Port Royale 2 (PC)

Publisher: Tri Synergy
Developer: Ascaron Entertainment
Genre: Simulation
Release Date: 09/21/2004

By Allen Rausch | Sept. 23, 2004

More Patrician than Pirates!, Port Royale 2 is a rich haul for hardcore management sim fans.

The most obvious game that Port Royale 2 can be compared to is Sid Meier' s Pirates!. Both games have a lot in common, at least on the surface. Both cast the gamer as a young sea captain with a single ship and a small nest egg seeking his fortune in the untamed wilderness that was the Caribbean in the 17th century. Both allow players to wander freely, traveling from town to town in search of treasure, developing reputations and deals with the powerful colonial governors of the region, and fighting on the high seas as either a mercenary privateer or a full-blown pirate.

Move past the surface, though, and the two games appeal to very different audiences. If you' re looking for a light-hearted Pirates of the Caribbean that won' t tax your brain cells too much, than Sid' s your guy. On the other hand, if you' re looking for an incredibly detailed management sim/empire builder, you' re going to love Port Royale 2. It' s not the easiest game in the world to get into, but those willing to put in the work will reap a rich reward.

The heart of the game is an incredibly detailed business/trading simulation. Towns in the game' s world produce 19 different commodities ranging from basics such as food and building materials to New World luxuries such as cocoa and tobacco much in demand in Europe. As always, wealth is generated by buying low in towns with a surplus and selling high in towns with a need. As the player builds up wealth, he or she grows in reputation and stature, adding ships to their convoy and eventually gaining the ability to hire captains to run new convoys. As the player' s empire continues to grow, they gain the ability to build businesses in these towns, leveraging their assets to drive competitors into the ground. Eventually, should the player become rich and powerful enough, they are granted land to build their own town.

It' s the level of detail that really makes Port Royale 2 stand out. When I reviewed the first Port Royale last year, I praised the richness of the trading simulation, but lamented the fact that the underlying economic engine wasn' t terribly good. Setting up two automated trade routes in that game pretty much knocked out any fun to be had from the trading portion of the first game by flooding the player with money. Well, kudos to Ascaron for dramatically reworking the underlying mechanics, because Port Royale 2 has a far more sophisticated and dynamic economic model to play with. Players must attend to their trading business and keep track of their cash flow because the game' s rapidly changing market conditions can drown a player pretty quickly. Unfortunately, for many players, the level of detail-oriented work may be a negative. On the other hand, those who chew up Excel spreadsheets for breakfast will be very impressed with the fine level of control they have over their empire.

Fortunately, Ascaron answered another of my laments about the original game. Unlike the first Port Royale, the sequel has an 8 mission tutorial " campaign" that serves as an introduction to the game' s complexities. The " missions" start out with simple trading runs and escalate all the way to up to becoming a Viceroy' s privateer troubleshooter during a vicious shooting war between several European powers. Each of the game' s 8 " missions" is quite limited in scope, and players are unlikely to play them more than once. They also leave out some of the game' s nuances and quirks, meaning that once players enter " Free Play" mode where they' re free to carve out their own destinies, they' ll still have to overcome a serious learning curve. For what they are, though, they serve their function fairly well, which is to say that they take a Mt. Everest-sized curve and reduce it to just a really steep plateau.

Once players have mastered the basics of Port Royale 2' s trading system, they' ll be ready to move on to the rest of the game -- carving out a career. A player' s reputation with various factions in the game is determined by what actions they choose. Players who supply towns with badly needed commodities will find their reputation going up. Missions ranging from military escorts, ferrying passengers, or sailing to war as a privateer under a Letter of Marque are available at any Town Council, Governor' s mansion or Viceroy' s palace. Completing these missions provides the player with more gold, better (or worse) reputations with the colonial powers in the area as well as more missions and commercial opportunities. This is the section that elevates the game above a mere trading sim. Juggling the various political factions, wooing and winning a Governor' s daughter, and even running from determined military patrols if you decide to go pirate is incredibly fun -- and randomized free play conditions provide plenty of replayability.

As in the original Port Royale, ship combat happens in a top-down isometric real-time strategy style. This time, however, the ship-to-ship battles have been streamlined to run faster and leaner. The game also only allows the player to control one ship at a time while facing up to five enemy vessels. Should the player' s ship be boarded or sunk, the next ship in line can be brought into the battle. While historically inaccurate, this system actually works pretty well and allows for better player control and faster fights. Fighting with one ship against five, of course, requires considerably different tactics than real-time strategy gamers might be used to. However, my success in battle using this system indicates to me that the strength of enemy units has been sufficiently tweaked that a halfway decent RTS player should be able to figure out Port Royale 2' s combat system pretty quickly and start formulating tactics.

Port Royale 2 also sports land combat and sword-fighting mini-games. The land combat is sort of a real-time strategy game in which your soldiers must destroy the gates of a town before time runs out. It' s fairly simple as real-time strategy games go (certainly no one would mistake it for Rome: Total War), but it manages to be fun. Somewhat more problematic is dueling. While the " click-the-mouse-on-the-enemy" interface for swordfights is easy to understand, there' s not much strategy involved and the game quickly becomes boring due to a lack of challenge. The good news is that duels never become so difficult they become an actual impediment to play; rather, it' s just a dull portion of the game players have to click through to get to the good stuff.

In fact, I only had a few major issues with Port Royale 2. The first is the interface. While it' s been cleaned up and improved since the first edition of the game, it' s still absurdly overcomplicated. First, the interface has buttons all over the place, some on top of the screen, some at the bottom. Clicking on those buttons brings up sub-screens that have even more buttons, some of which are multifunctional and emblazoned with obscure symbols -- when they' re not blank, too small, or just look like part of the decorations.

There' s also an issue with relaying information to the player. The game sports an excellent " Journal" utility that functions as a financial sheet, mission log, and news source. Unfortunately, the game doesn' t seem to have any sort of a system that lets you know immediately when something happens. If France declares war on Holland, that' s important information I need to have. Being recorded in the journal' s not good enough; I need a chime to go off -- or failing that, some text on the main screen that lets me know when big things happen.

The last issue has to do with the game' s clock. The game is played against a constantly ticking clock that counts off the days, months and years. Everything you do -- whether it' s building a production facility or sailing to Barbados, takes a certain amount of game time. There' s no issue with this in principle, in fact, it gives the game a nice sense of realism. The clock can also be set to several different speeds ranging from 1/10 standard to 100 times normal speed. That helps avoid the dreaded dead time where players are waiting for something to happen.

The problem arises because of the different pace required by both halves of the game. The trading portion of the game is more detailed and market conditions shift very rapidly as the days advance. This means your business requires constant attention. Unfortunately, once the player starts having more than one ship convoy and begins traveling around looking for adventure or completing missions, it' s entirely too easy to speed up the game in order to get to your destination only to find that something dramatic has happened to your businesses that needs to be taken care of. Given that the game has no system to warn you when important news comes up, accelerating time can cost you serious gold or even drive you into debt when you' re just starting out. Proceeding at a normal pace, though, can make ship voyages seem almost as long as actually traveling around the tropics on a sail-powered frigate.

It' s unfortunate that the issues with the clock and the interface add another layer of difficulty to a title that' s already got learning curve issues. That having been said, however, Port Royale 2 is a fun game. It might not have the cache of Sid Meier' s name and the level of detail may turn off more casual strategy gamers, but anyone willing to put in the effort will find Port Royale 2 an enjoyably open-ended trading/management sim.