Having spent numberless hours playing Patrician III, this game was a must buy for me.
Couldnt have been more wrong. This would have made an acceptable Patrician II since is clearly a step backwards.
Patrician IV its clearly worse than its predecessor.

If you are thinking about buying this, my advise, pick up Patrician III.

DON'T BUY THIS THING! Just DON'T !

You logged into steam ? GFWL ? uplay from ubisoft ? origin from EAgames ??
IT'S NOT OVER , you have to log into "kalypso" now !
You need an email adress and a password to log into a "KalYpso thing" in order to play maybe one day.
Why do you want to play this game anyway ??? IT IS SO FUNNY TO SPEND YOUR TIME CREATING NEW ACCOUNTS EVERY♥♥♥♥INGWHERE AND GETTING TRACKED AND SPAMMED FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE ! ALL YOU NEED IS TO GIVE KALYPSO 29.99 EURO.

There are so many better games that are just "click-and-play", don't bother for a game worse than Patrician III, unless they have patched the login page to an offline launch.

Don't waste your money with KalypsoGames whatsoever. eVEN THE TROPICO SERIES FROM POP TOP AND BREAKAWAY WAS WAY BETTER THAN THEIR RELOAD

I thought it was an improvement of the Patrician 3, but I wasn't expecting this... The same mechanics, same map, same gameplay... Disapointing... I still prefer Patrician 3 instead of this. I'm lucky I bought it now with the Steam summer sales!

There aren't many games out there, where the point of the game is to traid and to do some capitalistic ♥♥♥♥. One of them is definitely Patrician IV. I've been playing the game for some time now and I think it is time to say something about it.

These games can be boring sometimes, and this or similar kinds of gameplay, are usually part of some bigger game. But the thrill is not in the gameplay, it is in the role that you are playing. In this particular game you take the role of a merchant in medieval times on the Baltic sea. Your goal is to be the biggest merchant of them all. And as far as the story goes that's about it. So, as you can see, there isn't much of a story. But there is a lot of trading to do and you have to industrialize your production of goods and trading roots.

For the gameplay I can say it is simple as far as handling it goes. You don't have any trouble trying to figure out how to do things around there. The mechanics of demand and supply are realistic and you can quickly overproduce or oversupply a market of a city that you came to trade in. So in that way you have to be careful that you always keep them a bit short on supplies.

There is one thing that is in this game and has to be mentioned separately, and that is the naval battles. You can have naval battles with pirates or you competitors, but these battles are not big ones which is little bit disappointing. You can only have fights 3 on 3. Never the less, it is a welcome change in the monotone playing experience.

I am enjoying playing this game, but I think that those who like more action will be bored. That's why I am giving the game 6/10, and I gave it a rating that high just because, I like to play it once in a while when I feel that this capitalistic world is not the best decision that humanity has made.

If you enjoy sim city type games you'll like this. Basically you're trying to dominate trade routes and muscle out otehr merchants.

It's been a while since I've written a recommendation for a game, and it's a service I feel the community really needs doing, so here we go:

Patrician IV, henceforth known as "Patty IV's" is in something of a niche genre, in that it is a Renaissance trading simulator set around the Hanseatic League in Northern Europe. Doesn't sound like the most riveting game now, but when I rephrase that as TIME TRAVELLING DOSH SIMULATOR 1420 EDITION it starts to sound ♥♥♥♥♥ing dank. (Note to self, make montage video with that title)

Patty IV's behaves something akin to a sandbox, and the main campaign introduces you to the core concepts in a really intelligent way rather than simply throwing a standard tutorial at you, whereupon you start with modest resources as a simple hemp smuggler operating out of Lubeck aspiring to grow his empire until you control all the booze and kush in Denmark.

The difficulties in the true sandbox mode work pretty well too, they basically make more bad things happen the higher difficulty you select, like pirates stealing your ♥♥♥♥ or bad winters freezing ports over as well as ramping up the costs of production, so that in order to maintain a decent profit margin you actually have to spread your goods out intelligently. Because of this, on the higher difficulties you truly end up as a wicked beer baron, having to ship your product all over Europe to find enough people keen for your booze and bud (Stockholm can't get enough hemp for some reason).

Once you've gotten enough dosh behind you from your 'legitimate businesses' you can move into the world of protection, racketeering and exploitation. You can create fleets of pirate vessels or hunt the pirates that menace your trade. You can be 'elected' in charge of a town and pay off the local authorities to leave you in peace. You can build 'schools' where the goal is to design bigger guns for you ships or ways to grow danker kush. You can even pick up some wench and start 'The Family' (watch that ♥♥♥♥♥, I caught mine cheating once).

Have I mentioned that it doesn't stop there?

WELL BUCKLE UP KIDS

IT EVEN HAS A GODDAM CO-OP MODE FOR TWICE AS MUCH DOSH.

Because by know you're already clicking add to cart I'll discuss the DLC now, so you can wrap it up in one easy purchase.

The expansions adds some pretty legit content, so if the gold edition is an option go for it, but the game isn't fundamentally handicapped by missing it out. I even managed to drop about 50 hours into the full edition before finding the key feature of smuggling booze and 'exotic spices' overland that the DLC introduces. It seems like there were a lot of little tweaks that were added with Rise of a Dynasty too, including some fixes with the aforementioned co-op mode, however, so I would recommend picking up the pack if possible.

This is a ♥♥♥♥ing wicked game, potentially the best game to play while you're browsing the net or whatever at the same time, which is ironic due to it not being terribly casual. The reason it has a ♥♥♥♥ty metascore is because all the reviewers are cowards that don't want to put any effort into learning how the systems work, which are relatively easy to understand and smooth to operate. ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥s are too busy giving 9.8's to on rails shooters to learn how to run a criminal syndicate, uh, I mean 'trading syndicate'. I wouldn't say the game is immaculate, but it's challenging and interesting in a fun way, and I don't regret sinking plenty of hours into it. The ship combat is a little dry too, but that's not the focus of the game.

If you like simulators or relaxed strategy of any kind I'd say it's a must buy.

Overall I'd give TIME TRAVELLING DOSH SIMULTOR 1420 EDITION 80/100.