El Presidente is back! It is time to leave behind smuggling and crime and join big players in the major league. Starting with the wooden toys of El Prez, build up your own brand that will leave the rest of the world catching up to Tropico. This is our Tropico 6: Llama of Wall Street review.
For the uninitiated, Tropico 6 is the latest game in the series of city-building simulators. You are El Presidente, a cunning ruler of a small island state of Tropico. It is up to you to shape your own little republic through four different eras, caring for the needs of your people and making sure that everyone knows of Tropico.
You can choose what industries to pursue, steal world wonders and monuments, customize your palace, expand your little empire to other islands via bridges and or ship routes, edit Tropico’s constitution, give speeches and proclaim edicts that will affect the lives of your citizens. Don’t forget about building up your military to protect Tropico and El Prez from rebels, guerillas and other superpowers. However, all of the above needs money. The more cash you have, the bigger and better are your options for the state of Tropico.
This is where The Llama of Wall Street comes in. The first major update to the title, the DLC adds a new set of features that allows keen-eyed dictators to take advantage of randomized economic events, influence the global market and make sure that Tropico remains where it belongs – at the very top, together with El Presidente.
The Llama of Wall Street adds a new stand-alone mission featuring three new buildings and random events that affect the global market situations. For example, the news of the upcoming end of the world might cause panic on the market, sky-rocketing the prices of weapons, canned goods, and steel. Due to the nature of the events, El Presidente might want to pursue a wide variety of industries in Tropico to always have something to profit from.
This gameplay mechanic is complemented by the addition of a new building, Trade Institute, used to track the ongoing trends. By utilizing this building, you can also provoke the bull (increase) or the bear (decrease) the prices for export or import of certain randomized groups of goods – in a good time, the global market doesn’t move too fast.
The story in The Llama of Wall Street starts small, just like Tropico. Your loyal second-in-command Penultimo comes up with a new idea to sell wooden toys made in the likeness of El Prez. After building your first set of newly-added production building Toy Workshop, you make your first step on the way to the great global megabrand. Toy Workshop is a versatile tool that can utilize rubber, planks, and cotton to create the end product, making it perfect for starting fledgeling economies.
The Broker will be your advisor along the way, as the story – and the toy industry – grow larger through World Wars, Cold War & Modern Times and soon start spanning nations and continents, filled with jealousy and betrayal and a lot of money. It will certainly take you at least several hours to play through the DLC even if you focus just on the main mission. Meanwhile, your nation will grow from a toy-producing corner of nowhere to a mighty economical empire and the center of tourism.
Another new building added in the DLC is the Smart Furniture Studio. It is a production building that allows you to produce smart furniture by combining normal furniture and electronics. While not as interesting or important for the story of the update as the Toy Workshop, this building allows you to have yet another industry to utilize if the prices for its goods suddenly go up.
The last but not least is the addition of new edict traits and customization options for El Prez and your palace.
Altogether, The Llama of Wall Street provides players with several hours of gameplay as you complete the cheeky and charming mission that is so uniquely Tropico. However, compared to the scale of the base game and to the DLC released for previous games of the series, The Llama of Wall Street is light on content for its price.
The DLC adds one mission while the main game consists of fifteen. Meanwhile, similarly priced Waterborne DLC to Tropico 5 added six missions, nine buildings and a variety of features. However, if you were looking for a reason to return to Tropico or try your hand at bringing a tiny island nation into the big business, The Llama of Wall Street was made just for you.
Note: the Steam key for the base game & the DLC was provided for the purposes of this review.
