''Merchant Prince II'' is a 2001 turn-based strategy game of economic, political, and military conquest. The game is developed by

Holistic Design Holistic Design, Inc. (HDI), is an American game company. It was founded in 1992 as Several Dudes Holistic Gaming. The company has developed many computer games in its history, including ''Battles of Destiny'', '' Hammer of the Gods'', '' Final L ...

and published by

Take-Two Interactive Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. is an American video game holding company based in New York City and founded by Ryan Brant in September 1993. The company owns two major publishing labels, Rockstar Games and 2K, which operate internal ...

under TalonSoft label. It is the sequel to the 1994 video game ''

Merchant Prince ''Merchant Prince'' is a turn-based 4X strategy video game franchise set in the Republic of Venice during the Renaissance. The first was published in Europe in 1993, and North America in 1994; in 1995; and in 2001. All three were developed by ...

''.

Reception

''Merchant Prince II'' received "mixed" reviews according to the

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website

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. So little was added to gameplay that it was properly a

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rather than a

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, and the changes to the graphics were considered uglier, with a zoomed-in and less user-friendly interface. ("End turn", for instance, was represented by an unlabeled wine glass.) It was largely panned by critics and even the positive review by ''

IGN ''IGN'' (formerly ''Imagine Games Network'') is an American video game and entertainment media website operated by IGN Entertainment Inc., a subsidiary of Ziff Davis, Inc. The company's headquarters is located in San Francisco's SoMa dist ...

'' called it a "cheap reissue" and pardoned it only because of the difficulty of finding the original DOS games. ''

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'' opened its review, "''Merchant Prince 2'' is the kind of title that gives strategy gaming a bad name," and concluded with, "Mainstream consumers pulled in by the fascinating topic are—once again—going to feel ripped off, confused, dumb, and jaded toward turn-based strategy games." Kent Conrad found the implementation of the research tree "half-baked" and ended his review with "There is a good game hiding inside of ''Merchant Prince II'', and that game is ''Machiavelli: The Prince''. Get that instead." Kevin Rice of '' NextGen'', however, said of the game, "It's virtually the same game it was eight years ago, designed to run under

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instead of

DOS DOS is shorthand for the MS-DOS and IBM PC DOS family of operating systems. DOS may also refer to: Computing * Data over signalling (DoS), multiplexing data onto a signalling channel * Denial-of-service attack (DoS), an attack on a communicat ...

, but in the end it's still an entertaining, unique turn-based strategy."

Notes

References

External links

* {{Holistic Design 2001 video games Holistic Design games Multiplayer and single-player video games Strategy video games Take-Two Interactive games TalonSoft games Video game sequels Video games developed in the United States Windows games Windows-only games