But Merchant Prince 2 doesn t offer you much in this regard. From the easiest to the most difficult settings, there s no feeling of accomplishment only the tedious traversing of trade routes, the bribing of the occasional Venice-based official and the onset of disease, storm and low popularity votes. For some this may be considered good gaming. I, on the other hand, don t think this comes close. Waiting for a storm or pirates to strike, or hopefully the Black Death to ravage cities on my trade routes, were the closest things to stimulating gameplay as Merchant Prince 2 gets.
Difficulty setting is just that hard to figure out, hard to make any real moves, hard to enjoy.
Trading across settings as diverse as the Orient and the Mediterranean were somewhat interesting. But I found myself waiting impatiently for the cut scenes, as they provided snippets of historic happenings. Instead level after level of these curiously blas images dampened any hope I had of in-game realism. Each scenario called for its own tradeable goods. For example, silk, perfume, tea and rice were abundant in Asian cities like Canton or Nanking.