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.
