Cartel Tycoon Review for Steam

Cartel Tycoon is a business management game where you are on a quest to run a drug cartel. The game is inspired by the 1980’s narcotics trade with your job being that of a drug lord trying to expand their trade and territory. You have to manage the growth and production of narcotics as well as the distribution and logistics of the whole operation. All the while keeping a low profile as to not arouse suspicion of the government and police forces wanting to tear down your new empire. Do you have what it takes to be a powerful drug lord and run a successful cartel? 

When you start the game you have three modes to choose from, story, sandbox, and survival. Story gives you a list of scenarios to choose from each with their own story, difficulty, and expected completion time, which varies. Sandbox gives you the opportunity to explore more about the game in a less restricted way. Survival just tests how long you can last running a cartel on your own. Within the story mode there is a tutorial scenario that is expected to take around 3 – 5 hours, each of the scenarios after that are much longer and higher difficulty. So there is a lot for you to explore in this game already. In the tutorial you are shown the basics of running a cartel and walked through how to expand and grow into the more complex aspects of the game. You start by building farms and warehouses, having to research logistics in order to properly distribute your product. From there you are taught about money laundering which is how you turn dirty drug money into usable legal money. Eventually you move up into the more complicated aspects, having to hire trusted and loyal lieutenants and expand out into other cities, gaining control and dealing with rival gangs. Truly there is a lot to explore in this tycoon game, so many options for expansion and research in order to make your cartel run efficiently, with the added bonus of story scenarios to keep you more engaged. The art style and graphics are very good and set the mood for the game, the music tying it all together really amazingly. Overall the game has a really nice flow and teaches you at a good pace about all the mechanics in the game. The manual becomes very helpful as well as the video tutorials showing how to do things as it can get hectic and complicated, these features really help you stay on track. 

There are a few things about the game that did end up being frustrating. One of the biggest issues I had was with the demolition of buildings and roads. Early in the game you can build but not demolish things, so there were times where I accidentally misplaced buildings or made too many of them but then had to wait until I could demolish them. That got particularly annoying with roads as many of the quests are very particular about where some roads are placed. Even if the roads connect to where they need to go sometimes the quests made it so you had to connect to a very specific road. While that is a little annoying by itself you also can’t demolish stuff until you complete the quest so if you had the roads connected wrong it turns into a web of random roads connecting to the same places until you finish the quest. This issue is more from the need in tycoon games like this, especially in depth ones, to have things look nice while being able to control where everything goes. It saves a lot of issues as you get further in the game and can be frustrating when you can’t fix it right away. The only other real issue I had was that some quests had difficulty updating even after I completed the objectives, some of that did tie into placing roads incorrectly though. Even if the beginning of the game has some frustrating aspects once you get the hang of the mechanics it becomes much easier to progress. 

Cartel Tycoon is a real-time strategy game that allows you to become the leader of a drug cartel. Your job is to grow and expand your cartel while dealing with the obstacles put in your way. There is a lot of content in this game, from the different scenarios that add up to around 20 – 30 hours of gameplay based on the expected completion times, to the sandbox and survival modes there is much to explore. There are a few frustrating aspects to the game’s questing system in the scenarios but nothing that was too hard to work around. I am giving this game an 8 out of 10 because other than needing a few tweaks here and there with questing and demolition this is a very solid and enjoyable game. 

8/10

Check Out the Cartel Tycoon Live Action Trailer:

Cartel Tycoon will be available for PC via Steam, Epic Games Store, and GOG for USD $24.99 / €20.99 on Tuesday, July 26, 2022. It will support English, Russian, French, Italian, German, Spanish (Spain), Brazilian Portuguese, Simplified Chinese, and Turkish languages.

For more information, visit the official Cartel Tycoon website, follow the game on Twitter and Instagram, like its official Facebook page, subscribe to its YouTube channel, and join the cartel ranks on Discord.

Related: Reviews by Brianna Keller

Brianna Keller

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I enjoy a wide variety of games from intricate survival/adventure games to simple platformers. I am also a sucker for a good story game.

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