Set sail and join the colonial powers of Spain, England, France and the Netherlands in their fight for supremacy of the Caribbean in the 17th century. In 'Port Royale 4' you will take control of a colony as a young and ambitious governor, eager to learn what it takes to manage and grow their small settlement into a bustling trader city. Develop production chains connecting multiple islands and create complex trade routes across the Caribbean, covering the ever-growing needs of the respective cities.
Make use of the detailed sea map to avoid stormy weather regions, cliffs or shallow waters. Fulfil tasks for your nation's viceroy, earning more fame to unlock town buildings, ships and more. Conquer the cities of rival nations or hunt down their fleets with a letter of marque while also keeping a keen eye out for pirates and other privateers.
For the first time in the series, naval battles will be turn-based, with up to 8 ships battling at one time and tactical captain maneuvers that can turn the tide in even the most hopeless of situations for a glorious victory.
Port Royale 4 is also available on Nintendo Switch, PS4 & XBox One.
A good management game with superb visuals, offering enough freedom to let you build your own merchant empire in the Caribbean to your heart’s content.
Old-school trading simulation with clumsy handling. The real-time sea battles of the predecessors have been replaced with turn based combat.
We are probably all familiar with this phenomenon: you spend hours with a game complaining about it all the time, but you simply can’t turn it off. Having spent all evening with it, you feel guilty about wasting your time, but the next day you come back and play some more. For me, Port Royale 4 is one of such games. I enjoyed the atmosphere of the Caribbean and the depth of the trade system, but I’m not sure why I devoted so much time to a title that annoyed me with many ill-conceived bits, and whose low difficulty level often made me feel redundant. [12/2020, p.55]
A good trading simulation... and little else, really. Port Royale 4's weak combat system and repetitive gameplay make for a somewhat boring, if functional and honest, strategy game.
Port Royale 4 is not your typical strategy game, and unless you are patient enough to really get to know how each and every element works, you'll probably have a hard time with it.
Port Royale 4 is a solid trading and building management sim. The improved visuals, as well as some improved mechanics, help set this apart, as does the tactical turn-based ship combat. It's very user-friendly and intuitive, particularly with the city building and trade-route creating aspects. However, it isn't without flaws. Side quests feel very repetitive and don't really give you enough to do and the campaign can be too rigid, not giving you the amount of time you'd need to do anything other than the bare minimum for the tasks set. If you like this sort of game, Port Royale 4 is likely just up your alley, but I can't see it converting anybody to the cause.
Even for the niche audience that this game is aimed at, I imagine this will be too unintuitive and exhausting. With a better user interface and some quality of life improvements, I could see how this game could be enjoyable for everyone and not just history buffs. As it is right now, Port Royale 4 is great for those who love crunching numbers, but probably won't be much for those who want to play a video game.
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