This is a game which utterly and completely fails in every way -- to show its age. In all other ways, the game is perfection defined, and has incredible depth, entertaining gameplay, highly realistic simulation, and gorgeously hand-crafted and pre-rendered graphics.

Approaching this game as if it's a "trading game" is like approaching The Sims as if it's a "home economics training tool" -- it's completely missing the bigger picture. From your first tax bill to your first profitable trading run, the game gives you no illusions of success, only that which you strategically earn, and earn you shall. Money? Pfouah! Your earnings are reputation and power, to lavish comfort on your prospective suitor and to expand your holdings.

See, the unique thing about Patrician III that no game has yet duplicated is that it begins as a basic speculative cargo trading simulation, and then when you least expect it it becomes completely different. Suddenly you're no longer interested in simply maintaining a fleet of trade ships; now you're becoming a Hanse-era industrial mogul by building factories, hiring managers, and executing profitable itineraries and regular shipments. And all the while you're fighting the good fight against pirates... and ever so occasionally fighting the bad fight against other traders... until, when you least expect it, the game changes *again*. Now you're not just an industrial mogul but a political force to be reckoned with, and your decisions bump against a council of apathetic, profiteering councillors (like yourself, of course) who resist your decisions unless you work out deals in the bathhouses. And then, when you least expect it, it's a real-time strategy game? What's all this about a siege? Yeah. Wow.

If there's any nitpick about the game, it's that it sometimes has a "roguelike" style of frustration to it. You will learn about many things the hard way, oftentimes having no idea that what you did was wrong (unless you had read the impressive manual from cover to cover -- which, although the manual is excellent, is not light bathroom reading) until you are suddenly brought up on charges. You will quickly learn not to do these things, and soon you will be in the right mindset to live in the Hanseatic League with the best of them.

May the wind be at your back, Captain. You've got a long road to the top ahead.

This is a solid trading sim for all those wannabe-tycoons. Set in the late Middle Ages / Renaissance era, you start out as a humble trader with a single ship and a small amount of gold. It's up to you to climb the social ladder and become eventual leader of the Hanseatic League. Over the course of your trading career, you'll build trading fleets to service the cities of northern Europe, send expeditions to explore and trade with southern Europe and North America, build businesses, develop cities in a SimCity-esque manner and strengthen the Hansa. The game plays like a sandbox, so it leaves you to decide your goal. Some criticism - all the information you need to optimise your empire isn't readily available. For diehard tycoons, you may need to use a third-party software like a spreadsheet to save your information, which can be immersion-killing. Endgame becomes very complex with so many ships, fleets, cities and businesses to manage.

I don't have anything negative to say except that I was never able to get a large-scale, multi-city, multi-fleet business to work well and bring much profit. I was too lazy and didn't have interest for that. I found it difficult to optimize the automatic buying and selling functions effectively. I usually tried to use only a couple of ships to their maximum potential which limits the actual scope of this game. The third Patrician wasn't much different to the second, just a couple of differences that I noticed. You have to make lots of calculations when playing but nothing too difficult unless you try to be perfect. Sea battles are ok, similar to Sid Meier's Pirates. If you're just looking for a business sim and not necessarily a sea-oriented one with battles, I'd recommend Capitalism 2 instead.

This is a really in depth economic real time strategy game. It deals with the Hanse, a group of merchants that dominated Northern Europe during the Middle Ages, and it is your task to build up a trading empire which main goal is to outdo your competitors. You start with nothing but a small ship (if you just play it in its sandbox mode - there are also scenarios too), and have to buy and sell around ports; buy low and sell high is the name of the game here, all the while amassing your fortune that you can use to buy more ships, larger warehouses to hold your stock and invest in your home town buy building houses, factories and so on.

Quite a complex game, and I guess you would need a head for maths to work out all the price fluctuations, where to sell and buy etc - its quite dynamic. Yes, also there are pirates in the game, so make sure your convoys are protected by buying weapons for your crew and ships.

I guess the game is quite old now; it is 2D, but the gameplay factor is high. I have yet to play Patrician 4 which is coded in 3D, but I never really finished Patrician 3...? Good game if you are into trading/economic games.

I love this game. I've played hours of it and I feel like it's one of the best trading games out there (that I know of). I really just wish it was more viable to be a pirate. But then again I probably just go about it all wrong.

An interesting game. Good for quite a couple of days fun.

Yet you will face a time where it might be getting boring.

You aim at social and political power. Thus spoken you of course need cash.

And thats where the whole game starts. Earning cash. Building vessels, building production sites and warehouses. All these add up to a high amount of fix cost which can be shouldered by increasing trade.

At a certain point you will feel like it doesnt seem opportune on an economical basis to expand your production and fleet, or you will feel it takes too much management out of you to keep the whole thing running. Last because the company could break down in quite a short time depending on your strategy (e.g. major sales fleet roaming from harbour to harbour). So you will stick to what you have and keep the whole thing running until you earned enough money to become increasingly active on the political stage. And there it can get boring. Though I have not looked into every facett of the game (I didnt, because investions on a try and error basis could have had severe drawbacks on my company and I have had kind of a hard time organizing/managing my whole production and distribution). So I lost enthusiasm right before the political playground opend up.

Great game and predecessor to my favourite - Port Royale (1). If you are into games featuring economy and history, this game is a must buy. The only criticism is that it tends to get a bit repititive. However it's great value for this price, many hours of fun and relaxed gameplay of building up a trade empire.

This game is an excellent trading game. It is a little on the difficult side. It is fun to sail around finding good deals at all the different ports and building more ships and buildings. It gets a little complicated when you get a lot of ships and a lot of buildings. The seasons matter, so when you're trading supply and demand AND the seasons matter. If found this game a little difficult to get good at. Maybe there are some tricks or something that I didn't figure out, but once it got into the advanced stages it was hard for me to do. That said, this game is fun, and if you're willing to invest the time to figure out the deep strategy I think it would be worth your time.

To me this is a great economic, geo political game. However it tends for me to get a bit repetetive. Its not easy to start out new, and has a bit of a learning curve which might turn of those that want an easy game. Still if it was a bit more polished id play this more.

Anyone who likes tycoon games should try Patrician 3. You can start with a single ship and a pitiful few coins in your purse, and in a few (game) months can have trade offices and warehouses in several cities, ships running 24/7 on automatic routes just to supply your industries (and deliver the products you make), and heavily armed convoys hunting for pirate ships. Everything you do matters - the goods you supply to a town will help it survive the harsh winter and help it grow. Speaking of winter - in the winter months you can really feel the pain of expensive food and scarcity. Or abuse them, of course, by selling the stuff in your warehouses for very high prices.

This is a classic for strategy/simulation gamers. Mixes RPG elements successfully with business/trade engine. You always come back to this game. Can't wait for Patrician 4 to come out later this year!

Bought this when it was on sale based on great price and reviews. Overall, a very fun game, but very repetitive. You are a trader in the Hanse, and basically your life will revolve around moving any number of a variety of goods from one port to another to make profit. You then spend your money on expanding your business by buying more ships, opening businesses to increase demand and production in your city and eventually expand to other cities. It is quite a compelling game though, as you find yourself hooked on making more cash. There are other aspects, such as piracy and sea battle to defend your goods, as well as expeditions to far away ports that net you larger cash transactions. Most of this stuff is handled through simple screens where you tell the AI what you want done, you do not actually sail your ships to Africa or anything. They just vanish for a few months and then return. There is a little bit of detail interaction in cities though, as you get reputation based on what you trade, how much of it, how much you click on the church to pray, etc. Eventually if you get rich and well liked enough, you can be mayor of a town and build its defenses and walls, and maybe get elected leader of the entire hanse. Be warned, though, the game has a steep learning curve and it is easy to be trading for a long while, making great profit and over expand too fast or unwisely and suddenly find yourself broke.

It’s all about the money. Patrician 3 is a maritime trading simulator set in the middle ages. You spend most of your time trading. You can dabble in piracy and politics but trading is where it’s at. This is a good thing because the game’s strength is that pleasant feeling you get watching as your wealth steadily grows. Hours of your time will slip by. The combat is nothing amazing and can be avoided without loss. There are a few clunky micromanagement implementations which become irritating once your trading interests reach a certain size. But on the whole the interface is neat and effective. This game effectively has next to no narrative elements. Getting married just means a picture in a sub menu and occasional receiving news of your newly born children through the mail. I appreciate the honest pixel animations and simple graphics, not groundbreaking but functional and satisfyingly pretty. This is not a slick modern production however it is a satisfying trading simulator with enough variation and feature to keep you hooked for endless hours. If you like 3 dimensional space monsters who want to devour your spleen in High Definition after explaining a convoluted back-story which takes over an hour, don’t buy this game. If on the other hand you like trading Sims buy this, you’ll like it.

This is a great trade simulation game. You spend your time controlling small vessels around from town to town, buying and selling. You can also raise Jolly Roger and hunt down other traders, take their cargo and ships, sell it and go hunting again.

Normally you develop trading and constuct workshops and trading offices in many towns to expand the individual towns and the entire Hanse.

If you are into games like EU3/Victoria and loved Pirates! this game might be the right choice for you. For me it is one of the few older games I play quite regulary because it's still so much fun.

In a "normal" game you will build up lucrative trade routes, increase your fleet, build up production of needed goods and take especially care of the development of your hometown so you might get elected as major one day. You have to deal with Pirates - but if you manage to overwhelm them, you might manage to even capture their vessels. Later on you might get elected to elderman which means even more tasks to manage.

Long story short this game is really worth a try / the money...