I'm pretty late to the party but thought to share some info.
First thing is, the campaign is not 5 - 6 mission short. It's 15 mission in total (I'm currently in the last), spread over 4 maps. I dunno what Space Satan did which made him finished the game after getting nuclear power.
Now as I've said before, I've skipped 2 to 4 of the series. But compared to 1, or many other city building games, Tropico 5 is quite dumbed down. No, the problem is not just with dumbing down, but a lack of information. The manual is awefully short and useless (where's the awesome, informative, well written Tropico 1 and 3 manual?). The game doesn't show influence area of things such as education buildings, religion buildings, etc. I don't know how much are my grocery covers. Education buildings don't tell how fast they are teaching people - sure, I see there are 15/15 students, but how soon will I get the next batch of high school educated citizens? Do I need to build more high schools or not? What's the industrial building's input
utput ratio? Is it 1:1? How does parking places work? And metro system? Why is there no overlay or similar things that allow me to see where all the 1-tile buildings - cabins/metro/etc. - are? It's a nightmare when I've laid down some cabins in the woods but then I can't find them anymore, or if I want to build a metro system but I need to find that tiny entrance among all the buildings. And I don't even know (and the game doesn't tell either) how effective my metro system are. I can't see conveniently see which buildings have upgrades either - the almanac does show that info but it's buried deep and is difficult to manage and the control is buggy. And I can't even upgrade buildings easily - I need to find that building, click Update, click the actual update. And then I need to do that for the remaining 5 plantations, 6 ranches and 30 houses. Fuck.
There's little if any useful tooltip info anywhere. I don't know how much cargoes ships can carry. I don't even know WTF "local consumption" means in the almanac's food part - does it mean how many people are taking food from there? What does pollution do? What does beauty and housing effectiveness do? What DOES effectiveness do?
Building a tourist paradise is also so much dumbed down than 1. You just put down slob/family/eco/wealthy tourist hotels on the highest effectiveness spots, and then the money will start coming in. I don't even need to set up entertainment/shopping areas. The hotels don't even need roads to connect. There's no specialized tourism buildings except for hotels and airports. Fuck, ALL the tourists look (almost) the same.
The ironic thing? Despite the control being so dumbed down, the game is still playeable, because the system is also dumbed down (simpler diplomacy, trade, tourism, economy, food, religion etc.. Also the humor is less and much more facepalming), I don't need to optimize my gameplay strategy and tactics in order to win. But the game absolutely doesn't recreate the feeling in Tropico 1, which is building a true paradise with careful planning and especially importantly, building a tourism paradise.
I tried to play Tropico 4 but the grafix sucks compared to 5. How does 4's gameplay compare to 1?