Port Royale vs. Port Royale 2: which is better and why?

[MetalCraze]

I know PR3 is done by another dev and is deemed to be shit by gamers (at least from what I've read) - so which one should I bother with? Specifically what makes them different and superior to another

Discuss!!

 

[Hoaxmetal]

Port Royale 2 is Port Royale+, if it's your first time with the series there's no need to play the first one. And yeah, I hear 3rd is shit.

 

[Raapys]

Pretty sure they're still the same devs, just that they switched engines or something. Can't be bothered googling. Anyway, PR3 is basically an inferior version of Patrician 4. It's been quite a while since I tried PR2, but I'm pretty sure it's still better than PR3 in most areas since a lot of stuff didn't get 'reimplemented' in the transition. I do think Patrician4 is the best of them though, but obviously the different settings might have different appeals.

Also, the 'auto-trading' feature in both P4 and PR3 feels kinda cheap, since you can get rich as hell without doing shit.

 

[mondblut]

Patrician 3 >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> the rest.

The only redeeming feature of Royales is large number of ships and better customization. Still, the way trading goes in there (pick up a little bit of everything, spend months selling it a couple of units at a time) is crushingly boring next even to Patrician 4

 

[Raapys]

Been a while since I played the third game, but doesn't the fourth game have at least as many features if not more?

 

[MetalCraze]

Getting PR2

 

[Zarniwoop]

I've only played the second one, and it was quite fun. Trading gets boring pretty quickly and soon transitions into just setting up a route and holding space bar, but the combat is entertaining. Possibly still better than Shogun 2's naval battles.

 

[jagged-jimmy]

They should've come up with something better than 1 ship vs. all combat though. Maybe turn-based would be better.

 

[Karmapowered]

In PR2, you engage battle with only one ship, while your enemies have their whole fleets on screen. Once your ship is damaged enough, you can release it to computer control, to take over the next vessel in your fleet. At that point, the AI will have the damaged ship defend to the best of its (poor) abilities, and flee the battlescreen.

In PR1, you engage battle with your whole fleet on screen, like your enemies.

I have only really played the 2, but as far as I could see, that's the main difference which explains why some PR fans still prefer the 1 to the 2.

They should've come up with something better than 1 ship vs. all combat though. Maybe turn-based would be better.

I also would have preferred a genuine turn-based, instead of a RTwP.

 

[Norfleet]

In PR2, you engage battle with only one ship, while your enemies have their whole fleets on screen. Once your ship is damaged enough, you can release it to computer control, to take over the next vessel in your fleet. At that point, the AI will have the damaged ship defend to the best of its (poor) abilities, and flee the battlescreen.

I've never actually reached that last part.

In PR1, you engage battle with your whole fleet on screen, like your enemies.

That sounds like a disaster, really. As you mentioned, the AI is quite poor. This means your whole fleet will end up a crippled, flaming mess that YOU have to then pay to repair. So I'd be telling the rest of my fleet to bugger off while I fight alone, anyway! Really, it's like in P3, where my fleet would consist of a few barges escorted by a single Death Sloop, which could singlehandedly destroy entire enemy fleets without taking a hit. Using an entire fleet was just a recipe for getting your entire fleet shot up without actually increasing its effectiveness at all.

 

[laclongquan]

One of these days I must try PR1. I skip from Patrician 3 straight to PR2, so I dont know what it is like.

 

[Karmapowered]

That sounds like a disaster, really. As you mentioned, the AI is quite poor. This means your whole fleet will end up a crippled, flaming mess that YOU have to then pay to repair. So I'd be telling the rest of my fleet to bugger off while I fight alone, anyway! Really, it's like in P3, where my fleet would consist of a few barges escorted by a single Death Sloop, which could singlehandedly destroy entire enemy fleets without taking a hit. Using an entire fleet was just a recipe for getting your entire fleet shot up without actually increasing its effectiveness at all.

Exactly. Either I feel I can win with a single ship (my first, and strongest one), or I just usually avoid the battle altogether.

IMO, a turn-based system (as basic as it was in Uncharted Waters NH, for example) would have been much more adequate for PR.

I don't understand why developpers persist with their real-time crap in such games. Sea battles in RL situations used to take hours, if not days in some cases. Ships just don't operate like tanks, or planes, historical ships even less.

 

[Norfleet]

Well, it was never meant to be a highly-realistic simulation of ship combat. It seems clear that the combat model draws its inspiration from the original Pirates!, and isn't meant to be Empire: Total War. I mean, you can dodge cannon volleys, which is a significant reason why your one ship is capable of defeating an entire armada singlehandedly. If anything, PR is "harder" on the realism scale than Pirates was, since in Pirates, the best ship was a sloop for its ninja-like dodging skills.

 

[gunman]

I like PR1 a lot having bought it recently, and only seen let's play of PR2 on youtube. Looks to me the main differences between 1 and 2 are the slightly improved UI in 2 and the naval combat.

But the naval combat in PR2 looks retarded and there is no auto-combat? In PR1 after the beginning phase I only use auto-combat, because for trade convoys I only use unarmed fast ships with minimal crew that always manage to flee if attacked, and for battles I use large fully armed convoys with crushing superiority that make impossible individual control and they capture the entire enemy fleet on auto anyways.

The music in PR1 is way better and also the overall atmosphere in PR1 seems to me superior to 2.

 

[mondblut]

Add to it awful graphics in PR2. Early 3d hard-locked on some 1999-era resolution that insists on being fullscreen.

PR1, by contrast, is almost as good as Patrician 3. Combat is probably even better once you get a hold of it.

 

[gunman]

Could not find any widescreen patch for Port Royale. This is weird since there is one for Patrician 3 and I thought they share the same engine.

What about muskets, are they used only for land combat or are they used in sea battles too?

 

[null_subject]

Could not find any widescreen patch for Port Royale. This is weird since there is one for Patrician 3 and I thought they share the same engine.

What about muskets, are they used only for land combat or are they used in sea battles too?

I'm having the same problem. It definitely appears like the methods used for P3 should work for PR1. Someone kinda got there by doing the hex editing (on the widescreen gaming forum), but they didn't edit the image files that get edited when using the P3 patcher.

I'll try reaching out to the person who made the patch.

 

[Galdred]

Add to it awful graphics in PR2. Early 3d hard-locked on some 1999-era resolution that insists on being fullscreen.

PR1, by contrast, is almost as good as Patrician 3. Combat is probably even better once you get a hold of it.

Indeed, if you are not playing for the combat, you should get Patrician 3. And if you play for the combat, getting PR2 and its 1 ship limit is retarded.
So PR1 all the way, or Patrician 3 if you want to build a trade empire.
PR1 is best played as a pirate/corsair simulator, where you steal English ships to capture better English ships (because they have the best ships, so it's better to play as not English corsair, or pirate).

I spent quite a few hours on PR1 almost 20 years ago, but could never get into any of the sequels.

 

[null_subject]

Indeed, if you are not playing for the combat, you should get Patrician 3. And if you play for the combat, getting PR2 and its 1 ship limit is retarded.

Yeah, this is pretty much 100% accurate. I think there may have been a few improvements from PR1 to PR2, but they are too few too matter, or even remember, while the downsides stand out (no multiplayer, lower res, combat that clashes with the base game loop).