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Amazing Medievil accuracy!!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: October 16, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Certainly challenging and infinitely complex, but much more than a game. After a bit of play you find yourself becoming familiar with the universal rules of the merchant mariner.

Every history department should require play. It is the only way to truly understand how the renaissance and the industrial age came to be.

Hanseatic League Trading Simulation

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 15 / 15
Date: October 19, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Complex markets, realistic trading, town development, personal advancement, etc., this game has it all. Patrician II incorporates an interesting time period where growth in trade and city development was pinnacle for Northern Europe. Running your own business in a medieval situation gives a new found respect for the hardships these entrepreneurial souls endured while carving out their markets.

Patrician II has excellent graphics; it sets a feel to the game that makes it very enjoyable. The game-play is fantastic; there are tons of options to adjust to your speed or difficulty level. The multiplayer works flawlessly and the game appears to have been tested quite efficiently. No patches were necessary, and bugs and crashing are non existent. Strategy First is definitely making a name for itself for delivering stable working games, with impeccable historical accuracy and interesting environments and time periods very few game manufacturers explore.

Better then the first, enjoyible to a point

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 13 / 17
Date: October 24, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Many years ago, I ran across the first installment and said, this idea was good, but something was missing. Well, they must have heard me over in Germany. The reminds me in many ways of Pirates, (Yes, I am old enough to remember that game). Sailing the North and Baltic Seas in order to gain a high rank among the trading towns of the north. The graphics are fairly good and the detail is ok, the manual has a few words they forgot to translate from German. You can marry and ship and hunt pirates, or be one yourself. You have your choice of 8 cities to start from. The micromanagement is the only real distractor from this game. When one gets many ships, it becomes very hard to manage the ships and if you are mayor of a town, the stress level increases. But if you are like and remember the good old days of Pirates!, this game is for you. It is worth the money!!!!

Has trading in the high seas ever been so fun?

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 15 / 15
Date: December 02, 2001
Author: Amazon User

This is the type of game I wait around for. You know, the one that comes out every year or so that you know you'll have to buy when it first comes out as opposed to most games where you can wait a bit until the price goes down. Well, I forked the cash when this one hit the shelves. And it was worth it.

Anyone old enough to remember Sid Meier's Pirates will appreciate this game. It combines the same elements of that classic game as well as business management and some serious historical factoring. This game would be great business history tool, because today's European Union is loosely based off what your objectives are. Anyone with a brain won't mind playing this game for a few days or so.

With endless options, you basically are set out to make money, any way you want. The open ended goal is too become Alderman of the Hansa, the vast multi-national trading guild. The ladder is pretty long too, it is tough enough on average difficulty to become just a merchant.

I would say this game combines the Microprose classics Pirates and Railroad Tycoon into one game. (Both of which are hall of fame games by the way in almost every publication.)

The only downside is the length of the game. It takes a long time to do stuff, and some people will be very turned off. This game ain't no Diablo. This game involves thinking, and with that a lesson on European history too.

Great simulation by our friends in Germany. Thumbs up.

Oh what a joy!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 7 / 7
Date: December 03, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Let me just say, this is one of the best games I have ever played! I have played them all (simulations that is) and this one allows multi-players to use the same machine and play on a turn-based setting. It is overwhelmingly enjoyable, addictive, and FUN! A friend and I have been playing together on the same machine for some time now. Although you lose some features with the turn-based option, it is still well worth it. Most developers cannot understand the importance of a multi-player option within a game. This one is a must have for all PC game lovers.

Be Advised...

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 10 / 11
Date: January 02, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I love the game and I generally agree with the positive reviews of Patrician II.

HOWEVER, please be advised: This is not a game that you just pop into your CD drive for a casual 20-30 minutes of play. It requires a lot of micromanagement, patience, and frankly, can be quite sloooow for quite a long time.

We fanatics tend to forget that not everyone is inclined to spend hours on what may feel more like a history lesson on a relatively (for most people) obscure trading league in order to become a successful merchant.

You've been warned.

a deep and thoughtful strategy game: BUY THIS!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: January 23, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Patrician 2 is an excellent game. If you like a good PC strategy game, then you will be sucked into this one for untold numbers of hours. The buying and selling has a most addictive feel to it. I haven't had so much fun buying, producing, selling, and trying to make supply and demand work for me while beating out the competition since M.U.L.E.! Very open gameplay is the rule as well. The match objectives can be achieved by any number of possible actions.

A thinking ,not a shooting Game.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: February 17, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Quite a change from the point and shoot,"market to kids", attitude in Game design.This requires Memory,Skill and Luck.

Simply Awesome

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 8
Date: May 04, 2002
Author: Amazon User

P2 was a great, original idea to begin with (how many other 14th century Baltic Sea trading sims can you name?), and I love what they did with this one. Anyone who likes the thought of starting small and rising the ranks will love this game.

The money model is tough enough to be challenging (and realistic), but not so much as to be impossible or unpredictable. At first you can't help but just make single trips to nearby towns and build houses to rent in order to make money, but soon you can build your own industries and run your own towns.

I won't go into all the good parts of the game since others have done that well; I will just name a few drawbacks:

- The game's interest tapers off as you get richer and richer, because you can never stop planning and making all the shipping runs that you did as a lowly shopkeeper (there is no turning it over to a middle manager), so you always have to be bogged down in the details as you move on to other things.

- I still haven't sucessfully survived a land seige, even after maxing the number of my town and wall guards and building all the towers possible. Since there is no controlling how they fight (you aren't a military commander in this game), how do I protect my people?

- The sea battles are awesome, but your opponent can easily evade you if he has a faster ship. If your ship is suped up with weapons to fight with, though, you probably aren't very fast. So it is hard to search and destroy with a heavy force.

- Each town only has a few commodities that you can make economically. You can make some others, but the costs of production are high and you won't make a profit.

Those are only minor problems after dozens of hours of gameplay, though, so don't let them hold you back. Enjoy!

Addictive!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: June 10, 2002
Author: Amazon User

The player begins as a small trader in one of the cities of the Hanseatic League and tries to build up a trade empire. The starting point is up to you: choose comfortable trading from a home town centrally located and rich in resources or try to make a fortune based in a town that is remote, under-supplied and surrounded by pirate-infested waters.

There are 20 different goods to trade with. The market operates according to supply and demand and you will have to find out where to buy cheaply and sell dearly. So if you sell fifty barrels of wine the last will bring you a good deal less money than the first, always provided you get to that city in the first place before your competitors flood the market with cheap plonk!

No town produces all goods the people need, so at first you'll have to travel quite a lot to buy whatever your town requires. Later on, as the population figures are rising, you will have to establish trading posts in other cities and produce goods yourself to ensure a steady supply. In addition you can open up trade routes to the Mediterranean Sea or even to the New World. It's anachronistic but immensely rewarding when the 'discovery' video comes up and your fame and popularity ratings go up steeply. Only a happy, impressed and well-fed population will elect you mayor and perhaps even Head of the Hanseatic League.

The trade setup is well balanced between realism and playability. It's almost impossible to get rich quick as you cannot confine yourself to trading in luxury goods. The poor are the majority of the population and you need to provide low-profit food staples like grain, beer and fish for them, as well as things like furs, wine and cloth for the rich.

The game remains interesting once you do have a lot of money and property because then you will also have plenty of expenses (taxes, wages etc) and the task of running your huge empire in the face of threats like disease, fire, sieges, blockades or pirates. Your ships will suffer from wear and tear on journeys and your sailors might start a mutiny if they don't get regular leave. Many routine tasks can be automatized but the overall strategy and any adjustments are your own decision.

The real beauty of the game is that within the parameters you have a lot of choice: for instance, it's a given that you will need more and more ships as your business expands. However, it's up to you how you get them: if you are a respectable trader you will have them built in your home town's dockyard. This creates employment, wealth and happiness among the people. If you are a more daring character you will invest in a fast ship, an able captain and a couple of cannons to capture pirate ships and incorporate them into your own fleet. This will boost your reputation as a person not to mess with. And if you happen to be a thoroughly bad egg you will use said armed ship to rob your competitors's ships and goods. This is probably the most lucrative option, but if you're caught you will have to pay a large fine and also write off election for office as well as any prospects of a rich marriage for the foreseeable future.

Random events, entertaining sub-plots and 'just-for-fun' details make this a game that keeps you interested for hours on end. The music deserves a mention, too: very pleasant and atmospheric.

There are a couple of campaigns, I myself prefer the open-ended game, though. Having played the original German version for over a year I understand from other players (I haven't got there yet ;) ) that the logistical limits for feeding, clothing and housing the entire Hanseatic League all on your own are reached at a population count of about 680.000. This should be enough for anybody's aspirations!

This is not a game for instant results and you might have to do a couple of trial runs to find the strategy that suits you best. After that you can have almost endless fun with a superb and challenging game.

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