All the attention being paid toward the imminent release of the remake of Sid Meier's classic Pirates! is doing a disservice to another game set on the rolling waters of the Caribbean. Ascaron Entertainment's Port Royale 2 might focus more on shipping cartels than on sea battles and swordplay, but its brilliantly realized gameplay is more than just number crunching. Buccaneers, tropical locales, and piracy on the high seas are fully realized in Port Royale 2, and the intricate real-time design is geared to win over even those who aren't fans of economic simulations.

While the visuals aren't much to look at, it's impossible to make Caribbean islands look ugly, and the map screen gets the job done in an attractive board-game style.

Accessibility is the biggest reason for this broad-based appeal. Unlike the first Port Royale, which dumped you into the deep end without even a tutorial, eight starter scenarios here cover every aspect of building a shipping career amid the feuding English, French, Spanish, and Dutch Caribbean colonies in the 16th and 17th centuries. Starting at the lowly rank of ship's boy, you soon trade goods, set up convoys with around a half-dozen different types of vessel from sloops to galleons, build businesses in towns, construct settlements of your own, stage sea battles, and even track Blackbeard for the governor of Havana. These scenarios practically form a game unto themselves. Most of these scenarios take well over an hour to complete, so by the time you're finished with them you'll be thoroughly prepared for the free play campaign (the game's only other mode of play).

Ease of use is further enhanced by the superb interface. Ships are maneuvered by right-clicking on a destination. Journeys can be accelerated by holding down the space bar to turn up time acceleration. Right-clicking on ports of call after arrival brings up the trading window, and this is where you buy and sell goods on a chart that shows prices and uses a color scheme to indicate the availability of goods. Yes, it's still a spreadsheet, but don't let that scare you--it's the most user-friendly spreadsheet we've ever seen in an economic sim.

Left-clicking on a town while you have a ship in port brings up a view of the settlement's buildings, which control most other game functions. Head to the shipyards to purchase ships, visit the governor's mansion to check on missions, drop into the inn for some gambling or to recruit a captain or pirate crew, and wander into the council building to hobnob with the upper crust. All activities and events are tracked in a log. Aside from a couple of miscues regarding minutiae like button size and location, the interface is a snap to learn.

The elegant trading engine at the heart of Port Royale 2 is complementary. You deal in 19 different goods, ranging from foodstuffs to building materials to finished items. Each of the 60 towns spread across the Mid-Atlantic and Caribbean, from Charleston in the north to Georgetown in the south, specializes in five products. The 48 colonial towns produce two essential goods like grain and fruit, two raw materials like sugar and cotton, and one processed item like coffee or tobacco. The 12 governor and viceroy towns produce essential goods and finished goods like meat and garments. These towns are also on European shipping lines, so luxury imports such as spices, wine, and tools can be found there. A handy map provided with the manual shows each town's products, regional specialties, and the colonial power spheres of influence.

Spreadsheets in an economic simulation are rarely this straightforward and easy to use.

Supply and demand rules everything. You buy low in a town where items are common and sell high in a town where they are not. You can make a killing moving coffee beans out of Venezuela, tobacco out of Cuba, and dyes out of Nassau. There are lucrative trading opportunities all over. Also, icons under needy towns alert you to what goods are scarce. Have a hold full of hemp? Scan the map and see which town is the most desperate to, um, make some rope. Such easily obtainable information makes it easy to get absorbed in the game for hours, going from port to port looking for the best deals and watching your bank account grow. It's incredibly addictive trying to figure out the most economical ways of setting up trade routes, largely because there are so many towns and so many possibilities.