Patrician IV: Rise of a Dynasty

Patrician IV: Rise of a Dynasty
67
Metacritic
67
Steam
68.566
xDR
Our rating is calculated based on the reviews and popularity of the game.
Price
$3.99
Release date
11 April 2011
Full game
Steam reviews score
Total
67 (373 votes)

Patrician IV - Rise of a Dynasty brings a comprehensive package of improvements and new features to the best-selling Patrician IV including online multiplayer and new scenarios. Finally, you are able to operate your business in cooperative multiplayer mode with up to three friends helping out.

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Patrician IV: Rise of a Dynasty system requirements

  • OS: XP / Vista / 7
  • Processor: 2 GHz Intel Pentium 4 / AMD Athlon 64
  • Memory: 1 GB RAM
  • Graphics: Shader Model 2.0 PCIe (Geforce 6 series, Radeon X1000 series), 256 MB, DirectX 9.0c
  • DirectX®: 9.0c
  • Hard Drive: 5 GB
  • Sound: DirectX compatible

Recommended:

Recommended requirements are not yet specified.
Updated
App type
Steam APP ID
57730
Fullgame appid
57620
Platforms
Windows PC
Popularity
Reviews
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Lt. Dan
Lt. Dan

It's addicting if you like trading. I thoroughly enjoyed climbing up the ranks to Patrician. Multiplayer is stupid and doesn't allow both players to start in their own cities but equally control one ship, etc and is quite obnoxious. Still, single player is a good time.

rsimpson229
rsimpson229

I used to really enjoy playing Patrician 3, so logically bought this game. It's not massively different or updated. The only bug is that the auto trade option is very limited, and you can't assign your convoy to unload and load in the same auto trade.

zombogeekz
zombogeekz

I was a fan of P3 so I had to buy this as soon as I saw it on steam (conveniently it was also on sale)
It's almost exactly the same as the last game with a small number of critical changes that I found really dumb. There's now an AI for your automatic trading; which does save you a tonne of time setting up trade routes it also removes alot of the challenge and reward from playing.
Honestly Just buy Patrician III. I mean they look almost exactly the same, just play the older and better one.

3/10

eaharms3544
eaharms3544

If you were ever beaten up for your lunch money as a kid, you know what if feels like to play this game. The pirates are annoying bullies and ruined this game for me. I spent more hours on Patrician 3 than any game I've ever played, and due to the mixed reviews, I waited for this game to be on sale before trying it. I made sure the "Pirate Activity" was set to "Low" before I started the campaign, I didn't like them in the previous game and never had any interest in manual battles. The pirates in this version are even more irritating than Patrician 3 and ruin the fun of the game. I was forced to abandon the campaign several hours in when the fifth pirate appeared. At that point there was a total of six ports blocked, and I spent a ton of money and time trying to build a convoy that would help get rid of them, only to have it fail completely. After giving up on the campaign, I thought maybe the setting was ignored unless you were in Free Play, so I started a new game. Three hours in, I have a pirate ship that is blockading my home port and pillaging every ship that goes in or out. That is considered a "Low" amount of activity. I spent over an hour searching for a mod to get rid of the pirates, to no avail. It seems to be a common complaint, but all I can find is instruction for editing game files to make them weaker in manual battles. I've never edited game files before, but I guess I'll give it a shot, and maybe I can still play. I'll be honest, if someone could offer a mod that works, I would pay for it at this point, I am so frustrated. This game is bad for my blood pressure.

Hydrotonic
Hydrotonic

Loved this game and it brings a certain Nestalga remembering when I was young. I still love and will always love these games and the Devs.

RLaumeyer
RLaumeyer

The best economic simulation ever. Supply and demand are made very clear here, but it is fun. The fighting seems completely broken but you can really enjoy the building phases of the game without it.

Snootch
Snootch

I have actually played Patrician IV for many hundreds of hours since 2010 that were not logged on the Steam application (as I played them on the CD).

Patrician IV is an overhauling upgrade to Patrician III; so if you have not played the previous games in the Patrician series, starting with IV is really all you need. Also, the game of Patrician is very straightforward and addicting, so playing previous versions won't offer you anything unseen in Patrician IV.

The game plays upon a fundamental capitalistic principle: "buy low, sell high." Patrician IV colors this principle in a video game set in the 14th Century North Sea and Baltic Sea. (Sure, this concept could have been done in any setting: 17th Century Carribean; 4th Century BC Mediterranean; or something after the Panama and Suez canals were both in full operation. But those have all been done already; who ever took the time to learn about the Hanseatic League...? Rich history there.)

There are three phases of Patrician IV: (1) auto-trade, build ships, and make (more) money; (2) build businesses, expand into other cities, and build more businesses; and finally, (3) perform city management as a mayor, Hanseatic League management as the Alderman, and optimizing your production/selling operation (to include manual "expeditions" down in the Mediterranean Sea, which is more of a "side quest").

As with everything, there are things that I like and dislike about Patrician IV. What I like are the music; the ability to build my own economic empire, learning from my mistakes; and the addicting genre of constantly trying to think my way through the most optimal uses of my growing economic empire. What I dislike are three: (A) you can't expedition out to the New World, like in Patrician III; (B) the voice acting of your competitors is some of the worst you will ever hear in all of video gaming history; and (C) the game has been developed/published by Kalypso Media (Gaming Minds Studios), a German company, whom I think do a poor job in supporting their games and respecting their customer base. (Most non-American studios or publishers seem to be clueless on how to treat people, in general, such as UbiSoft and Paradox. Of course, EA - an American company - at least learned from their mistakes.) On that last point, there are a few glaringly obvious bugs that they have openly stated that they will "fix in Patrician V." (Meaning, they are aware of them in P4, but will not fix them.) These bugs are things like: disabling the terrible voice actors - you can't, even with the button saying you can; clicking on a convoy on the Convoy List - you sometimes can't without a work-around; and the inability to sell all your cargo during Expeditions, thus coming back with amounts of what you are trying to get rid of! (The developers think this has to do with overall population in the Hanseatic League during your game, but they are unwilling to explore this further and correct it. I relay this information to you based on the responses to my bug reports on their game forums.)

The Rise of a Dynasty (RoaD) expansion to Patrician IV made the game better. There is more to do than in the original, including developing inland cities and establishing overland trade routes. And heck... having 8 more cities on the map is just better (totalling 40 possible). Of course, the whole paradigm of "withhold content intentionally so that we can charge extra for an expansion pack" has everything to do with RoaD. But like I said, it made the game better. Would it have been nice to be offered in the base version? You bet. But you know how developers/publishers are nowadays, as well as undisciplined gamers, too.

The other thing that I dislike about the RoaD expansion, specifically, are the overland trade routes and the wagons used for transport. While I like that they added 8 more cities to the map, the trade routes to them must be unlocked - there is no way around this. This might sound like "something interesting to do," but the way to unlock them is to please all the hegemons (princes and dukes and whatnot) of the European regions by way of doing them favors: give them a lot of money; give them goods tributes; and/or sabotage others (whom you are trying to keep happy, as well). The problem with that is that the opportunities to please them are not easy to come by when you need them the most, thus extending the time frame to do so almost completely stupid. But then, once you unlock all the European overland trade routes, you must then build Wagons to transport the goods. Now, you can build ships that hold tens of thousands of goods (10,000+) that can be carted all over the sea to coastal towns. The wagons, on the other hand, only hold 100 goods each. So if you want to carry 1,000 goods from an inland town to somewhere else, you are building ten wagons. But 1,000 goods is dinky by that stage of the game! So you'll have wagon trains of 71 wagons just so you can carry 7,100 goods (which is similar to 3 Hulks and 3 Caravels, which carry a total of 7,110 goods). That is just asinine. But even worse is what happens to your game's performance with that many wagons in a train - get ready for crashes.

The last thing that I dislike about Patrician IV is the multiplayer offering within it. Basically, it is only cooperative (a.k.a. "co-op"). You cannot have your friend log in to his game, and you into yours, and then start developing the Hanse in competition with each other - which is really the only friggin' way to play multiplayer on this type of game! Instead, you both own the same business; so you basically only compete against the computer opponents. I guess it could be fun having each other develop their own cities; but pulling from a common pool of money and essentially trying to ignore what the other one is doing (so as not to step on each other's toes) is quite lame. The fact that this is the only way to play Patrician IV multiplayer is also asinine.

In all, the very nature of the gameplay is why I recommend Patrician IV: it is addicting and makes you think, think, think - learning from mistakes and pondering how to make things better. (Yes, you will think about this game while you are not even playing it. You might even create your own spreadsheet, like I did, in an attempt to optimize your operation.) There will be times where you will actually turn off the game and feel like you accomplished something worthy and important, as if you are smart or something. It's kinda funny to look at yourself in retrospect, ha ha. But I also recommend Patrician IV because modifying it is not too terribly hard (if you have the RoaD expansion pack - you cannot modify it otherwise). You can figure out how to set up each city's resources for trade, which ones pop up with the corresponding research, and a few other things about the towns and computer players. I really like customization, so that is a step in the right direction.

To close, I would say that Patrician IV (with the Rise of a Dynasty expansion pack) should be bought for $7.49 or less.

Manumitany
Manumitany

Waiting five minutes for a mandatory activation email, which is required to register an account, which is required to play the game whether in single player or not.

Absolutely stupid.

benedikth
benedikth

I never encountered any of the problem other people talked about. I think it's a great game that worth your money. The only downside is that the naval combat is clunky

Namarsin
Namarsin

Yeah I know it's really old! And some aspects of it are really boring. But of all the similar games published by Kalypso this is still the one I like best. And every now and then I just have to play it again for a while. Must be a childhood thing("Hanse" on an Amstrad/Schneider?). Maybe some day there will be a "Pat V"? :) But the "requires registration"-thing is absolute rubbish! So I can't 100% recommend it if you don't like these "medieval trade empire" games as much as I do.

Pravda_Zlo
Pravda_Zlo

Why i can't play this game meanwhile i can play the steam edition? My screen turns blue, very laggy (when finally got to see the map sometimes) and the word go somewhere else and in disorder.

lhaima
lhaima

This game combines all of my favorite elements of sandbox city building into one gorgeous package. You play as a trader in the Hanseatic League, and as you advance you accumulate more ships, are able to build production facilities and expand into other cities. Your play style can focus on city building, piracy, or just sailing around trading goods from town to town. It's largely a balancing act, dividing your attention across your burgeoning economic empire.
A fun and relaxing game with options to be ruthless if you so desire.

Sleazy Geezer
Sleazy Geezer

One of my all time favorites, I used a spreadsheet to calculate demand/supply and programmed an algorithm to optimize trade routes based on my calculated values.

Mvek
Mvek

Recommended, this add-on version, not the base Steam Edition game, BUT… For new players, well the game is technically a bit obsolete in some ways, but works fine, only there are some confusing text mistakes and I think that the naval battles are tricky to play well manually, but you can let computer compute it (I did it in the end always).
For players of Patrician III, the game is much simpler, but offers some new things too (land routes and cities later in game after fulfilling some tasks from kingdoms). I like the easier way to sell and buy, but that is only the UI. On the other hand you don't take care about ammo for your ships, don't equip the ships with weapons, only upgrade them, hire sailors and that is it. You still can lend money or take a loan, but you cannot easily manage it, you can do it only, if it is offered to you by someone in tavern like the other tasks.
If you want to build a house/factory or order a ship, you pay always the same price and then the producer buys the material from city, so it creates the demand and you can sell your material, if you own it.You don't set a rent for your houses and you don't decide if you build patrician house or cheap house. They are automatically upgraded according to the population.
You have lack of information, what do some events have effect on the city. And there are funny small bugs (well don't know about Patrician III, but Port Royale had a lot of them too), like that the port is frozen, you have there a patrol ship, still getting income, and it can be attacked by pirate:-), but cannot leave the city. So in fact it is nice cheating if ice catches you in port, just provide the convoy as a patrol until the port is free, to not lose much money.
My biggest complaints are to the graphics, because yes, it can be nice to look in 3D on the city and that you don't have there a grid for buildings, but it still is very simplified and you use it only sometimes to enjoy the view. And even though the cities don't share same layouts like in Patrician III, there are still few similar layouts with a little difference. And the world map is ugly.
Second complaint is to the naval battles. They are tricky to play correctly. I gave up. In Patrician III I was good, I could win almost each battle, but here I could lose completely everything easily, because the UI is bad.

Ssendam
Ssendam

I've put a lot of time in this game and now all of a sudden I need to create an online account to play. You should feel ashamed of yourselves Kalypso, this game is over 7 years old why do I need to build an account now?

Thorberg
Thorberg

My rating: 8/10

I have played many economy/trading games including Port Royale, but the Patrician 4: Rise of a Dynasty is the only one to which I always return once in a while. I think it is because its nice atmosphere of an old Europe in 14th century, when Hansa league was in its best years. With the expansion, the map also gets a lot of nice details, and the game includes important features which makes it much more interesting.

As with majority of the games, I feel like lot of features were not finished. Buying lands from the lords does not seem to have any effect, and many of the kingdoms does not have inland trading routes. The military vessels have to stand in a point, from which they often don't move even if pirates are sailing next to them, which makes them useless in protecting the trade routes.

The combat is very limited and repetitive, worse than in Port Royale. So thank God for Auto-Resolve.

After all, I really like this game. I spent a lot of time on it before it came to Steam and also lot of time on steam in offline mode, as no internet connection is needed. Therfore, I really recommend the game if you have at least little bit connection to history.

mattboesen
mattboesen

This is the same game it has always been. Except it is terrible.

The one biggest issue - in the 'combat' part of the game, you MUST use auto-aim. Because there is no other way to fire. And the auto-aim misses most of the time if you fight the smaller ships. One hundred shots fired while 'on target', for one hundred complete misses. Yes, it is that straight-forwardly broken.

For this one simple reason, this game is simply terrible.

Seddrik
Seddrik

Patrician 3 was great, even if trade was a bit tedious to set up. There was so much to do! Hire captains, train them, manage crew (and happiness), get arms (legal and illegal), battle pirates or be a pirate, just EVERYTHING in addition to city management!

Patrician 4 has made some improvements on the land aspect of city building, automated ship trade (needed, but in some ways made it FAR too easy!), and practically removed all the fun captain, crew & ship weapons & battle elements!!!!! Argh! The best part of the game was gettinjg to the point where you could roll around armed and fight piractes or pirate ur competition.... no longer. It has been stripped bare in this aspect. Even in battle, it has a half second delay if u do not touch a key it starts auto steering your ship... I mean... just let the AI take over why don't you! Stick with Patrician 3. Trade is tedious to set up, but the gameplay is much more fun than 4 (though I do like the city improvements). Shame.

verhag2
verhag2

Hmm - Rise of the Dynasty expansion seems to be bad value - worse looking world map, internet connection required for single player, and combat is now broken (can't hit small ships).

So far I've played myself up to Patrician on a new playthrough with the expansion, and I haven't seen any sign of the inland cities (or wagon trains!) - it feels like i'm still playing the old game, nothing is new :/

Oh, and the treasure hunting isn't worth it - paying at least 50k in Taverns (~5 map pieces) to get some flotsam worth less than 5k seems like a bad trade...

I hope Kalypso put out a patch fixing the broken stuff, until then I have to give this a thumbs down...

2nd Class Janitor - Wilco
2nd Class Jani…

Tags: Tycoon&Simulator&Sim&City
Additional Tags: Delete Local Content & Remove from Library

TLDR: Requires Kalypso Launcher. High learning curve. Trading oriented. Gameplay is detached and remote.

Acelena
Acelena

Still loving this game after this long and would recommend it to all still! thanks for such a great game!

cape
cape

A very addictive trading and city building simulations. It has most strengths of the predecessor with better UI, Graphics and more cities to trade with. If you live in one of the cities represented in this game then go get it and become the mayor! However, if you are looking for ship combat then this game is not for you as ship battles can only be described as boring, annoyingly frustating and really badly implemented...

That being said the game sadly is less deep than the predecessor. Only one ship weapon instead of 6 and no weapons for trade or to equip the crew with. Land battle is even worse as instead of hiring troops all you can do now is building defensive towers. What a let down, especially as local land powers now have a happiness rating and can be interacted with. Population mechanics have also been simplified. Though still I prefer it to the predecessor because trade the mainstay of the game is implemented better (given that you have the expansion Rise of a dynasty).

Only1XUL
Only1XUL

The UI is completely unintuitive. This destroys any chance of getting into a flow and enjoying the game. All these little icons just look nice - that's it. So you will run into a constant loop of questions like "where is again this info about..." , "how can I see...", "why does a dobule click not work here...", "why can't I pause the game...", "ahh, I hit the Cancel button..." etc. etc. The interaction design of this game is so unbelivable badly concepted. If you don't want to torture yourself, don't buy it.

puncleV
puncleV

Kalypso as always just bought a game with high potential and killed it. Just as they did with the whole Tropico series. Tropico 3 was good, but they just rename it after it. So now you can play tropico 3 under tropico 5 label.

Its the same game as it was in Patrician 3 but simplified at many ways. And got rid of piracy. And added very boring auto-trade mechanics.

So just dont buy it, buy Patrician 3 instead.

brothir
brothir

Great premise. Wonderful graphics. Great soundtrack, although the programming of transitioning is quite bad. Awful voice acting. Very annoying popups.

But the reason I cannot recommend it is the godawful UI. So many clicks to do anything. It sucks all fun out of the game.

lfa
lfa

The Launcher is a horrible!
Can't even play singleplayer, because i lost my email address.
I hate it!

fadetoblack
fadetoblack

If you enjoy grindy games where you trade your way into bigger and better business via methods like vertical integration, this games a damn treat!

erik22
erik22

sad that people drop out with under 2 hours played and then giving bad reviews, because this game lives on another time scale than many short lived (action) games, and grows with the time to let u become a trade empire, where u have to manage ur worker, production facilities, trading fleets, city supplies, storage and so on, within the late middle ages setting.

Supply - demand - structure changes completely over time due to direct influence in population size by trade and many features are accessible only with a budget much higher than seizable in 2 hours, like influence into the nobility to get new ports and roads to inland cities open.

Experience the early days of Capitalism before the rise of the Fugger.

jameshardin62
jameshardin62

no different from special edition. unrealistic goals, objectives, can only have a certain number of cannons, were as enemy has more, and more sailors, waist of my time.

CCM
CCM

For an economic game it is okay, in regards to any semblance of a naval combat game it is neglegible. Any attempt to employ any type of naval tactics in an encounter is fruitless, the way the AI negates any command except for one ship, your current selection, makes it impossible to employ any type of strategy and have even had ships just run away and leave a battle. Absolutely amazing!!!! So if you like being frustrated then this is the game for you!

Anonymous
Anonymous

Do not purchase this game. It reports 'Product Key Already In Use' despite being licensed and purchased through Steam. The Kalypso launcher is at fault and evidently Malware.

Synthetic_Space
Synthetic_Space

Not as good as "Patrizier 2"(original name) but still good. Also the only good new Patrizier themed game we have and probably will have.

JibbleTitz
JibbleTitz

I would like to start off by saying that I could add another 1500 hrs to my playtime by counting a non-steam version that I used to play.
This is my third favorite game of all time, behind KoToR and KoToR 2.
Definitely not for everyone, but I would say that if you like getting stoned and organizing things IRL, you will probably like getting stoned and playing this game. I go on long breaks from this game, but always end up back at it again.
And I just found out about editing the .ini files... Here goes another 2000 hrs playtime over the next 10 years.

Barrfind V
Barrfind V

Brilliant simulator of trader in times when Hanza was in power. Buy and sell, build and produce, fight and gather reputation. Become the richest men in world of Hanza.

Khan
Khan

>The whole Baltic Sea goes into permanent starvation loop after a few years in-game. >Some cities starve so hard their population goes negative. >Bremen burns down to ashes for 14th time and i swear i started only 4 fires. >We dont have wells so i extinguish fires with my underpriced wine that i got in bulk from a shady place called "mediterranean". >Competitor screaming threats and burns down the city for 15th time in attempt to get rid of my sheep farm. >Duke is pissed that our burning village cant send him carts of gold and besieges it. >3% tax is apparently outrageous. But that does not matter cos duke is stealing all the tax money anyway. >Most cities hate me for buying all their cheese so i cant advance in rank. And i cant destroy pirate hideouts without advancing in rank. >So naturally every city is now blocked by at least 4 pirate fleets, cannons blast directly in my ear like a machinegun (notification of pirate attack), and the northern sea is slowly entering starvation loop too. >Except Bremen. >Bremen is getting all my dirt cheap grain and beer. >But Bremen is burning again... 10/10

pereh
pereh

This game was released in 2011. To be able to start it, one still needs a working Kalypso account. This is some kind of digital slavery and absolutely inacceptable.

jan schlehofer
jan schlehofer

Played Port Royale 3 too. Classic trading game, yet the combat is not that good like in PR3. Making spice trade nd land routes make the game unique. Only problem is that some place are so distant and hard to trade with or unable to be reached with bigger ships
If u want to enjoy medieval northern Europe go with this or for others go with PR3

outman
outman

It's quite boring in later session session.
Game always crush if you made a big city, and disaster is too frequent.
It's seem the disaster is design to yield your game time.

generalsub7
generalsub7

Game constantly crashing every 10-45 min..runing it on win7 64 bit. it appears its a widely known problem...DO NOT buy this game

johnak67
johnak67

Added an un-skippable log in page post-purchase. Now I am locked out of the game unless I agree to hand over my Data. Scum move!

Sent for refund as developers have now stopped me playing the game I bought.

Anonymous
Anonymous

Buy low. Sell high. Rinse and repeat. Until you can afford another ship. Then, do it again and again... It's simple, repetitive, and mindless at times. Yet I can't stop playing it. It's unique in that you can develop your business any way you see fit and play at your own pace. I've enjoyed this series for years and am grateful for it.

supoman
supoman

DO NOT BUY KALYPSO PRODUCTS!
The game key system is broken. I can't use the Steam key that I purchased because its already in use... by me!

BW
BW

I never made it past the Kalypso launcher. I am already logged into steam. Don't want to log into another launcher. I have no idea if the game is good or not.

Anonymous
Anonymous

The multiplayer game only works for Coop-mode, I need a real multiplayer game with several players each with his own company.

ZERO SP
ZERO SP

I played this game for nearly 200 hours then Kalypso did an update and they now force you to register through a very invasive process that I can't get through. I can't even get into the game any more.

NoNihilism
NoNihilism

This is one of my favorite games ever. It really needs some smarter automation. Managing trade routes and city administrators is too difficult, but still wow this is a great game.

Anonymous
Anonymous

Entertaining easy to gain money..But really easy to loose you fleet..still trying to get the hang of the ship to ship combat.

Khalthehunted332
Khalthehunted332

iTS LIKE THE LAST 2 BUT WITH BETTER GRAPHICS i don't know if they have new world exploration though. I like 3 better.

Grzegor2005
Grzegor2005

Unplayable, crashes when administering a counting house. And that's what this game is about.

Also, there is stutter during naval combat, renders them unplayable, which kill the campaign experience. Other people also seem to have this problem, but there are no answers on the forum.

Also it forces a registration on Kalypso shop, which is always opened in your face when starting the game. You also need to register for the shop with your email etc. Honestly, I would rather pirate the game then buy it as it would be a better experience.

Game is a very nice idea and I would like to play but at current state it just sucks.

Gan Xodos
Gan Xodos

It's enjoyable, despite the not-so-good armament management. I also wonder why people keep saying they wish they had more fountains but it's not possible to build them.

The main problem is bugs in assignments where you sell like, 200 out of 200 cloth for a contract and it doesn't get marked as completed in about 1 out of 8 contracts.

ftlman123
ftlman123

I don't remember right now as I am writing this if I wrote a review of the special edition. It would be however the same good review. The game is very fun, not too hard, not too easy. There are more features that I haven't even got to yet, although I have gotten married in the game. If you like management games and trading, this is the game for you. I don't remember if I got the game for free or in humble bundle or if its a game pass game. I am not getting paid for this review. Unless someone out there wants to give me some money!

Scorn
Scorn

Good. But the map and economy feel static. in the mid game it feels like your the only one trying to grow the supply side of the economy.

MISAlexis
MISAlexis

Would love to play, but can't any more. The launcher asks for a key, and the key I registered with years ago is "already in use".

Avenson
Avenson

Great game, but for me it is unplayable since it crashes randomly. Maybe it's my hardware, maybe something else... Support is useless, I contacted them and never received a reply.
If you can get it to work, it is worth it.

Bluebyte
Bluebyte

I recommend this game to anyone who enjoys building cities and enjoys economic strategy. Played some 230 hours and i'm just reinstalling it so i can do some more damage to Hanseatic League.

Gary
Gary

I played 28 hours about 4 years ago, and installed it today to have another go at it but... I can no longer play the game.

The Kalypso Launcher tells me I don't own it any more?... "My product key is already in use". Why do these games have this DRM crap, isn't steam ownership proof enough that I bought it...

Anyway, I sent a support ticket to Kalypso... waited a few days and then they reset the product key, and I can play the game again... a bit annoying, but it is a good game and at least I can still play it

Helscreama
Helscreama

I'd love to recommend this game, however the failure that is known as the Kalypso Launcher claims my key is used and that I'm not allowed to play a game I bought YEARS AGO.

Fuck you Kalypso and fuck your failure of a launcher.

Goffik
Goffik

First a note for those whinging and whining about the dreaded Kalypso launcher. It took me all of 30 seconds to find and complete a "fix" that completely bypasses the launcher forever. No need to create an account, no need for serial numbers, no need to even look at it ever again... and no, it doesn't involve any kind of dodgy crack. You guys have wasted more time than the fix takes to implement by crying here instead of simply typing "bypass Kalypso launcher" into Google. It's shocking how few people seem to be able to help themselves these days.

Onto the game itself. Patrician IV is one of a group of "old-school" games which I regularly return to, which also includes Port Royale 3 (very similar game based on the same engine) and The Guild 2 among others. It comes from an era in which people still wanted to actually play their games instead of just watching them... the latter being what most "management" games are about these days.

The premise is very simple. The game world is full of towns which require an amount of every available product based on their population. However, each town can only produce 4-5 of these goods themselves. Everything else must be imported from other towns, while the town's own goods are exported elsewhere. You begin as a humble trader with a single ship and a purse of coins, and it's up to you to make your own way in the world. You will start by trading goods between towns with your ship, but once you have some capital you can start to expand. Eventually you can have fleets of ships transporting goods all over the map, as well as your own businesses producing these goods more cheaply for even greater profits. And that is the core gameplay.

There are a number of other mechanics thrown into the mix for added interest though. For starters, every other trade ship and business in the game is owned by an AI trader. You are in direct competition with them, and they can and will resort to nefarious means if you step on their toes. Of course, you can also use the same tactics on them as well! You can also become Mayor of your chosen hometown which adds a few minor benefits though nothing groundbreaking. The Hanseatic League is also part of the game, in which you can rise to Alderman in order to determine guild policy yourself. There are also local Kings which need to be appeased before they take what they want by force, as well as pirates which can be a real thorn in your side. However, most of these are relatively minor things which are a diversion from the main mechanic of trading, which is what the game is all about.

So far, so good, and most of the above makes for an enjoyable experience. But there is one area which seriously lets the game down in a very big way... combat. It is nothing short of horrendous. It's slow, it's clunky, it's frustrating, and it's excruciatingly boring. Yet unless you are happy for your convoys to be pirated on every other voyage later in the game, you will have no choice but to engage in it on a regular basis. There is an auto-resolve option, but it appears to be a very simple higher-numbers-mean-instant-win calculation, which even if you succeed will result in very long and costly repairs. The only way to minimise this cost is to fight every single mind-numbingly tedious battle manually. Absolute irritating bore-fest. To be perfectly honest, it's the combat which usually makes me give up playing in the late game, when piracy is rampant and it can no longer be avoided.

But combat aside, Patrician IV is an enjoyable game which can provide hours of entertainment. I would recommend Rise of a Dynasty even if you've never played the original, because it has improved visuals and a number of new gameplay features which are well worth having. Recommended for those who want a management game they can actually interact with, instead of a worthless click-and-watch experience.

B_10_Kinky
B_10_Kinky

A true classic of the genre. If you love games like Port Royale, or enjoy trade networking, community development, economy building, etc. this game is a must-have.

💀 Klq X Klly 💜
💀 Klq X Klly 💜

All of the successor games have regressed on the details that were in this game. I love this game, but it can be a buggy piece of shit. I wish gaming minds would be given the support to do things properly for once, because for some reason every game they've made since this has been a pile of shit too, with the exception of Railway Empire which probably escaped by being simplified a lot.

If you have played their other games, grab this in a sale or something, it's by far the best in the series.

lordarous
lordarous

I bought this 7 years ago with my money. And now it says my product key is in use. I bet kalypso know about this yet doesn't care a thing about us, neither do they verify our claims nor investigate about it. Shame on you kalypso, taking our money yet wants more of it.
They just want to bleed us of our money for developers to earn without any sort of reasons. Because they can Just create one new game with similar game play but named it "patrician 5" or even worst, +1 to the "version" to every bad reviewed game they have to patricians in future. And in turn they solve not only having no bad reviews yet they can make people who are fresh to this genre to buy this game which have been there long ago, yet the older customers are left to be silenced by who? By whoever manages this thing because they have allowed it yet the bad reviews doesn't do a dent to a patrician 5 or patrician 6 because they just +1 to the "version" every time and forever. Because from this game was the second time i was dealt with this card, "developers sucking blood yet with a +1 to the [version], all bad reviews was erased because they made the 1st version free, which in turn makes the reviews gone" because a free game doesn't need reviews right?

*Update from 4th Aug 2022* so what Kalypso does now, to me at least, is to make my Kalypso account invalid. Basically, whatever games that i bought on Kalypso from steam are all unable to login from Kalypso, talking about being unreasonable. So what i presumed is that they are not happy about my review and they use direct actions to pay back without even communicating with me AT ALL. So i cannot submit a ticket to them now (which some did, after reading the reviews of others) to let them rectify my problem which is just some rounds of clicking for them yet they are not even giving me such a chance. Well, such great customer service must be shown i guess is to further worsen situations and on their road to getting more bad reviews, i guess? They could have reacted to my review on steam since it's their product yet they chose not to. After all, reasonable people would change their reviews if they are compensated accordingly but Kalypso simply wages a never-ending feud war with the seemingly bad customers. Well, this review will always remain here and forever be a thumbs-down review when my Kalypso account is forever gone & Kalypso being very unreasonable. They could have taken appropriate actions like just forbidding the user to play specific games that they feel are being shortchanged but that seems not the case. Kalypso to me now is a petty company that does things they FEEL is right and being revengeful is part of their actions/tactics.

grep
grep

You have to Create Your Kalypso Account (wow I don't want that) and consent to using your data for marketing purposes (no thanks), or else you can't launch the game. Shameless cash grab.

Dagins
Dagins

Doesn't seem to play as well as it used to... Looks like they changed a lot for online play or something since I last played. Disabled online so no one should be able to join me but even then it feels almost laggy. used to be a good game...

mikerk92
mikerk92

This is a great Economy RTS game. I have played both single and multiplayer, all great. Feel free for commenting with any questions

DDRJake
DDRJake

Mandatory account sign-up launcher. I already bought the game, don't have this naked attempt at taking my data too.

Sillls
Sillls

Game tries to force you to sign up for things that you don't want.

rick.moult1
rick.moult1

The game is absorbing and fun but a lack of instruction on the finer points.

Mr Smigly
Mr Smigly

kalypso launcher says the key i paid for is already in use, fuck you kalypso