I didn't splurge much on the recent Steam Summer Sales, but what I did spend on included The Witcher 2 and this rather odd and not so popular trading strategy game. Patrician IV was released back in September 2010 and has ever since been on my wishlist for quite a while. I've preferred the Port Royale series and the Patrician series has always seemed lacking in a soul to me and was a very formulaic calculative type of trading game. That wasn't going to stop me from trying it out when it was on sale... so I purchased it out of impulse.
Patrician IV is a naval trading game set in the Hanseatic league of trading cities focus around the Scandinavian region as well as England, a bit of France and Germany. You start off from a lowly trader to a wealthy businessman. I started of the game playing the campaign which tells the story of one Max Stromberg from Lubeck. The campaign is pretty dry and uninteresting and serves as a decent tutorial. It's not going to be getting critical acclaim for amazing story... that is unless by the end of my game I discover a mysterious island with smoke monsters and Max Stromberg gets isolated on this island... Patrician IV: Lost: The Game: The Video Game: That Was A Trading Game. But I digress.
 |
| Sail from city to city buying and selling, that's about it. |
The entire system of Patrician IV isn't that complicated, you don't need to be a rocket scientist or have a Ph.D. in quantum physics. It is remarkably intuitive for a trading strategy game and displays most wanted/highest demand item in a city in the world map. Just by a glance of the map and you know exactly what each city needs urgently and can choose your trade run without going through menus and a bunch of screens.
The thing that really sticks out like a sore thumb in Patrician IV is the amount of grinding required. And you though only free to play MMO's are a grind fest. To give you an idea, you start off with 20,000 bucks and must trade your way and increase your cash holdings. Buying a Burgher house( a middle class home that you can rent out) will cost you more than 100,000 bucks. Which means you're not going to afford to own any properties for quite sometime.
 |
| Cities offer a bit more gameplay diversity, invest in stuff in the city. |
Patrician IV takes the whole earn and grow your savings to a whole new level... you level up by saving more money; and this isn't inconsequential as in the campaign, things open up as you reach a new level, from a humble salesman to a patrician(a governing elite of a city). There's more than the usual buying low selling high mechanic of a trading game. For the uninitiated, in Patrician IV you move your ship around this region buying goods at a cheap price and selling them at ports that buy them at a higher price... basic trading principle, that's how you make money. Easy right!
But as I said, you start of with very little money and very... very slowly level up your stature and wealth doing menial trade runs, selling salt, selling meat, and if you're smart, do trade runs on wine and spices. This makes Patrician IV beginning slower than a snail high on ecstasy(don't do drugs kid), and a chore that I presume not many people would find much fun right clicking cities and moving slider to the right and left. However, I find that I go into a state on trance when I play such a game and just meaninglessly click on purchasing and selling goods and clicking on cities until this number(cash savings) increases.
What I love about these trading strategy games is less of the early game trading that becomes a chore, but the prospect of growing your business to taking over the world, or Scandinavia, or Europe, or wherever said game takes place. In Patrician IV, all the items on the market can be produced by their manufacturing building and this changes the supply and demand levels in the region as well as lowering the cost of purchasing these goods in the city you have a manufacturing facility to make a killing on the market.
 |
| This is to the extent... the whole world of Patrician IV |
And then there is the opportunity to become someone important in a city, standing for town council election. This part of Patrician IV is not as deep as say something from The Guild II(where the focus is on growing your businesses and playing local politics. If you want to read a diary of the game, you can read Kong Yew's diary of The Guild II: Renaissance here on Knights of The Cardboard Castle), but it's a slight diversion from all the trading... breaking up the monotony.
There's the reputation system in Patrician IV that encourages you to buy goods at a good price without completely buying off all the stock in a city(people don't like it if you clear out their local market of a certain good). A pretty smart system that keeps you buying goods are a profitable price(as good price fluctuates to a higher price as the stock decreases). But the reputation system is also tied to doing other stuff in a city, such as dabbling in politics and the ability to take missions in the city(which normally is a request for you to ship a certain amounts of goods from there to somewhere else or bringing certain goods to that city).
I'm still rather early in the game, and there are still setting up convoys with military ships, hiring sailors to man your cannons, defending against pirates... but Patrician IV lacks a soul, character. It's the reason why these trading/business games are not the in thing in the video game market at the moment. Certainly a dying breed that still lives by the skin of its teeth due to the abnormal popularity of these games in Germany. It's rather formulaic and rote.
You keep chugging away at a known strategy of making money until... well until perpetuity... until you realise how meaningless it is. The game might throw you a bone, promising ownership of a supply chain or politics... but what comes after that? It's certainly not for everyone... but I do enjoy it quite a bit. Anyone else into these trading games?
TIP: I enjoy playing Patrician IV while listening to podcasts. Helps break the monotony of it. I highly recommend the Idlethumbs podcast.
No comments:
Post a Comment