Patrician 4

The Hanseatic League was a loose confederation of trading cities that flourished on the northern coast of Europe during the late Middle and early Modern Ages. They are an interesting example of the effects of trade on otherwise isolated cities.This...

I personally am in the audience Kalypso is shooting for with the release of Patrician IV: I love business and economic simulations, and the interface in the sequel is much better than any of the previous entries. Furthermore, between the tutorial...

A wave of tedium nearly sinks this medieval trading...

I think people tend to underestimate just how difficult it is to create a sequel. It is difficult enough to change the story, introduce new characters and create new environments, but what do you do when your game has no room for any of those? I can’t...

Where German board games are renowned for their elegance and simple mechanics, German strategy games are renowned for their obsession with efficiency -- especially the efficient management of money or scarce resources. American gamers have, by and...

Taken purely as a simulation of the economics and politics of a very specific organisation during a very specific period, Patrician IV isn’t half bad. But there’s barely any game here, and what little there is suffers badly from an overstock of...

Wealth is power and so ‘Conquest by Trade’ was all too real during the height of the Hanseatic League, which is exactly where Patrician IV casts our trader empire dreams. From a humble beginning of a single cargo ship the vision is to expand out and...

Sitting through world history class in junior high, I can remember the brief attention that was paid to the Hanseatic League. To hear the teacher and the textbook tell it, the Hanseatic League was a fluke, an entity that came about by dumb...