Port Royale Preview

It's been a few days since I've stopped playing Tropico 2 and now that I've given up my career as a well-heeled buccaneer, plundering ships and raiding battlements, I've decided that the Pirate's life wasn't sophisticated enough for me. Actually, I've always imagined myself as a trader, merchant, or adventurer living in the 16th century. Port Royale, the latest achievement from Tri Synergy and Ascaron Entertainment, will carry you straight back to the times of exploration, voyage, and trade with the newly discovered continents. After checking out a playable build of the game, we take you through some of the exciting times of history when being an adventurer that seeks fortune and fame was all that mattered. So, swab the deck, trim the mainsail, get everything shipshape, and let's cruise!

Fire, you blundering blockheads, fire!

Let's check out our production efficiency... Not bad!

In Port Royale, gamers get to experience one of the most important ages in human history. In 1570, Spain had predominance in maritime might and had conquered half of the world with its nearly undefeatable navy. Therefore, you could play as a Spanish captain, riding freely over the seas. In the 17th century, the French brought the might of their powerful navy (Ed. - And the ability to eat calf brains.) to bear against the world. So, players can choose to play as the French and strike a blow for the "Le Roy". For those of you not familiar with French, that means "the King" and not that guy on 'Shaft.' And finally, if you prefer, you can begin playing as the English in 1630; a time that saw England as a dominant force and the Spanish very much the weaker nation. Playing any of these countries denotes a different number of challenges, since you begin as a mere sailor and usually have much higher goals. Basically, your task is to achieve the rank of governor and increase your wealth via trading and battle.

Before you begin, the game allows you to go through a variety of options which will determine the way you wish to play each scenario. The beginning of a mission is always important, so you'll have to choose wisely between trading skills, money, and ship capacity. All of these are crucial to your success, but it's up to you to decide the quantity of your starting assets. On top of that, players are able to choose which way their reputation improves among the town's population - it can either be achieved through trading or during sea battles. First of all, the only way you can successfully maintain trade routes is by establishing a powerful fleet. But, be warned, as your fleet gets larger it will attract the attention of pirates and plunderers that roam the seas freely. Still, if you supply your ships with an experienced captain and a well-armed crew, there shouldn't be too much trouble. After all, by expanding your fleet, you'll improve commerce and increase your popularity with the local inhabitants. This should be your main goal, to ensure a prosperous and stable economy. Here's a piece of advice, It's always good to keep checking out your stocks, they are often a good indicator of what your town may lack and what resources you need to accumulate. As soon as your uprising nation accomplishes a number of successful trade deals, your governor title won't be that far off.

As for the trading itself, it is handled through a relatively plain system that's well-presented and easy-to-learn. If you get some supplies within your stock that are marked with red numerals, that means the local town is in dire need of that particular resource. Goods, that usually consist of wine, grain, fish, meat, potatoes, rum, and so forth, have a predetermined price which can fluctuate according to the amount of resources in your town. If you are scarce on, say wine, its price will start increasing automatically. Naturally, the value of overstocked goods is likely to start dropping, so you have to keep an eye on which purchase would be most suitable for your current price range (and would secure solid income). Other means of acquiring goods and gold can be attained by attacking and robbing other ships, or hunting down pirates. And, it is always adviseable to explore as much as you can, because you'll never know what treasures can be found on neighboring isles.

Those sweet reflections make you wanna take a swan dive right into the water.

Those Dutch dudes are quite an industrious bunch, don't you think?

As you may have gathered, sea battles represent the very heart of the gameplay. Players can choose to conduct sea conflicts automatically or manually. Manual battles give you an opportunity to participate in standard RTS naval combat. During these clashes you can attack enemy ships in three ways; cannonballs, grapeshot, or chain shot. Each one of these attacks casts a different type of damage upon your floating foe. The chain shot, can slash and rip enemy sails and make their ship immobile, cannonballs will inflict heavy damage to the hull, while grapeshot injures the oppsoing ship's crew. I'll bet this all sounds very easy, huh? Well, just so you know the game has a very solid AI, so any conflict at sea will be a dangerous and challenging undertaking. Guiding you through these sea battles is a very simple and intuitive GUI which can help you get into the spirit of the game quickly. Of course, if there will always be players who are new to the genre and the whole concept of gameplay, which is why the developers have incorporated an enlightening and clear-cut tutorial. Also, the game works pretty smoothly at this stage; we never encountered any visual bugs or apparent hiccups in the gameplay. The whole game works pleasingly at this point without any complications whatsoever.

From what we've seen of the game so far, it has fairly decent visual potential. Generally, I have to admit that the graphics are very pretty, especially in high resolution modes, featuring beautiful water surfaces and lovely art work. It was also good to see that the designing team had done a decent job with providing detailed maps, which have been supplemented with things like walking pedestrians, rich wildlife, etc. Another obviously meticulous effort was invested in generating historically authentic architecture of the ships and buildings - each boat at sea and structure on land was re-modeled to fit a specific period of history. The crew at Ascaron Entertainment has given the same attention to detail in portraying battles at sea. The water surface has a number of attributes that make it look quite realistic such as waves, boats and clouds reflecting on the water, and so on. Also, the ships have visible damage and were beautifully animated. This delightful 16th century setting was spiced-up with excellent ambient noises as well as some short, but very sweet and likable tunes in the backdrop. Nice.

We feel that many games nowadays lack the sort of approach that was taken in the creation of Port Royale - promising features, neat graphics, and smooth gameplay. At this moment we were rather impressed with what we saw, and it's safe to assume that this game will fit very well in the crowded scene of contemporary strategy games. In any case, we expect to receive the full version some time this summer, so be on the look out for a full review then.