Port Royale takes place in the 17th-century Caribbean, back when the English, French, Spanish and Dutch were the economic superpowers of the world and dominated the shipping trades. Seafaring merchant fleets and cutthroat pirates constantly prowled the trade routes crisscrossing the area. It’s a world of riches, danger and adventure, all of which await you right from the beginning of Port Royale.

When you start up Port Royale, you’re given the option of taking a trip through the tutorial. I cannot stress the importance of the tutorial enough for new players; it is an introduction to every aspect of the game. While it’s a little brief in some areas (such as production in towns) and could use more visual cues, it’s still a worthwhile way to spend a few minutes before diving into the game.

The gameplay in Port Royale is deceptively simple: you buy a boat, load it with cargo and zip back and forth between seaports. Each seaside city has specific resource needs, be they fish, wine, meat, tobacco or one of about a dozen other items, and it’s your job to fill those needs. It’s a simple economic system based on the classic "buy low and sell high" theory. You’ll spend quite a bit of time buying products cheaply in one town, then setting sail for another town to sell them at a profit. However, you have to pick ports that are nearby, or by the time you arrive, your destination port may have already met their resource needs.

This sailing back and forth can be quite time consuming, so Ascaron wisely put in a time compression option, which lets you fast forward the game. When you’re just shuffling supplies between ports, this is a godsend. Along with the basic buying and selling, you can head to the Governor’s palace to pick up a Letter of Marque, which is simply a mission or task you need to perform for your mother country. These letters might be a simple request to run for supplies or to actually capture a foreign town. As you complete more of these missions, you’ll increase your experience, reputation and gain favor with the colonial governor. You can also request the right to become a buccaneer, which is basically a license to be a pirate for your nation.

Port Royale wouldn’t be much of a game if it were just about being a grocery service, so there’s a whole RTS-style building system in place. When in town, you can build storage depots, which will allow you to sock away your excess cargo and keep an eye on the local market to purchase cargo at the best possible price. Whenever you finish a storage building, you can hire a merchant to handle business and buy or sell certain products at a price range you set. This is a fantastic way to keep gold flowing into your coffers and help you start building your own townships.

As you earn more money and prestige, the local governor will grant you permission to build your own businesses. These businesses include cotton plantations, grain farms, fishing huts and about a dozen others. Each has a resource cost associated with not only building it, but also keeping it running. The advantage of a business, though, is that it provides a steady supply of money and materials for you to continue your shipping business and establish new endeavors. It’s a great little economic system that’s simple enough to be grasped by anyone but detailed enough to keep things interesting.

As you sail the seas, you’re bound to meet those scurvy dogs, the pirates. Or, if you’re looking for a little more swashbuckling action, you can take on the role of pirate yourself by attacking trade ships and port towns and stealing their cargo. Either way, you’ll need to hire, maintain and equip a quality crew. Hiring a crew is a simple task done whenever you’re in a town with a few extra men around. None of these crews are any good without some weapons to defend themselves, so you’ll have to purchase weapons for them. Muskets and cutlasses are the weapons of choice, and without them, your crew will be useless during boarding actions, so be sure to save enough money to buy arms after you buy a fresh crew.

Whenever you’re at sea you’ll also need to contend with crew morale, which means giving them plenty of shore leave and being victorious in battle. If you run your ship with an iron fist, expect your crew to refuse to fight when the time comes, and sometimes they’ll even refuse to set sail. The better a crew gets, the more experienced they become, which improves their ability to fight and sail, though they’ll cost you more to maintain.

Port Royale also ensures that you’ll need to maintain a certain "status," as the game relies heavily on a deep reputation system that determines how people react to your arrival in town, and how well you’ll perform as a businessman. If you’ve done good things for a town, such as delivering much-needed supplies or building a hospital, you’ll find the townsfolk love you. This love translates into building permits, low cost ships and even offers of marriage. That’s right, if the governor of a town thinks you’re the greatest guy around, he might just offer you his daughter’s hand in marriage. If you take him up on it, she’ll become a very useful informant, keeping you abreast of any news you might normally not hear when you’re in port. If you’re an unloved captain, though, you’ll get gouged when you head to port for supplies, crews will not join your convoy, and the governor won’t grant you the rights to start a business. If you’re hoping to play as a merchant in Port Royale, expect to spend some time building up and maintaining a strong reputation.

Port Royale as a whole looks pretty good, albeit a little simplistic. The towns are par for the course for an RTS, with great little details like men hauling lumber to construction sites and buildings that are built board by board and brick by brick once you buy them.

The ocean, which is a major component of the game, is pretty flat and lifeless. A ship under sail, which could be impressive, ends up looking like a toy ship from the old boardgame "Broadsides." I don’t recall a single cinematic in the game, which is too bad, because the game could’ve used them during dramatic naval battles.

The graphics as whole have a unique visual appeal, but they certainly aren’t anything memorable.

There’s just not a whole lot of sound in this game, and what there is, well, it won’t send you running out for the soundtrack album. The cheery and fun musical score is pretty entertaining, and (I imagine) it does a good job of simulating the music of the colonial era.

There’s so much variety in Port Royale, you’ll be able to play it for hours on end. And it’s a good thing, too, since you’ll have to spend several hours just building up your basic fleet of ships and crew. If you’re expecting to become a seafaring hero in less than an hour, you’ve got a lot to learn about Port Royale. This game demands hours of your time just to get going, but the rewards are rich and keep you coming back for more. And once you’ve enjoyed a few dozen rounds as a merchant, there’s always the piracy option, which changes the gameplay experience entirely.

Oddly enough, Port Royale has multiplayer options for both LAN and Internet play. I say "oddly," because while the game plays smoothly in online multiplayer, just one round can take several hours, which is far beyond the attention span of 90 percent of the gamers I’ve ever played against online in any game. It’s nice to see the option is there, and if you can find a good bunch of buddies to play against, it’ll surely increase the replay value dramatically for you.

When I first fired up Port Royale, I immediately wondered why they bothered to rip off the old DOS-based Pirates! title. As I continued to play the game, though, I became more and more impressed with the depth they had tacked onto the game without losing its unique flavor. In the end, I found it to be an engrossing and addictive title that may not be original but is still a lot of fun. If you’re looking for a bit of swashbuckling mixed with your RTS, Port Royale will keep your entertained for more hours than you’ll be able to count.