| Back in 2001 I reviewed Ascaron's Patrician II, Ascaron's trade simulator centered around European monarchies of the 1300s. I liked it - the game play was solid, the music and scenery captivated my imagination, and there was an elegance to the interface that appealed to me. Well, it's back, this time wrapped around the Caribbean of the 17th Century. And it's good.
The first go-round, Port Royale 1, was not universally hailed, but the Ascaron crew listened and learned, and there are improvements. Basically, the point is similar to Patrician – learn to manage trade routes, only in this instance from Cuba to Florida and back to Venezuela, or any other similar combination, as long as you can buy (or build) low and sell high. Once you get the trading mechanics down, you can become popular, amass fame and fortune, and even succumb to the urge to plunder.
But if piracy is your wont, wait for Sid Meier's Pirates! to emerge from it's modestly-hyped makeover. Mr. Meier (a.k.a, "The Great One") will no doubt get the Jolly Roger part spot-on, and you can talk like a pirate all you want. Port Royale 2 offers some buccaneering, but it isn't a requirement. This is all about earning, and keeping, your pieces of eight through the time-honored exercise of free trade.
Graphics are fair enough – the cities look realistic and the oceans have whales, dolphins, starfish and reefs, while colorful parrots and flamingoes patrol the balmy skies. But there's nothing dazzling when you zoom in. The music is decent, setting a nice, mellow mood that is part Jamaica, part salsa in places. When tension needs building, the music obliges, especially during battles.
The documentation consists of a nice map of the Caribbean, a 64-page manual, and Web forums at the Ascaron site. While the map is excellent and suitable for pinning to the wall, I had trouble with the small font in the manual, and it's printed on pages with an old map of Mexico underneath, making it damn near illegible in places. Oh, for a manual in a 12-point font, with clean, crisp black and white pages.
PR2 is one of those games you'll never see on a console; you need keyboard shortcuts and patience in abundance. I think that's half the fun – you don't learn the game so much as conquer it. But there are places where the developers could do everyone a favor by not requiring that players devote their brain cells to memorizing shortcut lexicon and combos. For example, one of the tutorials had me locked up for ten minutes because I was supposed to hit the "pause" button to keep going. I hit the pause button, shift-P, control-P, alt-P, and tried various combinations before I found deep in the manual that I needed to hit what's known as the space bar.
You can rest assured that PR2 has a steep learning curve. What helps immensely are eight decent tutorials that walk you through the basics and get you into a good confident zone. This is a major upgrade from PR1. The tutorials are a bit dense in places, and it's a little too easy to wander off the "happy path" and find yourself at a loss as to what comes next. You just have to restart when you run into those walls, which is a bit annoying. I like tutorials that lead me by the nose until I'm feeling confident, but monitor my keystrokes precisely. For example, if a tutorial senses that you haven't done anything right in quite awhile, or are thrashing mindlessly, would it be so hard to implement some logic that informs you what the problem is?
On the other hand, there is an open feel to the training missions that encourages exploration and experiments. You can roll through them at your leisure, replay them, and go off on your own as you wish.
Once you clear the eight tutorials, you are ready to embark on a career, building your trading empire by making money and completing missions. Your goal, like Patrician and the other trading simulators on the market, is to master the trade routes, gain fame and acclaim, and maybe indulge in a little combat along the way.
I often felt that anywhere the game strayed too far from trading, it suffered. Land combat, dueling, and naval warfare are all simplified to the point of being add-ons in quality. The dueling – when your sea battle is inconclusive and it comes down to you and the other captain, mano a mano – is a chore you just have to pound through with brute force. The naval warfare is a one-at-a-time affair, rather than a chance to engage in any fleet tactics, and while the flying cannonballs are cool, I guess I'd like to see a little more "Master and Commander" activity or else roll the dice and let me move on. And the land combat, a case of taking over someone else's town, is reduced to racing the clock to tear down the main gate. Where's Mad Max when you need him?
Still, it's a nice piece of work, and the trading is intricate enough to hold your attention. If you like trading sims with historical accuracy, attention to detail, and enough diversions to make things interesting, give this a try. | 
