Hanse - The Hanseatic League

it isn't patrician or port royale but it is fun. Recommend it against all the bad ratings it was given. The patching definately improved the game from what some of the negative criticisms were. A good time waster and I found it in the bargain bin. So I went against the ratings for this game and was pleasantly surprised.

I've played this game for nearly 1.5h so far and you might be right to say that a playtime this little is not enough to give this game a bad review. You might be. But within these 1.5h I discovered several things which were pretty annoying. I don't even know where to start. So I start with the graphics. To make it short: Take a loot on Crusader Kings 1 on Steam. Yes, it looks that old. Hanse feels like you're playing a game from 2005. Usually I don't mind the graphics, but this interface, Jesus Christ. The controls seem to be pretty clunky, whenever I zoom out the map tries to center the lower right corner, which is pretty annoying. I only did discover one bug in the tutorial. On some point you have to fight pirates for the first time. The enemy had to make its turn but he just didn't do it. Tried to let the game finish it automatically, didn't work either. Restartet the game. Then combat gameplay. I have to repeat myself: Jesus Christ. Either I didn't pay enough attention to the tutorial or the game doesn't tell you how to enter an enemy ship or how you choose, which ship you'd like to attack. If you have play other games like Port Royale or Patrician or even the old Hanse or Kaiser, you might know the drill. Trading is pretty simple and fun, and oh boy it can be tough if you don't pay attention to your running costs. But there are two major things I really dislike, while the other things above are just minor things to rant about and would not justify a negative review. The first thing is the population system. When I first saw this I was pretty hyped. Each city has three categories of needs, which are categorized in several subcategories aswell. For example: To grow, some cities need cloth, leather, several food types and stuff like jewelry. It reminds somehow on the Anno series. In theory this is a great system and should provide a lot of fun and motiviation. But in reality this system hasn't been thought to the end. Below every need you can see a progress bar which indicates how well this need is fulfilled. The numeric value is shown as percentages. For example: A city needs simple clothings. The need is fulfilled up to 1%. Yet the city is selling clothings itself. You can buy all the clothings and nothing seems to happen. You can buy clothings at another city and sell them to the one which needs it. But then again the bar is still at 1%. There is no way to see how many clothings you actual need and on what it depends to fulfill this need. Also the pricing is often pretty low for a good which is heavily needed and not in stock in the city. This is confusing and frustrating and led me to take a break from the game. The second part is the production. Many cities have their own production of goods and some goods are only produced in one city, which is pretty neat. As far as I can see it from here, you cannot buy or buld you own production buildings as it is possible in Port Royale or other games of these types. Yet you can influence the production if you're the mayor, but you can only switch between possible production chains. That, in my eyes, is a bit TOO simple. Hopefully the devs will change it in the future, yet I doubt that tbh.