Port Traventor is an odd mashup of traditional RPG and medieval management sim. I suppose you’d call it the latter and say it has elements of the former. You are the king and you’ve just arrived in your country, and it’s up to you to build up your kingdom and drive out the forces that oppose it.

Let’s Talk About Assets!

Graphics are mostly from the VX Ace RTP, but also draw from a number of other sources. There’s a lengthy list of contributions in the credits, but I couldn’t tell you what is from where. It all suits the VX Ace aesthetic, so I didn’t notice anything out of place. This is essentially true of the music and sound as well, with only a couple pieces coming from outside sources. It’s put together well enough, but looks rather generic. One nice touch is that enemies in battle are animated to make them feel more alive. The sprites undulate slightly, but remain in the same pose otherwise.

Let’s Talk About Story!

There isn’t much to it. You’re the king, you travel alone, and the vast majority of other races around you are the bad guys. The people of Traventor need you to build establishments, hire villagers, and give them jobs. Forces of orcs, dwarves, barbarians, and the undead maraud around to oppose you. Even mermaids are out to get you for some reason. It’s actually a bit funny. You’re dropped into the world without much context and you’re left to operate under the assumption that all the other races are bad, yet you are the one who goes around picking fights with them to steal their resources. The other races are hostile, but it could be argued they’re justified with how you treat them. A little context might have solved this, but the game isn’t supposed to be that nuanced.

In short, the story is that of the kingdom itself. What few characters it has are mostly informative. There’s a witch named Vivien who causes trouble for you a few times, but apart from her, there isn’t much significant dialogue. The plot isn’t really the focus, so it doesn’t need to go very deep.

Let’s Talk About Gameplay!

This is the main course, so all pretenses exist for the sake of it. The entire territory is an overworld. Your position is signified by your floating head with an arrow pointing toward the ground, as are enemy touch encounters. Maps are only one full screen and interaction points are indicated with a pulsing circle. You run around the countryside fighting enemies for resources and using those to build and employ the populace.

The combat segments are where the RPG elements come in. Although you work alone, you’re formidable enough to stand up to groups as big as three to one. You fully heal outside of battle and it’s not Game Over if you lose, but your reputation depends on your win-loss ratio. I don’t know how this ties in mechanically as I never had a low rating, but it exists. Like typical RPGs, you level up and learn new abilities. The battle system uses what you’d expect from MP and TP; spells that come out of your magic points and skills that draw from a pool that fluctuates with damage taken/dealt. There’s nothing too crazy to fight since you’re by yourself the whole time, but some of them can still be challenging.

Out of combat, you’re roaming the land and expanding your territory. The game has a day/night cycle that progresses as you walk. There are different encounters during the day and night, and some places are only available at certain times, like shops only being open at daytime. When a new day rolls over, you can recruit more villagers at the main city and your ability to harvest resources is refreshed. The general flow is that you build places to train villagers in their jobs, fight enemies for their tools, and those let you harvest resources based on how many people and tools are at your disposal. In this way, it’s multi-layered resource gathering as collection of certain things depends on others. There’s even an order to the structures as each one built increases your reputation, but you need more rep to build in the first place.

While it has a functional dynamic, it’s also a bit grindy as you must fight for a lot of stuff to get anywhere. Respawning encounters is as easy as leaving and returning to a map, but you may end up fighting the same enemies over and over for desperate need of their tools. The one I always struggled with was barbarians, whose axes you need to chop lumber, which is vital for every building project. Tool necessities are somewhat alleviated by the existence of battle towers where you can fight many of a specific enemy type. However, I think it would’ve been better if the orc tower and barbarian tower were switched, as the former is the toughest and the earliest available while the latter can’t be reached until lumber isn’t a necessity anymore.

Let’s Wrap This Up…

The game plays out in an elegantly simple way, but I was somewhat let down by how little there is to it. While there’s plenty to do in getting your kingdom together, it doesn’t take long to clear all the hurdles, and as a commercial game, I feel like it needs to offer more (or adjust its price for what’s there). Since it only has one scenario, the gameplay is repetitive, and there’s no replay value, the cost may seem unjustified. It has a free demo that’s about an hour long, so you can try it to get an idea of what the full version is like. I would say it’s indicative of the overall experience, just that the scale is a bit larger past the pay wall. Pricing aside, I give this a...

4/5


They’d probably do the same to us, I guess.