I have read through the other posts and haven't seen a solution to this problem.
Whenever I start a new game the hourglass goes of, empties and then nothing. I only get the initial harbour view and hear some background sounds. Never get into the game.
If anyone has some suggestions I'd appreciate it. Thanks.

What are your system specs and what OS are you trying to run the game on?

Did anyone ever figure this out? I was thinking about buying this game from GoG, but i have vista 64 and had the exact same problem mentioned here while playing the official demo. Can't really find a concrete answer anywhere either other than GoG listing vista64 as being in the system requirements on their site.

Unfortunatly the OP never responded so I have no clue if he got it working or not. GOG does fix up the games to be compatibile with windows xp as well as vista 32bit and 64bit. Thats not a guarentee that it will work though as what will work on one computer with the same OS may not work on another, but the gog version should of got any fixes it needed to work on vista where the demo won't have. If you do decide to get it though and it does happen to not work gog support staff will try to get it working as well as members of the forum if you post your problem here.

Well, after buying it from GoG, i have the same exact problem.
The only suggestion i saw through general non gog specific research was to try turning off Data Execution Prevention for the exe due to copy protection issues with vista, but if GoG removed the CP, that shouldn't be the case. I'll mess with that later i guess, but now, I'm heavily leaning towards the "does not work with vista64" viewpoint.

Sorry to hear that, contact gog support and give them a dxdiag and as much information about the problem as you can. If you could also give your system specs here on the forum the forum members can try to help you as well.

Thanks for the help! I really wasn't surprised when it didn't seem to work perfect "out of the box," but of course it would be great if i could find a way to make it work since it sounded like a really fun game.
Exact same problem as Arnaldur. When trying to start a new game through any method (free play, scenarios), the game goes to the loading screen and then after the hourglass is done emptying, the game freezes. No errors and it isn't a "hard freeze" that I need to restart my computer to fix (alt tab and then right, click close, end non responding program is enough). the only thing that happens after the hourglass is done is that the flame atop that tower thing in the top right of the loading screen graphic appears (not animated) as if it tried to get to the next step before freezing.
As with the official demo, no combination of compatibility mode, messing with game settings or running in admin mode works. I still have to try the DEP thing, but that suggestion was specifically to try to fix the copy protection in the official version.
Some system stats (could post dxdiag if needed, but it is quite long of course:
Computer:
Operating System Windows Vista™ Ultimate (6.0, Build 6001) Service Pack 1 (6001.vistasp1_gdr.090302-1506)
DirectX 4.09.00.0904 (DirectX 9.0c)
Motherboard:
CPU Type DualCore AMD Opteron, 2000 MHz
Motherboard DFI Lanparty UT nf4 sli-dr expert
System Memory 2048 MB
BIOS Phoenix - Award WorkstationBIOS v6.00PG
Display:
Video Adapter Radeon X1900 Series (512 MB)
Video Adapter Radeon X1900 Series (512 MB)
Monitor Dell 2407WFP (Digital) [NoDB] (CC3026B31PMS)
Multimedia:
Audio Adapter Headphones (NVIDIA(R) nForce(TM
Audio Adapter Line Out (NVIDIA(R) nForce(TM)
Audio Adapter SPDIF Out (Creative SB Audigy 2
Audio Adapter Speakers (2- Logitech USB Heads
Audio Adapter Speakers (Creative SB Audigy 2
Audio Adapter Speakers (NVIDIA(R) nForce(TM)
Storage:
IDE Controller NVIDIA nForce Serial ATA Controller
IDE Controller NVIDIA nForce Serial ATA Controller
IDE Controller Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller
SCSI/RAID Controller MagicISO SCSI Host Controller
SCSI/RAID Controller Microsoft iSCSI Initiator
SCSI/RAID Controller SCSI/RAID Host Controller
SCSI/RAID Controller SCSI/RAID Host Controller
SCSI/RAID Controller Silicon Image SiI 3114 SoftRaid 5 Controller
Floppy Drive Floppy disk drive
Disk Drive Maxtor 6B200R0 ATA Device (189 GB, IDE)
Disk Drive HDS72808 0PLA380 SCSI Disk Device (80 GB, 7200 RPM, SATA-II)
Disk Drive HDS72808 0PLA380 SCSI Disk Device (80 GB, 7200 RPM, SATA-II)
Disk Drive Maxtor OneTouch III USB Device (111 GB, USB)
Disk Drive Generic Flash HS-CF USB Device
Disk Drive Generic Flash HS-COMBO USB Device
Disk Drive SAMSUNG HD753LJ SCSI Disk Device (698 GB)
Optical Drive HJ8294X VHP343E SCSI CdRom Device
Optical Drive HJ8294X VHP343E SCSI CdRom Device
Optical Drive MagicISO Virtual DVD-ROM0000
Optical Drive SONY CD-RW CRX140E ATA Device (8x/4x/32x CD-RW)
Optical Drive SONY DVD RW DRU-540A ATA Device (DVD+RW:12x/4x, DVD-RW:8x/4x, DVD-ROM:12x, CD:40x/24x/40x DVD+RW/DVD-RW)
Optical Drive YH9106S BRS023O SCSI CdRom Device
SMART Hard Disks Status OK
Partitions:
C: (NTFS) 78530 MB (1150 MB free)
D: (NTFS) 194479 MB (145 MB free)
E: (NTFS) 78530 MB (321 MB free)
K: (NTFS) 715401 MB (680 MB free)
M: (NTFS) 114470 MB (238 MB free)
Total Size 1181410 MB (2534 MB free)
Input:
Keyboard Microsoft USB Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 (IntelliType Pro)
Mouse HID-compliant mouse
Network:
Network Adapter Generic Marvell Yukon Chipset based Ethernet Controller
Network Adapter NVIDIA nForce Networking Controller

Try the DEP thing anyway it certainly can't hurt.
The next thing to try is to load it up and then set it to run on a single cpu core.
If those don't work I would try reinstalling it but do when you reinstall it set the setup.exe to run under windows xp compatibility with admin access. I wouldn't install it to program files if thats where you have it currently as vista can throw random fits for no reason with programs installed there, I would instead install it to something like C:\games. Once installed set the game to also run under windows xp compatibilty with admin access and try setting it to run with a single cpu again.
Hopefully one of these will work otherwise its going to be alot harder getting it to run.

I'm not sure if turning off DEP caused this or it was just a coincidence, but now i get an error: "Could not find translation files" when i try to start up the game even.
Some minimal research found a review citing this error being caused by DEP being on, but i just turned it off so who knows. I suppose i will try to reinstall the game later.
also: with the dep thing, reviews and other people suggest turning it off for the port royale 2 exe (i didn't for gog's wrapper), but GoG's support page says to make sure it is on. I'm only 80% sure what DEP does, but it should only interfere with the CP as far as I know, meaning it shouldn't be an issue.