Review: Dragon Ball Z – Ultimate Tenkaichi (PS3)

Coming into my preview for Patrician IV, I had to admit that I had reservations about the game.  It was not because I thought it was good or bad, but the game had never captured my interest, so I had long ignored the series.  My dread was listening to an hour of pie charts, bar graphs and pretty much the part of the Sony press conference where everyone falls asleep.  However, I left Patrician IV genuinely interested in the title, and definitely wanting more.  Continue on below for more on Patrician IV.

Patrician IV is a strategy game that plays out a little differently than most.  Instead of being some grandmaster of development on a map, you actually start off as one lone citizen in the late middle ages of Northern Europe.  You single goal is to take your one person and build a trading empire that will become the leader of the vaunted Hanseatic Trade Link, a huge link of trading ports.  The Hanseatic Trade Link is used as a reference in the game, as it is a factual organization that did exist in this time frame.

While it has some good looking graphics, the game is actually a very complex economic simulation, wrapped around the simple concept of buying low and selling high.  Patrician IV has a built in simulation engine that models consumption and production in the global world.  Now I did say global, but you have to look at what people thought global meant in the late Middle Ages.  for them, Global meant Western Europe, as Asia was too far to travel for trade, and the Americas had yet to be discovered.

There are 30 goods that can be traded between ports in Patrician IV.  Thinngs like grain, mead, cheese and more will fill the hold of your ship, heading out to destinations with the hope of gaining profit in the world.  As you play, you do start to learn some items about certain ports and what places will need.  In my demo, there was only one city that was producing mead, and it meant that I could sell a good there that was needed, buy some mead and then take it to other ports making huge profits.  On the other hand, I could focus on building a plant to produce mead in my home town, and lower the price, while creating more profit for myself as a producer of a hot commodity.

There are several influencing items on the world and demand that can harm or help your strategies.  Politics can get in the way of producing certain goods in your hometown, but could be used to forge new trade routes in different cities;.  Weather can also impact your shipping and the price of goods in the world.  In our scenario, the one city that was making mead was hit with some huge storms, closing off access to their ports, and thereby, straining the world’s mead production, inflating the costs to astronomical levels.  Lastly, on the open seas, you cannot get around and hope to completely avoid the scourge known as pirates.  Pirates can stop up trade routes, loot ships and generally cause a lot of mayhem.  All of these factors are dynamic and will change with each game, and with the passage of time in a game.

With all of this complex micro management, you would think that the game would be way too hard for anyone but seasoned strategy game veterans.  On the contrary, the developers felt that Patrician IV could be used as a training tool for young people, in schools and even in colleges.  It was funny, but as I watched our demo, I could not help but think that I would much rather have my son playing something like this over his current obsession of Farmville and Frontierville.  There are also a ton of aids to help you with managing your empire.  Everything has deep contextual menus explaining what they are and what they do, there are video advisors that can help you with critical decisions, and there are a number of tutorials that will get even the greenest rookie up and running in no time.

While a lot of the game takes place in the trading interface, there are some town management issues that will take up some of your focus.  As stated before, you are just a simple man, and therefore, cannot just build stuff whenever you want.  You actually have to join city guilds, and get permission to build from city architects.  Also, you have to meet certain level progression markers to build certain items.  Patrician IV has 10 levels that you progress through on your way to the top of the trading food chain, and each level will unlock new buildings that can be built if you have permission of the city architect.  You can also strive to become mayor of a city, which will help in getting buildings approved for construction.

But for those that like to grief a little in a simulation game like this, you will have the opportunity to eschew the norm, and take up the flag of a pirate, looting ships, doing battle on the high seas and even making a profit by selling goods in local ports.  However, reputaion plays a huge factor in the game, and become too big as a pirate, and you might have nowhere to hide.

All in all, Patrician IV was a surprising little gem for me at E3.  It plays well, looks great, and has a ton of polish in its economic simulation engine.  Some might find it to be complex, and it did seem like it could take awhile for the game to really pick up, but for those that want something a little deeper, Patrician IV looks like it will fill that void.  Patrician IV hits shelves on August 26th, 2010.