Port Royale

I'm not sure what to expect with Port Royale. It's basically a bare-bones trade sim where the only technique is to buy low and sell high. Production and consumption takes place virtually automatically and is so hands off it can be difficult if not impossible to manage much less influence. PR is *not* a construction sim. You can acquire buildings that improve production or your convoy or towns defenses but they are purely upgrades and don't factor in to any simulation. Neither is this a Pirate sim. You can steal goods through combat and seek bounties but the naval combat is shallow and unfulfilling. All it does is have you acquire goods to support your towns and sell them at a profit to upgrade your holdings and occasionally defend your holdings from attack or expand your empire through combat. But everything involved in improving and expanding your holdings is tedious and unfulfilling. There is a lot of watching not much happen other than numbers scrolling across the screen. In terms of presentation I have seen facebook games more attractive than this. In fact, PR is exactly the sort of game one would expect to find on facebook. It's simplistic. The mechanics are too shallow to toy with the simulation. Success comes too easily and there isn't enough of a difference for doing well to provide any sort of satisfaction. Not enough stands in the way of Caribbean supremacy, and the methods of owning the high seas are too few and too shallow to be of merit. I have no idea where all the praise for this game comes from. Perhaps I missed something? Would have been good for its day, though even for its time there would have been better contemporaries, but Port Royale doesn't hold up as a good old game by today's standards. Chances are if you're expecting more, you're gonna get far less.

German company Ascaron was renowed for it`s middle age merchant sim series Patrician. In this case they fast forwarded a couple of centuries, replaced cold waters of northern Europe with warm Carribean and voila - we have Port Royale. At the very beginning you will face a standard procedure: choosing a nationality, home town and your speciality (trade or combat). So you start the game with only one ship, some spare money and one storehouse in your home town. Your first goal is to earn money, so you have to do some trading. If you click on any city on the map, you will get information about city demographics and it`s main products. Most important building in every city is marketplace, where you can buy or sell goods. Beside the price is the available amount of goods, and the rule is simple: the more goods there are in the stock, it will be less expencive and vice versa. Another important building is shipyard, where you can repair your ships, or order new ones to be built. In bigger towns there is also governors mansion where you can get varoius missions (catching the infamous pirate, delivering some important goods or documents...). Can you imagine a Carribean town in XVII century without an inn? Of course not. In here you can gamble, hire a captain for your ship or buy a treasure map from suspicious looking pirates. At the start none of the many Carribean cities are drawn on your map, so you will have to set sail and discover them. Sailing from town to town can be very long, but fortunately you can speed up the game. At first your only income will be from trading, but after you get fair amount of money and increse your reputation within a city, you could build some production facilities and start producing your own goods. Make note that some goods require other goods in the production process, so make sure that those needed goods are always available or the production will be halted (for instance you will need salt to make salted fish, and for making salt you will need wood). During your travels you will meet lots of other ships: from ordinary merchants minding their own business to bloodthirsty pirates who will want to plunder your ships. Any of these ships can be intercepted and attacked. But if you attack ships from your own nation, or nations you are not in the war with, soon you`ll become a fugitive and not welcome in any of that nation`s ports. Battle is conducted on the separate screen. Battles are in real time, but you can pause the battle in any moment, issue orders to your ships and then continue the game. The strengh of the ship is based on the number of guns and men. There are three types of ammo, for destroying the ship`s hull, it`s sails or it`s crew. When you soften the opponent from the distance, you will have to board their ship and defeat the remaining crew. Plundering and capturing ships is very lucrative business, so it is advisable that you make one flotilla just for this purpose. Earining money, winning battles and fullfiling missions will boost your rank. After obtaining a new rank, you will get some information about your long lost sister. Besides trading and battles, the search for your sister is an integral part of the game. Port Royale has colorful 2D graphics, combined with 3D models of ships.Music and sound effects are fine, but a bit boring. Most important is that the game itself is very intersting, but you will have to invest some time in it, in order to see it`s true colors.

I like games and movies about pirates. Port Royale is one pf the better representative of theese games. Game takes place at Caribbean seas and islands durring 16th - 17th century. You are dropped in middle of this mess so you can have life full of glory. Trade peacefully or angage in piracy - it's your choice. Game has some elements similiar to Sid Meire's Pirates! but I think some things can't be done different in different games so there is career mangement, real-time combat between ships, treasure maps and side missions, including searching for lost famili members...sounds familiar? ;-). There is one large difference. Port Royale is imho pretty harder but fortunatelle tutorial provides some help. You don't have difficulty setting for game (overall) but instead some smaller options and settings because ow which game can be made harder or easier. There are four nations to choose with - England, France, Holland and Spain. Choosing one of them determines your starting port and reputation/hostility from other ones. Ship battles are made in 3D, rest of game is nice old drawn 2D, detailed and crisp. Sound effects are done good enough, so the music which helps to pass hours of playing unnoticed :-). So put Jolly Roger on mast and prepare for boarding!

This is an absolute gem. I don't remember anything that has kept me long in front of my computer. I'm a micromanagement fan (trade routes in colonization etc) so this is perfect. The only things that could be improved (because are easily abused and thus spoiling the game if you decide to do so): 1) range for different types of cannon ammo is the same - so you end up firing grape shots only, quickly reducing enemy crew and just boarding far superior opponent (this is sooo easy to pull through) 2) Anti piracy ops aka "pirate farming" - get 2-3 ships abuse point 1) and you gain constant supply of ships to sell (increasing your reputation) - this can be even improved when you have a hideout where you can repair them for free and sell them at even better price. Other than that great game