I don't know what to score this game, obviously such a nightmare but I'm so glad it exists. In some ways these are my favourite games, just complete freakshows. Total Frankenstein's monster games that have been given a few too many bolts of electricity to their dead, beating hearts. I played almost all the way through this w a friend one time, using save states and a walkthrough to get around it's absolute unplayability. And there was only one walkthrough we could find online, and midway through the guy writing had just given up and written "sorry I can't do this anymore". Like it was a suicide note or something. I mean, that has to count for something. Gamers will famously swallow a lotta bullshit but this one may be true kryptonite. Love it.

A great example of a game that fucks up on the simple stuff and makes me hate it. Just moving through the castle is torture. Having to walk to the edge of the screen in every room over and over again at your stupid, leisurely monarch pace. I feel like game-makers get let off the hook way to easy for this shit. Mechanically there's nothing interesting going on and no effort to connect mechanics w content. This is core game shit imo. Played it a while ago and probably had more concrete complaints then but I don't remember them.

Some real bright spots in there but not sustained/too many puzzles that were make-work and not about unravelling a mystery actually connected to the plot (eg: tallying people's scores in this weird political system that isn't substantially constructed enough to warrant that amount of time spent on it. I don't care if the math is easy, that makes it even more boring). And some of the time consuming design around how you shift documents/drag names into place/have to click on highlighted meaningless objects LA Noire style, feel like they're there to pad out the playtime. It's an "ok" for me.

I gave up on this immediately cause it seemed hard to learn (also the whole Cuba aesthetic thing is some bullshit, guarantee this game was developed in a less humane place than Cuba).
But I don't understand this whole thing of having micro-management sims be nominally about you being an all-powerful evil overlord. Like this Evil Genius game or whatever does it too. If I was really a Bond villain or an evil dictator the last thing I'd be doing is overseeing septic pipeline construction. I'd be throwing raw gazelle meat to my concubines while I polish my solid gold AK-47. The rest is for the lackeys. Give me a game the lets me blackmail the Queen into making Big Ben strike the melody of "La Marseillaise" or else I won't return her child slaves, that would be a more accurate sim experience imo.
Again I never got past the first 15min so maybe Tropico 4 is that game, in which case my bad.

The funniest moments in games always happen when you feel like you're getting away with something the game never expected or wanted you to do. Even if it's an illusion every double act needs a straight man who's in on the joke but never cracks a smile. Having a game lean into your face and choke hot laughter at you saying, "isn't this all so FUNNY! Isn't it RANDOM!? There's a TIGER in the car with you all of a sudden!" is like the gaming equivalent of having a drunk dude corner you at the party and recite Anchorman.
The game mostly has you witness scheduled "funny bits" instead of allowing you to truly participate in, or instigate them. It hands you the "funny weapon" and tells you, "this is the funny weapon". And personally I find it hard to laugh at the joke when the guy telling it won't stop winking at me or honking his big red clown nose.