''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 ...

and published by

Take-Two Interactive Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. is an American video game holding company based in New York City founded by Ryan Brant in September 1993. The company owns three major Imprint (trade name), publishing labels, Rockstar Games, Zynga and 2K ...

under

TalonSoft TalonSoft, Inc. was an American video game developer and publisher based in Baltimore. History TalonSoft was founded in March 1995, by video game producers Jim Rose and John Davidson. On December 24, 1998, Take-Two Interactive announced that ...

label. It is the sequel to the 1994 video game '' Merchant Prince''.

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 rerelease rather than a

sequel A sequel is a work of literature, film, theatre, television, music, or video game that continues the story of, or expands upon, some earlier work. In the common context of a narrative work of fiction, a sequel portrays events set in the same ...

, 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'' is an American video gaming 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 district and is headed by its former e ...

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

Computer Gaming World ''Computer Gaming World'' (CGW) was an American Video game journalism, computer game magazine that was published between 1981 and 2006. One of the few magazines of the era to survive the video game crash of 1983, it was sold to Ziff Davis in 199 ...

'' 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

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"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

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

instead of

DOS DOS (, ) is a family of disk-based operating systems for IBM PC compatible computers. The DOS family primarily consists of IBM PC DOS and a rebranded version, Microsoft's MS-DOS, both of which were introduced in 1981. Later compatible syste ...

, 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