Sea Trader: Rise of Taipan

"Simple, addictive strategy game."

Strategy games can sometimes be overwhelming; tons of complex menu driven commands to work your way through. Sea Trader doesn’t have this problem. It’s a good game, but it’s not a very deep game. There basically is no story; just a short introduction at the front and nothing that moves the story forward throughout the game. For all it’s simplicity though it’s addictive. I really liked the game at first, but now it’s fell into that realm of monotony that I dislike about this genre.

The goal in the game is to build a trade empire. You get a ship, which you can upgrade, and one map (South China) to explore. There are a few cities to trade goods between. You buy them in one city and take them over to another and hope their value is higher when you sell them than when you bought them. Sometimes you can stop in at the tavern, buy a round of drinks and hear the gossip. This could tell you there’s a shortage of lumber somewhere, so now you know to go stock up on lumber and head to the city that supposedly needs the lumber. Or you could just be sailing along and find a message in a bottle that will give you another one of these tips. After a short while you should begin to memorize the normal price of an item and when it is a good price to buy and when it’s good to sale.

There are different types of goods you can deal in. There are grocery items (coconuts, bananas), crafts (fine art, porcelain), and materials (iron, lumber). Then there are the elite bootlegging items. Once your reputation has risen high enough you can go to the customs office located in some towns, make a “donation” and then you’ll be led into the back. You can purchase things like ivory and gunpowder, or for a really high price a new map that will lead you to one of the other five areas in the game.

Out on the high seas you will encounter pirates, bounty hunters, other traders, and guards. The pirates are the most frequent enemy. The bounty hunters only appear if you owe money to the bank. Other traders are very infrequent. The guards are there to make sure you don’t have any elite items on your ship. If you let them check and you have nothing, they’ll let you go. If you do have some of those bootleg items you can give them hush money to keep it quiet. Or you can just bomb them with your cannons and say to hell with it. If you don’t want to sink any of the ships you can attack for a little while and then try to board their ship. You send some crew members over and they will steal some items on board for you.

As you earn money you can upgrade different things about your ship. You can train your sailors, strengthen your cannons, or expand the cargo hold so you can transport more items. You can also strengthen the sails on the ship so it’s harder to be blown off course or strengthen the body of the ship so it can withstand more when attacked by cannons on other ships. My only problem with this is how quickly I upgraded my ship to the highest level. I wish there had been more than the 6 upgrades for each option. I tired to store some items in the warehouses, but when I went back to get them most of them were gone or the expensive stuff had been replaced with the cheap stuff so I don’t even know why the warehouses were included unless you’re supposed to gamble with it by sticking bananas in there and hoping it turns into silk. If not the warehouse is totally useless.

The only real goals in the game are in achieving the awards. There are 8 different awards; four are for transporting a certain number of goods, 2 are for sinking certain types of ships, one is for earning a certain amount of money and the other is for sailing around the world. There are three time frames to play the game in: 1 year, 3 years, and 10 years. Obviously accomplishing all the goals is hardest in the 1 year game, but even in the 10 year game I found a couple of them to be a bit of a challenge. The game uses an auto save feature. Every few minutes of play it will auto save to the cartridge. The game’s weakest aspect is the music; I kept the volume turned down for the most part. The music is bad and there are virtually no sound effects. The graphics aren’t great, but they are serviceable with this type of game.

My main complaints with this game are the lack of depth, replay, or challenge it has. It was intoxicating for a while to play, but after about a week I just felt burned out on the game. It may be a while before I play it again, but this is a solid game to have around if I ever want to play it again, and I know I will. Besides, there's really nothing else like it on the GBA.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 12/30/02, Updated 12/30/02