Review - Port Royale 3
Monday, 28 May 2012 11:43
Port Royale is one of those games that you might just stumble upon without knowing two previous games have already been released. It is one of those “under the radar” type games where the publicity for the games have either been none or mediocre, but even though we love ourselves a good pirate game and dove right into it, head and feet first cannonball style.
Port Royale 3 is for those that don’t know a strategy game where you go being a nobody with a ship to ranking up as a known pirate or explorer, that is if you know the tricks and the trades of the open sea, and have a keen eye for both pirates, which ship to avoid attacking and a little sense of exploration running through your blood.
First off let’s check out the Adventure campaign which is one of the two modes you can choose to play with in Port Royale 3 and it is basically the way you learn to play the game. See there is no tutorial mode in that aspect it does what I prefer in any game like this and that is to show you the ropes as you play the game instead of being overrun with text and there is too much information for you to really soak it all in and you end up being tired of reading and head out to sea without any training what so ever and you lose out on a lot a game has to offer. The tutorial includes how you build your army, trading and selling in the market place, how to get quests from different people and rank up among these people and also get to build structures within the different cities. It is all there but it takes some time to go through everything and learn everything even though the game isn’t really that advanced, but it has a certain addiction to it none the less.
When you’re done getting the basics you are ready to basically choose how you rank up, you can choose to do the “good way” where you legally trade, buy and sell different items from different cities and you seek out what other cities need and sell them for more than you paid for basically. You can also choose to head onto the mainland and take up quests which are a diverse set of fetch quests and also kidnapping and extortion, but as you finish the different quests you get to make a name for yourself with the people you took the quests from. Or you can be a swashbuckling pirate! Just set out onto the open sea and rob and sink oncoming ships, it is all up to you what kind of reputation and way you want to go and set for yourself the idea is still the same for both, get your name out there and become a known faction within the world.
The game also has multiplayer for those who want to take the game online, which gives the players a way to set up their own game and how they would like it to play out, what is needed to win the game and how to do so and it includes the ability to take on 3 other players in a four player match.
The problem with the game comes when you put a few hours in it, and you realize that there really isn’t much competition if you don’t go out and seek it, and even then you will have no problem dealing with it seeing that the way you make money becomes easier and easier as the game progress, and you get become more and more powerful while the other players basically stays the same throughout the game. And when you realize that the story mainly is there to keep you on course but simply becomes too wage for you to really get interested in it becomes more of a personal challenge more than anything else, and in my eyes I felt I had seen most of the game after I hit double digit hours in it.
Port Royal 3 is a nice time waster in short bursts, but when it comes to replay value or overall gameplay it tends to become more of a mediocre time waster, sadly. I say sadly because we need more games like this, at least in my mind we do, because I love taking on the open sea and if they put out more games I will continue to test them out hoping to see more story based action and more diversity as you progress through the game, but overall Port Royale 3 is an ok way to kill off some spare time.
