Port Royale 4 Reviews
Port Royale 4 is the sum of easy-to-understand systems, making it entirely accessible, but it's not necessarily easy, and that's an important distinction. You'll still be challenged by what seems to be an endless stream of competing demands on your time and resources, while lacking the resources to do anything about them.
Port Royale 4 is a wonderful game, and the compromises that were made to bring it to Nintendo Switch are minor and easy to overlook. This is the kind of simulator that you can end up spending hundreds of hours with, and as one of the rare genres that aren't over-represented on the console, this is an excellent first port of call for genre fans looking for some on-the-go thinkies.
If you like resource management games which will eat hours of your life, check out Port Royale 4. The thorough tutorials and hints teach you everything you need to know about becoming a merchant and efficiently making a profit, easing you in gradually regardless of your skill level. The naval battles and late-game can get a bit tricky and challenging but by the time you reach those you should have had hours of experience under your belt. I personally loved playing this game and can’t wait to complete the other three campaigns, if you enjoyed Railway Empire or have an interest in games such as Tropico 6, you really should pick up this game.
After eight years, Port Royale 4 returns with a balanced release for the less experienced and, challenging for the experts.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
The fourth instalment in the Port Royale series will keep fans happy with its upgraded features and a bigger map than can be found in Port Royale 3. For newcomers to the genre, they're likely to be overwhelmed at first with all of the aspects that need to be understood to create a prosperous empire. However, developer Gaming Minds has tried to make the game as accessible to those players as possible. In this, they've largely succeeded.
A broad management/economic game with great graphics where you can conquer the Caribbean through money.
A good management game with superb visuals, offering enough freedom to let you build your own merchant empire in the Caribbean to your heart's content.
There’s a lot of layers to Port Royale 4. Its gameplay is impressively deep, and to truly succeed at it, you need to excel at multitasking and strategising. Like any sim game, it’s not something that just anybody is going to enjoy. But if you are a fan of deep simulation games, there’s a lot to love here.
Port Royale 4 looks and plays better than ever, while there are tons of things to do in it’s ambitious campaign and has intense turn based combat, it can get repetitive specially with the absence of multiplayer.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Port Royale 4 is ambitious and delivers in most regards, leading to a well rounded and beautifully choreographed world. The green tropical islands seem to breathe with life and purpose, a purpose that you influence through a variety of means, whether through trade, nationalism or just blatant piracy.
Port Royale 4 is a remarkable management game and a nice continuation of the saga. Unfortunately, some design decisions tarnish a game that could have been a worthy heir to the yet to be surpassed Port Royale 2.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Port Royale 4 will be an interesting distraction for fans of management sims, but none of its systems are complex enough to hook players for long. Both the trading and town building are surface deep, and after 15 or so hours of gameplay, everything is just repetition. There’s no big buildup to an endgame, so everything has that mid-game feeling of going through the paces.
Occasionally obtuse and sporting a few UX/UI barnacles, Port Royale 4 could use a little more dry dock time before setting out on the high seas. AI trading bugs and occasionally unfair combat sequences discourage combat, which takes the wind out of the sails of this pirate adventure. Developer Gaming Minds can patch the hull, but they need to do so before people find another ship on which to set sail.
There's a lot going on beneath deck in Port Royale 4, and much of it works very well. Setting up your perfect trade routes and watching all the moving pieces sail into action hits all those lizard brain elements that we love, and optimizing things when some new wrench hits the system is always a good time.
A good trading simulation... and little else, really. Port Royale 4's weak combat system and repetitive gameplay make for a somewhat boring, if functional and honest, strategy game.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Overall, Port Royale 4 lends beautiful design to its historical ships and detailed buildings, and the turn-based strategy naval battles are a nice change of pace from the large, lulling overview map you will spend most of your time in.
Port Royale 4 is a solid trading and building management sim. The improved visuals, as well as some improved mechanics, help set this apart, as does the tactical turn-based ship combat. It's very user-friendly and intuitive, particularly with the city building and trade-route creating aspects. However, it isn't without flaws. Side quests feel very repetitive and don't really give you enough to do and the campaign can be too rigid, not giving you the amount of time you'd need to do anything other than the bare minimum for the tasks set. If you like this sort of game, Port Royale 4 is likely just up your alley, but I can't see it converting anybody to the cause.
Port Royale 4 is a big game that puts all of its eggs into one basket: trading. This leaves other parts such as building and sea combat very basic for such an involved title. If you are into min-maxing and being on top of a great many things to keep your trading empire the best version of itself, you will have a blast in PR4. However, if you are someone who generally likes strategies and wants to have a good time conquering the 17th-century Caribbean, you might get bored due to the lack of other activities to pursue.
Port Royale 4 is not your typical strategy game, and unless you are patient enough to really get to know how each and every element works, you'll probably have a hard time with it.
Review in Persian | Read full review
Port Royale 4 brings good solutions for the genre and will certainly please many people interested in resource management, period commercial systems and the nautical theme as a whole. But it's important to know that it's a much more bureaucratic than an adventurous game, having a lot more backstage than action.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review