Port Royale 4 Worth It

[Solana Axton]

Back in January, I purchased The Key on my Royal Caribbean cruise to determine if this cruise add-on is worth the extra cost. At the time of my first review on The Key, I determined that the benefits were not worth the price.

I sailed on Harmony of the Seas when cruises were sailing with limited capacity, and this meant some of the benefits (priority access to the terminal, private time at onboard activities, etc.) were not as important.

Check-in time was slated to begin at 11:00 AM for The Key guests, but I was able to enter the terminal around 10:30 AM. The Key embarkation area was mixed with suite guests, and it offered a shorter line than the regular check-in area.

That being said, my original check-in time slot outside of The Key was 10:30 AM. I probably could have been one of the first in line at the regular check-in area and had a similarly quick embarkation process.

The benefit I used most throughout the cruise was internet access. This is the benefit that makes The Key most worth the cost, especially when the price difference between internet packages and The Key is small.

Another benefit I used several times during my cruise was reserved seating in the Main Theater, AquaTheater, and Studio B. Allure of the Seas has spectacular entertainment options, and it was nice to know I had access to some of the best seating in each venue.

The final benefit I enjoyed with The Key was an exclusive, la carte breakfast on disembarkation day. The final morning of the cruise can be extremely hectic, so it was nice to enjoy a sit-down meal in the Main Dining Room away from the hustle and bustle found elsewhere onboard.

One benefit I did not take advantage of was select private times at onboard activities like the FlowRider, rock climbing wall, etc. This benefit would be nice for those looking to try several onboard activities, though, as I noticed long lines for these activities during non-Key times.

My main reason for determining that The Key was worth it was mostly because The Key was only $5 more per day than the VOOM Surf & Stream internet package. As I would be purchasing an internet package anyway, The Key was only $30 extra.

When I purchased The Key on my Harmony of the Seas cruise back in January, for example, the internet was offered for $19 per day and The Key for $39 per day. For $20 extra per day, The Key was absolutely not worth the cost to me.

Additionally, I had my own cabin on this cruise. If you purchase The Key, everyone in your stateroom older than 6 must purchase it as well. This can easily get expensive, especially if the price difference between The Key and an internet package is significant.

Jenna DeLaurentis enjoys exploring new ports of call around the world on a cruise ship, learning about new cultures, discovering beautiful landscapes, and trying diverse cuisine. She loves to get active while at port, whether cycling through mountains in the Caribbean or scuba diving under the sea.

Started in 2010, Royal Caribbean Blog offers daily coverage of news and information related to the Royal Caribbean cruise line along with other relevant topics of cruising, such as entertainment, news, photo updates and more.

Whether you cruise multiple times per year or you're new to cruising, the goal of Royal Caribbean Blog is for it to be a useful resource for keeping up to date with what's new and exciting with Royal Caribbean.

As a lover of historical and empire building games, I was initially pretty excited about Port Royale 4. The game is set in the Caribbean of the late 16th and 17th centuries, back when the major colonial powers of the time were fighting each other and numerous pirates over control of the lucrative commodities the West Indies had to offer. I admit I haven't played the other games in the series, the last of which (Port Royale 3) came out in 2012. As it turned out, Port Royale is a lot more focused on trade than I anticipated, with combat and conquest playing secondary roles in terms of importance. So how do these elements work together, and do I like the end result?

Micromanaging your trade is, without doubt, the core gameplay element in Port Royale 4. In fact, Gaming Minds Studios refers to it as a trading simulation game. Most of the time, you're scrolling along the game map to find your cities and ships, looking for a profit. The huge game map spans the entire Caribbean area, including the Gulf of Mexico, delineated by Florida to the North and Venezuela to the Southeast. In contrast to earlier games in the series, the campaign map is entirely in 3D and you're able to zoom in and out of your towns and cities in order to construct new buildings. The game map looks pretty good in my opinion, with jungles and cosy-looking houses observable on land and a clear difference between bright, shallow waters and the deep seas. There are plenty of nice details, such as people walking around in the towns, weather effects, and a day-and-night cycle. The accompanying background music is decent enough, too.

There are four playable nations in the game, each with four different characters who emphasise either trade, construction or piracy. The Spanish are the most established power in the region. They start with most of South and Central America under their control. England on the other hand is one of the newcomers and will challenge Spanish dominance and their island possessions. The French are based around the Louisiana area (named after Louis XIV, after all) and are also looking to eat away at the pie of Spanish territories. Lastly, the dominant power of the time was the Dutch Republic. Being Dutch myself, I would've liked to have started playing as the Netherlands right away, but annoyingly you're required to win a campaign as the Spanish first. Nevertheless, I think Port Royale 4 manages to blend the historical situation nicely, with my Spanish campaign being mostly about growing the Spanish cities and defending against attacks from the other nations, for example.

The main element in the game is trading. Every town produces certain goods, such as grain, luxury items, cocoa, cotton or rum. At the same time, they will structurally lack other goods, which are then more valuable in this particular town. As a trading sim, Port Royale 4 revolves around building ships and buying goods at a favourable price in one town, and selling your goods somewhere else where prices are high. The game includes 18 types of historical ships, which can be grouped into convoys for increased cargo loads and protection. Every town has a convenient overview of goods and prices, including green or red bars indicating a commodity's availability and price level. Profitable sales provide an income in gold. Gold allows you to construct more ships, to buy access to more towns to trade with, and to develop your home port to produce more goods.

Despite a fairly good tutorial, it took me some time to get a feeling for the in-game economy. Manually sailing from one town to the other and buying and selling goods went well after a while, but luckily you're also able to set up automatic trade routes. This requires you to pick a route around the towns to visit and the goods to buy or sell automatically at the best prices. Unfortunately, I felt the manual buying and selling and the building of trade routes to be a bit of a chore after a couple of hours. I was constantly checking between towns, adjusting trade routes and eyeing prices. It reminded me of an actual job at some point. I can understand how this attracts players to the series who like a trading-focus, but this certainly isn't everyone's cup of tea.

Luckily, developer Gaming Minds Studios has added other elements to keep things interesting for a more general audience. Every nation has a Viceroy who's constantly guiding your gameplay with assignments, such as spreading colonists around or constructing certain buildings. Random tasks pop up every now and then in order to increase fame points, such as supplying a commodity to a town or finding part of a treasure map. Fame points allow you to research a handful of new technologies, to construct warships and to hire the captains needed to commandeer them. Developing your town with new plantations, hospitals or shipyards also adds variety.

Despite being a trading simulation first and foremost, I think the game does fall short in the way combat is weaved into the game. Firstly, compared to Port Royale 3, naval battles have been changed from real-time battles into turn-based ones. You take turns exchanging cannon fire and attempts to board and capture enemy vessels. With a real-time 3D map, this seems like a strange decision, as it doesn't match well with the pace of the rest of the game. Moreover, the hex-based battles are colourless and never managed to give me the feeling of an actual naval engagement. The battles become more important when you start getting into wars with the other powers later in the campaign, making their lack of appeal unfortunate.

Secondly, automatically resolving battles is only available when the sides are about equally strong or when the player is much stronger. Otherwise, you simply lose everything by surrendering. Thirdly, piracy didn't really seem to be a viable strategy. You're able to turn every convoy with armed ships into a pirate fleet and attack rival merchant convoys. However, there are strong military ships patrolling everywhere and whenever they spot you, it's almost impossible to retreat: you'll need to click your pirate fleet out of harm's way before they catch you, but I was always too slow. Most battles ended up with the complete destruction of my convoy-turned-pirates, making them not worth the risk.

Port Royale 4 therefore isn't an easy game to play. Based on my experience, completing a campaign successfully in one go will take around 15 hours in total, but it's possible to play endlessly. I was able to build profitable trade routes after a while, but they need constant tweaking in order to remain so. It becomes really difficult to keep a profitable trade network when pirate attacks and war with other nations comes into play. Attacks strip you of the resources you're trading and buying while constructing military vessels quickly drains your coffers. I had to reload my games often because I was simply unable to return to making a profit.

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