Those allow some different abilities to be used during the fight and are invaluable. There are however extra “tactics” that certain ships and captains have. It’s not terribly deep, with only a few basic moves and attacks. Each ship in a fleet has a turn and you move spaces on a grid-based patch of water. This is where the combat comes in and it’s a turn-based affair. While you’re sailing the sea, convoys and towns can be raided and attacked by enemies. What will get in the way of your progress however are pirates and enemy nations. It can perhaps come across as a little simplistic, but with how complex the rest of the experience can be, that’s not a negative. I was worried initially about how fun this would be considering the obvious naval focus, but it works as a totally competent city builder. However in order to get them on your good side, you must complete tasks and develop your towns. The viceroy is the leader of your country, offering up crucial upgrades and ships. Once you have the gold rolling in, then you begin running towns, creating buildings, moving workers around, and satisfying your viceroy. There’s a deeply satisfying feeling working on a web-like system of trade and seeing it being executed. It’s great fun going through the locations trying to find the best material to buy and sell on your route. Trade routes are essential as you get a huge amount of freedom in how you set up and optimize them.

Almost everything you do contributes to supporting your funds in some way. Players begin with a small number of small sail ships, with the goal of getting much more and setting up trade routes. Learning to manage the economy is crucial and it’s a very large part of the gameplay experience.

It’s impressive that it manages to condense an intricate game so quickly. It goes through everything from mechanics of the economy, setting up trade routes, to fighting enemy ships. It manages to be about forty minutes in length and teaches you nearly everything that you need to know about how to play and how the systems work. Much of that is down to the excellent job it does of easing you into the systems through the tutorials and tooltips. At first glance it can appear intimidating, however it ends up being much simpler and more approachable than it first appears. Port Royale 4 is strategy on the large-scale as players are tasked with managing fleets of convoys and coastal towns, either in campaigns or in a free play mode.

Port royale 4 review