Merchant Prince 2 (Take2, PC)

By PETER ELEY

It's Renaissance Venice and as leader of one of the city state's foremost merchant families, you must establish trade routes with the Far East and Africa.

Merchant Prince 2, while a solid enough, turn-based economic strategy game, is hardly exotic, thanks to some ordinary graphics which belong to a different era.

The upside of this is that the game runs on a modest Pentium 166, with 32mb ram and a basic SVGA card.

Graphics aren't everything, and many people will be content to become absorbed in this steamy tale of Machiavelli, the Doge and a dodgy Pope or two. Play your cards right and you can even get to be the Pope.

The original game was noted for its core gameplay, centred around trade. This holds up surprisingly well and you need to plan trade routes and alliances carefully to amass the million florins you need to win.
It plays very much like Civilisation, which is still going strong, proving that there is a demand for quality, turn-based games.

The flavour of an age summed up by Machiavelli's maxim that "the end justifies the means" is nicely captured here.

And you have lots of Machiavellian options to increase your power base. As Pope, you can excommunicate entire cities, which cuts the tax base or you can call a Crusade, become a patron of the arts, sell indulgences to wealthy sinners, or hire assassins and arsonists.

If that's too high-level, slanderers will besmirch the good name of your trade rivals for a modest sum.

peter_eley@nzherald.co.nz