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Buccaneer's bounty

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 4
Date: July 23, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Overall, The game is worth the money. If you want to play around and pretend to be a pirate, this is for you. While there are a few minor annoyances to me, you may not it to be so. Its a good gift if you are considering that as well.

Not a bad game

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: December 30, 2006
Author: Amazon User

This is pretty good over all as you get a different setting each game. The sea battles aren't to good but overall for the price was pretty good. I enjoy the game play and sea battles in Pirates better

Quite The Bundle

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: September 08, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I appreciated the referral for this product. I was looking for a good pirate game (other than Sid Meier's), and I came across Tortuga and Patrician III on Amazon. But one reviewer mentioned that there are three titles in one bundle for only $20 (or less). So I ended up buying Buccaneer's Bounty instead.

That said, I have had the opportunity to play all three titles of this bundle. (I've owned it for a couple months now.) I am really impressed with each of the game developers' initiative and even historical accuracy. You can tell by playing each one of these games that the developers were looking to make the best titles they could. None of these are just rinky-dink throw-togethers. All three are done professionally (very few bugs or glitches, quality instruction manuals, and loads of features). So if you are looking for quality pirate titles, there are three right here in this bundle, and it is for a good price.

What you will also notice is that CargoLargo sells this game bundle the cheapest. That is whom I chose, though it was hard to tell if I received the package in original condition. Either way, all three games install on your hard drive such that you don't have to have the CD in order to play them.

The games themselves are real fun, but are completely different in almost all ways, though you might notice a very few similarities between all three. But they hold to the basic pirate game interface: trade, choosing a pirate lifestyle or an honest trader's, building a fleet, naval combat, etc. But there are mostly differences.

In Tortuga, you feel like you are playing a huge, vast, massive (any other synonyms?) map because you can control your ship to sail anywhere (with the arrow keys, even), including into rocks or out into the wide blue (ocean) yonder. But in reality, it is just a port-to-port game for the most part, like the rest. But this free movement interface enables different strategies. Also, the combat system for this game lacks the most out of the three, in my opinion, because you cannot attack as a convoy, though you may be attacked by a convoy! I wonder about that programming... Another thing about Tortuga is that your reputation is affected by the locked conflicts in the game. That is, Spain, England, Holland, France, and the pirates will inevitably be against each other, and your role in their destinies affects your own trade empire. This is the biggest challenge of the game Tortuga, I think.

Port Royale 2 is a pretty sweet game, as well. It has what the other two have: buy-low-sell-high strategy to make profits and expand your network. One difference between the other two is the depth in side plots. I like the side quests as they have good meaning to them for the most part. Also, building in towns is pretty cool, though not on par with the city building games that you might know. Still, integrating resource production, consumption, and trade in order to have a good home port is pretty sweet in Port Royale 2.

Lastly, Patrician 3 is actually my favorite game in this bundle, only because I have been addicted to it the longest. This game is the most straightforward in terms of trade and city building. The glamour of the game, I think, comes from the reputation building amongst the entire Hanseatic League, as well as the naval combat where you can fight with massive convoys. But on the latter, it can be pretty stupid at times, I must admit. That is, the naval combat forces you to rely on the winds for your combat strategy. Okay - fair enough. And of course, you want plenty of room to fight, right? Well, what happens a lot for me is that I am not completely aware of who my adversary is, so I do manual combat. And then when I am engaged, I see that I am either out-numbered or out-armed. So I try to flee. Let's just say that if the only direction to flee is against the wind, your boat(s) will be sailing EXTREMELY slow with extremely slow pursuer behind them. It will literally take 5-10 minutes for your boats to flee from combat, as a worst case scenario. Ugh... But like I said, this is my favorite title in the bundle, and this one pooper won't let me down! A unique feature is the map editor. Granted, it isn't all-powerful, but you do get to place towns and resources before you play the map so that is cool.

Overall, I give this bundle a 4-star rating: 3 stars for Tortuga, 4.5 for Port Royale 2, and 4.5 for Patrician III. If you want a pirate game, I recommend that you get these three in this bundle. Try them all out (you will have to play for a while to appreciate each one), but overall, you will be pleased at he great value for three very professionally made games that garner a lot of entertainment.

Classics

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 7 / 7
Date: August 06, 2006
Author: Amazon User

This is a great bundle. Tortuga and Port Royale II are similar games that give the player the opportunity to sail between several Carribean islands and amass a fortune by either trading, taking contracts/missions, pirating, or a combination of all styles. Patrician is more town based and emphasizes RTS style play centered on a successful economy.

Viewpoint in all three games varies depending on what you are doing. Port Royale and Patrician use an isometric view in towns, while Tortuga uses a landscape style "view from the sea" interface. Players may select buildings to open menus that pertain to each particular structures function. Tortuga and PR use an overhead view while the player is at sea, using a blown up map of the islands to travel.

All three titles are fun and have their own unique merits. I prefered Tortuga as it offered what I thought was a superior level of gameplay balance. PR, however, has an added bit of depth that allows the player to actually build structures on islands and start producing products to sell. This offers a nice added bit of depth and challenge as it then becomes necessary to make sure your factories have raw materials, make sure you have an adequate workforce, and make sure your workforce has housing etc..

I have played Patrician least of the the 3 which accounts for my limited comments.

While a little dated graphically all three titles offer solid gameplay experiences at a remarkably affordable price. Additionally, there are not too many current generation games that offer similar gameplay.

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