With the goal of approaching the console market, Port Royale 3 has simplified too many of its mechanics, resulting in a step back in the strategy genre.
Port Royale 3 is one of the best games I've encountered during the last couple of years. Despite starting to play a buggy and unstable release, I really enjoyed it. The gameplay is amazing, in my opinion, and by now all the bugs are gone (as far as I can tell, at least).
The main idea in the game is to either be a pirate and build your own naval empire, or be a trader (my personal preferred choice) and build a huge merchant fleet, and later on gain control over cities. The game takes place in the Caribbeans, during the European colonization in America. Therefore, you can choose to be either Spanish, English, French or Dutch, but you're not limited to trading with just within your country's colonies. Also, even for people like me, who aren't die-hard fans of "Pirates Of The Caribbeans", it's impossible to miss the connection. :)
The trading mechanism is quite realistic, and is a lot of fun, as you need to start small, trading stuff yourself, until you get rich and famous enough to buy more ships and more goods, so you can buy more ships and build businesses in cities, so you can manufacture goods yourself, which is obviously cheaper than buying them from someone else.
If you're into trading simulation, get this game, it's definitely one of the best of the genre.
Thoroughly enjoying the sequel to Port Royale 2, The combat is a little wonky sometimes and I find myself auto resolving it a little often. This is basically PR2 with shiny new graphics, a few bugs, and a combat system that requires getting used to. The game is incredibly fun overall though, and I see myself playing it for the foreseeable future. The lack of a fleet inside a town being able to defend your property is odd, but worked around by parking your fleets outside your town on patrol.
Port Royale 3 feels bound by the traditions of this time-proven series
and gets all the basics right. However, it never really strays from
the path you had imagined it would take, even before you ever played
the game.
Well-thought-out, transparent gameplay rules make Port Royale 3 a title that can keep you entertained for hours. It's a shame that naval battles are so simplified and the story is presented so unattractively. [July 2012, p.76]
A complex strategy game from the Wild West Indies that's looking absolutely stunning at first glance. However, the game fails completely in many regards. Its controls are overly complicated, the game's mechanics are rather dull and the battles are quite annoying. In the end you are supposed to stare at numbers and drink your real rum, which is a need.
I occasionally caught glimpses of a competent simulation underneath the bugs, poor instruction, and rage-inducing interface, but not even the best of today's strategy games would be tolerable to play if subject to the malfunctioning saves, crashes, and sloppy presentation of Port Royale 3.
I picked this game up for sale on steam, and as a newcomer to the series I was very impressed. The artwork is amazing they put a lot of detail making everything look just right. To enjoy this game you really have to like economy based games, shipping goods from here to there. Some of the controls are not intuitive, but once you figure them out the game is very enjoyable. If you see it on sale definitely pick this one up.
Nunca joguei os jogos anteriores, mas Port Royale 3 foi uma excelente escolha para entrar nesse estilo de jogo da série. Possui um ótimo tutorial narrado, gráficos agradáveis, e um sistema de gerenciamento simples. O jogo pode te proporcionar muitas horas de diversão!
First off as reply to the critic complaining that you can't defend your cities: There are two towers in each city that enemy ships will have to destroy. I have no idea how a "tiny fleet" killed those two towers.
The critic:
PR3 has a very solid trading system. It seems you influence everything with what you do. Towns have a certain prosperity depending on the wares that are available there - they grow if they have abundant goods, and they have bad times if you keep buying everything up completely. Towns will dislike you if you buy goods they need for themselves (like all food), and they will like you if you sell goods they require. So if you don't want to be disliked everywhere (towns which really dislike you don't let you enter peacefully), you will have to buy and sell carefully. You can even starve out towns by buying all food over a few weeks.
Every town produces five things and requires ressources (from other towns) for some. You can transport those ressources for them, and even build own businesses on different islands, transporting the raw materials for yourself only. You can also buy houses and rent them out, as well as a few buildings beneficial to the towns themselves (like a hospital)
Trading between towns can be fully automatized. You set up a route, then you can select a behaviour from profit, transporting material for your own businesses, doing trade beneficial to the towns (providing what they need most) and a few others - and the convoys will decide for themselves what exactly to buy and sell.
You can also set up a merchant at your storehouses, who automatically sells wares, keeps raw materials back and more.
Convoys can have up to 3 fighting ships, which you can manually control or automatize. In combat you can either shoot cannonballs to destroy enemy ships, or projectiles to destroy their sails (slow down), or even decimate their crew so you can board them and take over the ships. It's easier said than done, since you need to reef sails in the right moment and stay long enough in the enemy ships vicinity for the boarding to take place.
Further you can take over cities by force, or by peaceful manners. You can also get a "letter of marque" from one of the four nations and attack their convoys during times of war, without consequences from the other nations.
The two campaigns you can play are more like tutorials, and the games turn into "free play" ones once you're done. There's not much there, and the whole game is more of the Sandbox concept.
There is also a multiplayer, but there aren't any additional trading or coop options. Also the game has basically no diplomacy at all.
Could've done better, but so far if you enjoy a beautiful trading game, this one certainly has a beautiful oeconomy. Ship combat isn't really somethnig that **** me in, but it's fun once a while.
a game with a very high learning curb, an once you get that you go through repetitive gameplay that consists of trading goods and engaging in combat that suffers from poor mechanics overall disappointment
Game would have good review from me even its simpler than Port Royale 1-2 if not gamebreaking lack of town defense.Thats right you cant defend your own towns even you have HUGE own fleet insde ... tiny hostile fleet will go inside and just take it. This is the point i said (insert long line with random insults). Its not bug just game lack of mechanics to defend towns...I mean really did they release not beta but alpha game??