Sunday, November 9, 2008

A Fun Time With Legends: Tradewinds Legends





It was one of those days, when I was looking around for a decent game, which I could play. I was on the lookout for a good strategy or a tycoon type. It was on that day that I stumbled upon the game Trade Winds Legends.

I’ve never played any games from this series or have ever heard of it. But it was the genre of the game that attracted me. Its story line is that you’re a ship’s captain in the Arabian Nights era, and your aim is to discover the story of the character as you build up your fleet and earn unimaginable wealth and fight different Bosses along the way. Now, this may seem to be the standard fare of any given wealth, but I decided to give it a try. And believe me that was one of the best things I did till now.

Upon starting the game you have to choose your character, based on which, you’ll get a different storyline. There are characters ranging from a Widowed Bride out to take revenge to a mysterious Chinese woman. The story’s different depending on your character. Depending on the character, your starting conditions vary, some might have Big debts, but all of the character will start from a basic ship. The starting city will be your home base, and it’s from here that you get your main storyline missions. Also this is the only city that has all the commodities. The game play mechanic is pretty simple: You accept missions from the palace of the city, starting from your city, which in turns opens up other cities whose rulers, get to know you on carrying out the missions and thus eventually you get access to all the cities. Complete the missions and the helpful people will give you hint about your main quests and thus put you down the storyline. In between all these you have the option of trading the various commodities up for sale at the market and make a profit by buying low and selling high, so keep an eye out for falling prices. But beware there are some commodities that are considered contra-band and will be seized on being found at some ports. The trading is optional as you’ll get paid handsomely for the missions, but in order to build up a pretty strong fleet to keep the pirates from sinking you you’ll be needing lots of ships. And yes, some places are only accessible, only when your entire fleet consists of Air-Ships. Yes, you read it right, it also features air-ships and you get 3 choices in it.

Now coming to game play, the thing that’ll keep you latched onto this game is the great sense of humor. The dialogues in the game are, in one word, brilliant. They made me laugh quite loudly and it’s a nice addition to a game that might get repetitive, especially after running around the ports looking for a runaway.

The game is not from a big budget game company like Crytek and so don’t expect high quality 3d graphics that’d make your GPU cry. The graphics are decent and sharp. The ports are pretty nice-looking. The animations are very good, with the sliding in and moving out of the different menus. The sound effects are great for this game, giving you all the sounds that you’ll be expecting to hear from a sea-faring games.

So, if you’ve played the previous games then this games worth playing. But if you haven’t and are looking for a game, and like good jokes, then you won’t be disappointed with this one. I for one had to go back to play it multiple times for its great funny dialogues. And given it’s price, you can rest assured that it was a wise purchase.

Here's a screenshot of the action going on : 


You can find more screenshots and also the download link here.

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