As others have noted, Port Royale 2 is very similar to the Patrician series of business games. You're given the opportunity to create your own business empire in the Carribean during the 1600s. You can setup your own factories, houses and even towns in the later stages of the game. You can also assemble fleets to trade with other ports, or go to war against another country by obtaining a Letter of Marque amd plundering their ships and towns. Along the way, you can complete missions given by viceroys and independent traders. How you choose to navigate your way through the politics of the era is up to you. You can choose to align yourself with one of the four powers (Spain, Netherlands, England and France), play as an independent privateer and swap sides whenever it becomes profitable, or become a fully-fledged pirate and fight everyone (probably the hardest route). This is a very solid trading game. The biggest down point would probably be the repetitiveness of ship combat. Once you've built a strong fleet, you will win virtually all battles and combat simply becomes a predictable and repetitive chore.

Port royale 2 is a nice trading game. The grafics are outdated of course. but the trading part is still intact. The different countries that are active give a some diversity in the game. The pirates and combat part of the game is bad. The worst part is that you can only control three ships in a battle and the enemy the whole fleet. This is more or less duck shooting for the AI

This game is like a combination of Patrician and Sid Meyers Pirates.

The only downside to this game is that it has to much focus around missions etc. and does not encourage as much free play as I would like.

This does not let down the game however, and for the price you will be quite pleased with your purchase. That is if you are into excellent trade simulators such as Patrician. If you dont want to manage economics and trade in a game though then this might be one to steer clear of.

I greatly enjoyed this game...

A lot of folks are comparing it to patrician. This is somewhat accurate, but to me I'll always think of the old pirates! games, which really got me hooked on this genre many years ago.

This game is worth the cost. It's fun, simple, easy to pick up and put down when you want something to play. It can be quite addictive so be prepared.

The game is quite polished a good trade simulation. Resembling the game Patrician it behaves similar. There are missions and the normal trading, i.e. towns grow when their demands are fullfilled and when they grow their demand is increased...

The Taverne and playing a nice card game can give you extra money if want to spend time and reload over and over again.

The graphics is although not high end, quite atmospheric and using the PDF map you can set sails and cross the Caribean sea.

Only after a while it gets boring... because its quite repetive. So I could not dedicate myself long to it. After the second promotion and before a battle took place I quit...

This is a decent game as long as you don't mind putting it down for a few weeks at a time. I play it for a week or two, then pick it up again a few weeks later. The trading and building aspect of it can be much more fun then following the script of missions to accomplish.

The sea battles are one of the features I really enjoyed at first, but later I tried to avoid them, unless I was trying to capture ships or just wanted to commit acts of piracy, which can be very rewarding.

A very good trading and sailing game in the golden age of the greater caribbean seas. Its in the same generation of games as Patrician and other commercial tycoons, but better because there are pirates in it! :D

If you played and liked the first Port Royal (and even if you didnt), its a must buy!

This game is everything "tortuga" should have been, and were not. Good and detailed game, on the genre "pirates! + high-seas-trader" style (PS: see? two very ond games, but whose formula still sticks on after all those years. Why nobody develops any real new games anymore?).

Sure enough, it is far far away from the complexities of a paradox game, for instance, but it is still very nice for a casual play.

Great trading game and great game to build a fleet of ships and slaughter your enemies in! Love the building aspect of the game. Can setup your own little Empire basically! Graphics are good for it's date. All around great sound. One of the best trading sims/fleet building games I've ever played.

The game is a good one. The graphics are good and the gameplay is better. Sound is not out of place and in addition to this being a good game to play it has bits of history built in. There is a character you can talk to that gives you much information about events that really happened during this period in American history.

The game starts you out with one ship and some gold. The economy is dynamic based on supply and demand, making it a game for a trading-game enthusiasts looking for a challenge. It also seeks to keep you involved in the money-making process. While you can have automatic trade routes it still pays to do some trading yourself. In addition to that, you can build your own buildings, if you have a permit to build in the town, and produce goods yourself. Naturally, with this comes having to pay wages. However, you can somewhat balance that out by building houses and charging rent to your workers, but if you sell the goods you produce at the right place you will make money.

The battles are very challenging for one simple reason. You can have large and powerful fleets, but you can only control one ship at a time. This is almost not fair as your enemies will have all their warships attacking you at the same time. While that is complicated it should appeal to people who love a challenge because it certainly is just that, a challenge.

There is realism thrown into battle as well. if your ships are smaller and have less that goes under water they will be faster over rocks and near the shore, while large ships with more of the ship under the water will be much slower above rocks and near the shore. Wind direction also affects speed and aim. For example if the wind is blowing south ships sailing south will be faster while ships heading north will be slower.

The various missions also present a challenge, for they will inevitably force you into the war between the nations (Spain, Holland, England, and France). My advice to you all is to trade and get your wealth up high before joining the war. Even if your nation is at war with another and you have done nothing to anger the enemy you may still trade with them. For example, my nation (Holland) was at war with England. I had not attacked England and as such I could dock at their ports and trade with them. Also other nations may have ships for sale that are better than the ships of your nation.

There are many events that affect the game. Storms come to the seas, towns are attacked, pirates roam the seas and establish bases, and nations deceive one another.

On the brighter side you can search for treasure or the famous Spanish Treasure fleet and loot them.

All in all, it is a good game. There is some room for improvement, but if you like trading games or like games from this era in history than this game is worth a try.