Tropico 6: Llama of Wall Street [Review]
By Thunderheavyarm
Kalypso returns to the island paradise of Tropico under the wise and just care of El Presidente. As always, I’m looking to exploit a game to make a decent profit as always. But in this new DLC, you exploit the global market and bend it to your whims. All for the people of course. If you're interested in my original review of Tropico 6, you can find it here.
Gameplay
The biggest changeto the base game is the addition of a global market. Similar toeveryday, there are changes to the price of both raw goods andmanufactured goods. If you’re lucky, you might be able to predictthe market and produce a large amount of product to trade for a heftyprofit. To remove the random nature, players can build a newbuilding, the Trade Institute, which tells you how long a trend willlast as well as what the next trends are. With research, you caneventually learn market manipulation to dictate what items will starttrending. Market manipulation is meaningless without preparationhowever, so the game has given a second new building, the warehouse.Fairly self explanatory, denote what resources or goods you want tosit on, waiting until the right time to release them back onto themarket to maximize profit.
There are some newgood buildings to build in the game, creating a new use for moredated resources, chiefly wood and wool for the more advanced ages.The Toy Factory and Smart Furniture factory allow the continued useof wood as more than just boat building materials and for wool tohave additional options based on the island that you build it on. Aswell as a new map to play on that provides a challenge with the newrule system as well as an explanation of how it works.
Review
Something of a soft update to the game, it should add some replayability, if nothing else. The new map doesn’t feel like it really plays that well since the point requirements to advance are gigantic and you’re limited to a single Trade Institute, the only building that can generate the points. Even maxing out the budget doesn’t help much in this regard. The DLC at least makes it possible to become incredibly rich without using exploits. But you can certainly play the game without missing a lot. It’s currently available on Steam, and for the price if you’re looking for a new mechanic to try out, you won’t need to be a Llama of Wall Street to afford this expansion.