Port Royale 3 Review

Despite being part of a completely different franchise, it’s easy to think of Port Royale 3 as part of the same family tree as Patrician. It’s made by the same people, uses the same engine, has the same gameplay characteristics and elements. It even has a similar UI. A more cynical person would say this was simply Patrician IV re-skinned, but dig a little deeper, you’ll find the game does actually try and stand on its own two legs. We’ll just call them twins separated at birth or something.

Port Royale 3 at least does a better job of pulling through the basics of the game as far as the solo campaign is concerned. Like Patrician, there is a central storyline where you are an up-and-coming entrepreneur trying to make a name for yourself in the Caribbean, and you’re being mentored by a kindly old man who just loves giving you free stuff.

The town interface is the best looking of the lot, and there's plenty of stuff to play around with as well…

In Port Royale 3 you actually have a choice – you can either be a trader, or an ‘adventurer’, and whilst the story essentially revolves around you trying to win the affections of one Spanish beauty called Elena, how you go about this depends on what choice you make. If you choose the trader, the game will take you through the economic side of the game, from trading, to buying and setting up businesses, to even owning your own town.

Choose the life of an ‘adventurer’ and the game will take you through a different route. Ship management, convoy raiding, privateering, starting wars with entire nations. It’s all cool bro.

The real-time combat system in Port Royale is almost a carbon copy of that in Patrician. Still just as confusing initially too, so be prepared to lose your first couple of bouts as you try and get used to the system. What’s especially good here is the way the story plays out. It is also dependant on which path you take – if you choose Trader you’re trying to fend off the intentions of a rival suitor, but as the Adventurer she actually gets kidnapped by pirates, which is a nice touch and produces a longer lifespan for the game.

Outside of the narrated solo experience, the game becomes pretty standardised with Patrician – the Free Play mode lets you customise the world and where you start/who you start for. The options for Free Play are actually slightly more extensive here than in Patrician, allowing you to really set up the world as you want it. The intricacies of Caribbean politics at this time (can’t believe I just said that) means that the ‘living world’ is far, far more interesting than what happens over in the Hansetic league.

Combat in this game is hands-on, and there's plenty to keep your attention. It's a tad confusing though...

Towns need to be ‘discovered’ instead of just waiting for you to rock up in your dingy, the four major factions present are constantly warring with each other, and you can get involved any which way you want in a very Mount and Blade kind of way. Interacting with towns is also more interesting as well, especially in terms of attacking them and taking over.

The beauty here is that as long as you continue paying whatever upkeep you have, you’re pretty much your own boss. Being a pirate is far more viable here than it ever was in Patrician, and the deep, robust trade section is still present. Even though the UI is as horrible as ever, that’s really the core thing Kalypso/Gaming Minds have to work on. Games like this don’t need to be easier – there has to be a base level of depth to be any good, but you can at least improve on presenation and usability.

Hell, even EVE Online, which is no better as far as accessibility is concerned, has all the information for you to organise and use as you see fit. Better presentation and referencing of price-stats, especially when looking to other ports for trade, would be a godsend here. If Kalypso were to contextualise things historically (given the fact that no-one would have been able to look up prices on their phones back then), I could think of a couple of ideas right now that could help with that.

It’s little things like this that hold Port Royale back a bit. Automation as well – despite the title having Patrician’s excellent set of tools to help with automated trade routes, basic gameplay principles mean you’ll have to micro them every now and then anyway, which defeats the point of them being automated in the first place.

Still, it’s not like these are deal-breaking issues, but if Kalypso is to emerge from this rut they seem to be in at the moment they need to start pushing the envelope on many of these niche games.

Welcome to Caribbean! Who wants a Pina Colada?

Unfortunately, Kalypso have yet to release that killer title that will put them on the map. Legends of Pegasus was supposed to have done it, but we all know how that turned out. Still, like Paradox and grand-strategy, Kalypso are really making business/sim games their ‘thing’. As Gaming Minds Studios learn and improves with each new release, their franchises will keep getting better.

Port Royale 3 is not a bad game, not by any means, and I’d say on the whole it does a better job of things than Patrician IV did – it’s still not fantastic though. Definitely one to pick up cheap if you can find it, but still worth picking up all the same.

Given the fact that as a games writer I’m always poor, making money in games like this helps distract me from my pain. I think I’m having left-over dust for dinner.