Especially as original developer Ascaron went bust last year, leading me to assume at the time that all was over for Patrician and Ascaron’s other cult strategy franchises, most of which I sought out and fell in love with in the wake of discovering Patrician III.Īs with previous games in the series, Patrician IV is a strategy and management trading simulator set in the principally Germanic Hanseatic League of the 14th century. Patrician IV’s arrival is one that I have been anticipating with growing excitement for some months now after finding out about it. Now, finally, there is a sequel to that game which so vividly caught my attention six years ago. I’ve not looked back since, and still play Patrician III to this day. A series of contradictions such as 2D sprites in the screenshots, low technical requirements and a price of five pounds yet the game purportedly being only a year old and designed for Windows XP saw me scuttle cackling from the store grasping my newfound treasure and impatient to get home and install it. This was something that looked as though it belonged on the large and solid cardboard boxes which computer games came on in my youth, and was entirely anachronistic and out of place gazing back at me from the front of a slim plastic DVD case surrounded by the glossy modern tackiness that passes now for a games store.īefore I sink once more into the deep and lustful nostalgia I felt looking down at that image at the time, and into a prolonged rant about the loss of the era when PC games had boxes and manuals that were as much art as the software they contained, and which held your attention with their sheer presence on the shelf, that game was Patrician III: Rise of the Hanse.
It’s cover had a very late 80s early 90s feel hand-painted illustration of an affluently dressed man with a neatly trimmed beard, clutching a giant leather bag of what was presumably gold coins rather too casually, and standing in front of a medieval European port complete with period sailing ships. Real Time Management and Strategy, Naval Trading SimulationĪbout six years ago I was rooting around in the increasingly shrinking PC section of my nearest GAME store, searching for the rare truffles occasionally obscured behind the accumulated dross of the discounted titles shelf, when I came across a game that I had never heard of but which had a premise and visual style that gripped my brain in a vice.
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