After a few minutes of playing, you have so much money that you have to start burying it (literally), or the buildings will overflow. Have you noticed that many people write something like "I only sold avocados" or "I became the vegetable cartel"? It sounds humorous but is simply a valid game strategy to avoid the mountain of annoying details in the game. You just produce fruit and sell it. Money is not an issue in the game anyway, but in the case of vegetables, you don't have to wash them beforehand. And since salaries or ongoing costs are practically imperceptible, it's just the much better way to play the game.

Did I enjoy the game during the 24 gameplay hours I sunk into it? Sure, but as someone that enjoys management / tycoon / logistics games, there's tons of nagging issues about this game: - Micromanaging lieutenants constantly (Issuing new delivery or attack orders with no option to queue them up, having to manually cancel orders which would otherwise lead to overfilling storage if destination was at capacity. This kind of micromanagement becomes awful as grow your organization). - Not enough useful hotkeys makes the gameplay loop of scroll, point, and click very tedious. Building a road isn't even on a hotkey, but deleting roads are dedicated hotkey? Also, that road demolish hotkey is different from the building demolish function? - Game is abandoned. Despite the developers recently dropping a DLC, there haven't been any meaningful game updates. Any existing bugs or new features will likely be forwarded to the black hole known as the "Mod Ideas" pinned thread in the game's Steam Discussions forums. I won't be supporting this developer (Moon Moose) again because of this game.

Nah, don't buy it. It doesn't worth it. Developers started to scam with shi1tty DLCs. Better buy Capitalism Plus and Capitalism 2.