New Horizons

aka: Daikōkai Jidai II, Uncharted Waters, Uncharted Waters 2: New Horizons, Uncharted Waters II
Moby ID: 1904

Genesis version

exploration, trade, and pirating all in one

The Good
6 different people to be, 6 different stories (they link together in a weird way). Some of the people are supposed to be battling such as Catalina being a pirate and Otto Battling Spain. Joao, Ernest and Pietro are adventurers and Ali is a merchant. This is good because you had little control over your story in the first Uncharted Waters.

The fact that your gold cap is 100 gold ingots (thats 1000000 gold) is much improved from the 60000 in the first installation of the series, which means less frequent trips to the bank to deposit money. There are many branches to put your money in, unlike in the first one where the only place in the game you can deposit money is in the palace in Lisbon.

The Battle program includes a fencing battle with the other flagship's captain.

There is only one point where the game does not go into a different screen when you are sailing, that is sailing across the Atlantic Ocean. In the first Unchartered Waters, every 5 degrees on the map (all directions) changes a screen, resulting in waiting for about 2 seconds for it to change.

Historically speaking this game represents the right time period, when there was a lot of exploration and every country in Europe wanted to expand into the New World and bring back spices from India and the Far East.

The Sega Genesis' fast processor is necessary for this game, whereas the DOS and SNES versions will sometimes go a little slow and pause to process the games request. This in itself makes it the best version if not second (I do not know about the Playstation version).

The Bad
Graphically speaking the game does not really excel, the graphics itself represent a typical 8-bit graphic like atmosphere with small characters in the village and small houses.

The sound itself can be annoying because like most Koei games, the tracks are too short, and therefore become boring, and you probably could hum them if you turned the music off.

The Royalty can really get in the way in some characters, and reduce your own fame by doing their bidding for useless royal titles, when only 2 out of the 6 people you can be in the game really benefit from these titles.

The Bottom Line
A great game for anyone that wants to explore the world. You can go anywhere with your character, you can even just sail away and battle everyone in your path for profit should you choose to do so.

by Scott G (765) on August 14, 2005

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