Rating: 
Summary: A finely polished trading/adventure game in the Carribean
Review: Set in the 1500-1700s, Port Royale lets you control fleets of ships that trade in large variety of goods at 60 ports, and fight with pirates all over the Carribean. Or become a pirate, and prey on the other nations. Or be a mix of both.
Beautiful graphics, extremely stable and balanced gameplay, and great sound to top it all off.
If you ever played Pirates!, Cutthroats, or Seadogs, and wished they had just a little more something, then Port Royale is the game for you.
The game was released in Europe in 2002, and is being released in the US soon.
Open ended gaming doesn't begin to describe this game. If you want to follow the storyline, fine. If you don't, fine. If you want to follow the storyline only when you want to, fine. You want to go to war with a country or two, fine. You want to butter up a country or two, hoping for gifts, fine.
Sail ships, trade in goods, marry a governor's daughter (who gets kidnapped often-it's great), beautiful graphics, great economic model...all this and you get to blow pirates out of the water too!
Rating:
Summary: FULL of adventure and it has Churchs!
Review: The cool thing although something I did not focus on using much in the game was the Church's, which aid in different ways.
You know if you like to think and love strategy games at a nice price, then this is a groovy game....
It is challenging but enjoyable, you can be the Pirates, Buccaneers or just a Merchant making bucks!
GO for building things as soon as you can and build your fleet with the same ships till you are ready to afford the bigger ones. DON't forget to max the Convoy with people and put enough cannons & cannon balls on board to take on the Pirates (depending on your political leanings).Dont max the convoy out with ships as you can capture and sell ones that you win.
I enjoyed this. Plus you really get a feel of that period in time.
GS
Rating:
Summary: Great Game, but lots of bugs
Review: The creativity of this game is amazing. The trading, the sea battles, from the easy to hard, depending on your choice, makes for a very fun game. It can be hard to understand, however it does come with an online manual and map if you really get stuck. But, once you have it figured out, your on your way to many hours of fun. That is....until it crashes. Thats not so bad, simply because you can save often, and it does have an auto save option, (which im not so sure isnt what causes the crashes), however it crashes in German, meaning, if you speak and read only English, you have no idea what just happened, all you know is you were about to attack a pirate and bammo, you hear a sound, then nada. If you manage to get back out to your desktop, you will find two error messages waiting for you. One in German, the other spouting something about null containers. When I first purchased the game, I went to the Ascaron forums only to find my problem was not an isolated problem. Many Many MANY (get the picture?) others experienced the same thing. After a month or so, something funny happened. ALL of the complaints about this issue, had dissapeared when they suddenly decided to clean?? their forums. They made one patch, claiming to fix the known bugs, but it failed to even touch this particular bug. Then, nothing, everything was all about Port Royale 2, totally sweeping the problems with one under the rug. Their support never contacted me back after requesting help twice. So..would I reccomend? Yes. But, expect the inevitable crashes, and dont expect technical support.
Rating: 
Summary: Good Idea, Bad Programming
Review: The idea of the game is great, but there are conflicts within the programming that causes it to crash constantly, even with an updated computer. If you check the maker's site, they have many reports of the same problem. The Idea is great, the graphics are good, just wish the game would actually work. You have to download a patch to even attempt to get it to work. Check out ASCARONS FORUM on their web site--Would I buy it again? No. I would hesitate at buying any software from ASCARON.
Rating:
Summary: A bit of caution...
Review: Though I really love this game, I must say that this is not a game for everybody. Especially if you hate "spreadsheet-like" games. Sid Meier's Pirates! had a very simple trading system. In Port Royale, it is far more complex.I think Port Royale's peer is not Pirates or Seadogs. Port Royale should be compared with (very old) games like Merchant Prince or High Seas Trader or Koei's Uncharted Waters series.
Rating:
Summary: A bit of caution...
Review: Though I really love this game, I must say that this is not a game for everybody. Especially if you hate "spreadsheet-like" games. Sid Meier's Pirates! had a very simple trading system. In Port Royale, it is far more complex. I think Port Royale's peer is not Pirates or Seadogs. Port Royale should be compared with (very old) games like Merchant Prince or High Seas Trader or Koei's Uncharted Waters series.
Rating: 
Summary: Partician II in the caribbean
Review: Well designed game and fun to play, but built on the same platform as Patrician II. Improvements to the trade screen makes micro-managing trade convoys easier and graphics are better. If you've played Patrician, it's going to look VERY similar.
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