Reviewed: July 7, 2003
Reviewed by: Tyler Whitney
Publisher
Tri Synergy
Developer
Ascaron Entertainment
Released: June 5, 2003
Genre: Strategy
Players: 8
ESRB: Everyone
7
8
8
8
8.0
System Requirements
Port Royale is a game of trading and economic simulation, closely related to the Patrician series, which were also developed by Ascaron.
Ascaron, with offices in Germany and UK, has been around since 1991 and produced several games over that span, most notably the Patrician series, which were set in the medieval times and involved advancing your character through trading- not unlike Port Royale. Anyone familiar with the Patrician series should feel comfortable with Port Royale as well; the presentation and style are similar.
The storyline consists of assuming the role of a captain to command your fleet aligned with either the French, British, Spanish or Dutch as each nation tries to gain dominance in the Caribbean from the 1500-1600’s. You can expect trading, naval battles, construction of plantations and a lot more trading, as you climb the ranks towards captain and perhaps governor of your very own port town.
A tutorial is available but it was out of sync with actions and it didn’t it have any voice to help the new player learn how to operate; you have to constantly read the small windowed text to see what to do next, and your never certain if you completed a certain task. However, it does explain some of the rudimentary game mechanics, such as trading, ship movement and the global map; but most of this can be found in the manual anyway.
The game is presented in a top down/isometric view, similar to the Tropico series. You can zoom in and out at will to better view battles, the town and other facilities. There is an auto save feature, which I just love in games, although if there is a horrific encounter with pirates, you may regret it. Thankfully, you can disable it altogether or set it to longer or shorter save intervals.
You start off with a lone ship, with options to be a buccaneer (bigger ship, less money), trader (more money, smaller ship) or a balanced option (medium ship, medium money). From there you set out to build your money and rank by trading goods; combat can wait for now until you can afford bigger, more powerful ships. There is a menu that you will get to know intimately that shows average price bought for goods such as rum, tobacco and cloth, to name a few (19 in all), and the selling/ buying prices at the various locales.
This game uses the simple system of supply and demand-more goods present means lower prices, and vise versa. This took me awhile to figure out, maybe that was because I only had a 1-week Economics crash course in high school and my checkbook is nothing more than a few scraps of post it notes.
But aside from my issues with finances, most people will pick up on the trading system quickly. To save time and energy, you can set up automatic trade routs that will do most of the work for you, a nifty feature because after awhile, trading can get boring. You can also search for new locales to trade with, thus adding experience points and the opportunity to expand your nations empire and your bank account. In addition, you can eventually construct plantations, farms, and mills that produce goods and employ people in the town, but you must have adequate approval rating first.
As you gain money and experience, you can add more captains and ships to your navy, ships that range from puny sloops with 8 measly cannons and a cozy crew of 26, to monstrous Galleons that sport 44 cannons and a crew of 148. If you feel nervous that some of your smaller, less armed ships will get entangled in combat, you can assign certain ships to be the main brawlers and let the others focus on traders transport of goods.
A lot of the real fun will come from sea battle, which consist of encounters with pirates or buccaneer (bounty) missions, where you first buy a letter from the governor of a town to take out the target convoy. Graphical effects pick up in this department, with visible ship damage and sailors running around on deck. You can choose different types of ammo, like grapeshot that shreds the sails or solid shot, which is used for gouging huge chunks into the hull.
At some point, you can even board the enemy vessel and battle with swords; just remember to carry enough for each man fighting. However, if you disdain combat, then you can have the computer battle it out for you. There are also land battles, where your troops can disembark and take over cities, but this is only fought by the computer based on your offense vs. the town’s defense.
Graphics are crisp-as long as you don’t zoom to close, then ugly pixels will attack your screen. The ships are modeled well, but are a little hazy at close range, much like the people. Vibrant colors of jungle landscape and sea resemble Tropico’s graphics. Citizens will mill about around town, cranes will raise and haul goods and ships ranging in all sizes will come to and fro as they venture into port.
Little details like whales surfacing and fishermen in the open seas, plus vivid landscapes, like the swampy terrain of Southern Florida and the volcanoes of modern day Cuba, add some sparkle to the otherwise lackluster world map.
I didn’t notice any graphical glitches whatsoever; Ascaron did a solid job in presenting the New World in a rich and colorful style devoid of errors.
Most of the music is “high seas adventure”, full of strings, trumpets and snare drums, and although it sounds like it was done on keyboard rather than live orchestra, it still manages to capture that distinct sound of the period of seafaring exploration.
Ambient sounds are comprised mainly of the commotion of the town, birds chirping and the ever-present waves crashing and roaring. These were all well done, and help to further immerse the player.
This game will take hours upon hours before you are even able to access some of the more detailed missions like escorts, deliveries of high ranked officials and tackling those legendary pirates. If you max out your character, you can always come back and play again as either one of the nations, in several different eras of expansion, some when your nation may be on the top, or struggling to hold an economic foothold in the New World.
Multiplayer is supported through LAN, Internet IP or through the Ascaron online game-searching tool that can bring players together. When I read that it had multiplayer support I thought it would be combat only, but you can actually play out a whole game (to rank of captain) and share in each other’s adventure. Overall, there is a ton of replay for Port Royale.
Fans of the Patrician series or the infamous Pirates!, will enjoy this title loaded with sea-faring trade, fierce ship-to-ship warfare and an endless replay value set during the age of colonial expansion. However, the steep learning curve and relative monotony early on, may lead less patient gamers to abandon ship.