Recommended, but ONLY if, like me, you played Ports of Call on a dodgy DOS computer and couldn't get enough of expanding your fleet. As that is not likely to be the majority, I am not recommending it.

This game IS Ports of Call, there are a few additions and subtractions but the core of it is simple: Get the most out of your fleet. However, where PoC offered depth and complexity, in this it isn't difficult to achieve what you want to achieve, it is a fun(ish) time-waster for a few hours before you realise it is severely hampered by lack of depth. It is PoC but done half-hearted at points where it matters. I've just sent two ships off from New York to Algiers, loaded with medicine, to finish a contract off. Both ships for some mysterious reason left without their loads. In PoC I would turn them round and ignore the bug, here you can't: You cast-off, that is it.

In PoC part of the minigames was that you would manoeuver the ship in tricky situations, ice, reefs, castaways. Here you either damage your ship or have to wait for an unknown time. I am fine with the minigame element being gone, but now I haven't got a clue what determines how long you wait, it doesn't tell you (unlike PoC), but having a ship sail "round a reef" just of the Galician coast and it taking 12 days... It could have been in the Antarctic by that time. Some of these aspects feel like they've just been put in to slow down the player for no apparent reason.

The game is a lot easier. The upgrades to ships are a potentially nice addition, but instead are a sure-fire way to rolling in cash in no time. Once you unlock radioactive goods and weapons, you rake in the cash. I feel there is a massive missed opportunity here. They've introduced a reputation system, why not link it to that? Other goods are already linked to it, also - gaining rep should be A LOT harder, now it is linked to being on time a lot, which is the easiest thing to achieve, it should be linked to the state of your ships, quality of your crew-training, quality and quantity of subsidiaries, average cost per TEU. Reputation in turn should determine the quality of the contracts you can achieve, you begin hauling fish from Iceland to Germany for a few years, after demonstrating you can do that and keep your ship in good condition, you might get the opportunity to bid for another contract and so on.

This game COULD have been a brilliant and legit successor to the PoC throne, what it should have done was offer MORE depth, not less. The new additions really don't help and the fact that management of the fleet is now so simplified reduces its value even more. Instead of putting different goods-types central it should have gone down the route of: Container-ships/Bulk-carriers and contract-work only, you know, like the real world? It should have an AI, also bidding on contracts. Real life margins in this business are cut-throat, yet after playing a few hours in the sandbox on medium difficulty I have 15 top of the range ships and billions of dollars to instantly expand my fleet - but there is no reason to. All I do now is send ships from one radio-active port to another and rake in the cash.

Real shame as it is a huge missed opportunity. Sims become great when they have more depth, not less. Look at Paradox games for an example of how to get that right.

Having played for just over an hour now here's what I have to say about the game. If you ever played Port of Call, Transocean - The Shipping Company is a modern version of that. Everything from the time progression to "status" or "reputation" to unlock more ships. There are some nice features of the sim that are handy to use such as the financial statements & diagrams, also the ability to take out loans is great as well. I didn't bother playing the campaign, just went right into the free play.

After about 20-30 minutes of contracting out my small feed ship i unlocked all the ports of europe, thereafter I unlocked the entire world. I gained enough capital to purchase some bigger pre-panamax ships and began trading the lucrative routes. Graphics wise the sim is pleasing to the eyes, beautiful colors, non-cluttered interface, lots to look at without getting bombarded with useless information.

There isn't a real challenging component to free play that I observed, eventually your larger vessels experience massive profit margins. If you complete a contract for 30 million euros, your fuel costs will only be about 5% of that, which is fine I guess, but I have a feeling that real shippers experience much more turbulent expenses. I'm not complaining, just, thinking out loud.

Anyways, this sim is shouting for tankers & drybulker vessels, stock market simulation, buyouts, further player interaction with other AI shipping companies (or even other players!) I hope Deck13 doesn't simply abandon this just yet. Oh and wait, there is more.

Many of you know the embarressing and disasterous repuation that German devs/publishing firms have for releasing unfinished products then abandoning them, i must say within the hour of playing, I didnt crash once, experience a bug or anything like that. It was flawless. Congrats!

Anyways I'll swing a 8/10 would play again. Thanks.

OK, this review is primarily for the campaign game as I still am in the progress of completing it.

THE GOOD:
If you remember Ports Of Call, this game has a very familiar feel to it. So much so that I would consider it the spiritual successor to that fine game. The ship docking is nearly identical, smaller feeder ships are more difficult to dock than the larger post panamax & larger ships that have side streamer jets that will allow much better maneuverability than the tiny ships.
Many varied ports are available worldwide to sail into and each port has very unique feel to it. Hamburg & Santos are especially technical and can be quite challenging and fun to sail into at full speed. They have an option to pay a tug to skip the manual docking for a fee based on your ship size. The fee can be quite a hit to the profitability of the runs... Which leads me to the Bad...

THE BAD:
Profitability: I have noticed that the smaller ships, while they carry much less cargo, and in some cases are significantly slower, are FAR more profitable than the larger ships. Cargoes are 3 to 5 times more profitable per container than the larger ships. THIS IS A COLOSSAL FLAW IMO, and a huge reason that my fleet of over 200 post panamax ships is starting to bog down my computer. I refuse to make runs where the cargo value for my huge UCLV ship is equal to a post panamax ship 3 size classes smaller.
I have found that there are ways to crock the game model by leaving feeder ships in the company contract ports to generate hordes of tiny highly profitable contracts meant for feeder ships, but this exploit should not be needed. The value of the cargo should remain similar through all the ship classes to motivate players to want to get the giant ships (which are a blast to drive) because they are big money as well as big fun. Instead I am forced to slog through thousands of port tug fees to remain profitable. Which leads me to the UGLY...

THE UGLY: The worst part of the campaign is the outright thievery of the investor. The first several status upgrades come along at reasonable intervals and have logical milestones to nudge the player to create a shipping empire. Once the player hits the Magnate level though, the game bogs down into mindnumbing repetition. The game becomes a treadmill of completing company contract after company contract. The fun "quests" of filling a whole slew of varied contracts to a specific city are no more. The "driving quests" where you are tasked with parking several of each ship are gone.
Tycoon level is the worst though. Your only goal is to gather enough money to buy out this thief, who wants roughly triple the value of your empire when you hit Tycoon. That wouldn't be so bad if I hadn't spent the entirety of the game building up a world spanning empire.
The main problem is that the thief/investor comes in every 3 months and steals 25% of your cash! This game mechanic alone is almost enough to stop even the most diehard players in their tracks. I have found that after a point, it becomes nigh impossible to break through this crock of a game mechanic and actually succeed and "win" the game.

All in all I would give a thumbs up to the game as a whole, but not the campaign. While the campaign starts out great, it ends like the Hindenburg explosion... OH THE HUMANITY of repetition!

I have read the previews for Transocean 2, and multiplayer mode sounds like great fun. For now though, I have to agree with may other reviewers. Grab the game on sale, and enjoy it. Very likely it will be cheaper per hour of entertainment than a movie, and when you create your own conditions for victory, the non-campaign could be quite enjoyable indeed.

Played Ports Of Call? This is it. A few new things, but other than that, its Ports Of Call.
I love Ports Of Call, played it a lot on the Amiga, but I know that this game isnt for all.
Its repetetive, its "just one more year", its "oh, this again", its "havent I already done this?", but its fun for a lot of us.
Have you played ports Of Call on pc or the amiga and liked it? Then this game is for you!
Now, just one more year...

Sadly this game appears to be no longer supported. Please visit the forums for latest details. The game has many bugs and features missing which according to the developers are to be addressed in a version due out in 2016. If you don't mind spending a bit of cash it is an interesting, challenging game which will amuse for a number of hours, especially over a wet holiday weekend. This game ideally should be heavily discounted from now on and free upgrades offered to those who purchased before the new version TO2 was announced earlier this week.

Everybody look at me 'cause I'm sailin' on a boat!

After two hours of play, I have to say that I'm impressed. After just a couple tutorial missions (each and all skippable in turn), I was turned loose to make or break my company. After a few lucrative ore contracts, I found myself smuggling contraband on the Mediterranian. And got busted. And my cargo seized. And fined. And my ship impounded for a week. A time-based contract I still had in the hold expired, so there were penalties there. And harbor masters didn't care to allow convicted smuggers in their ports, so harbor fees went up. All that in two hours and not a moment that felt repeatative.

A few features that I liked: Your home port determines what bonuses your company gets. I picked Lisbon for +5% on ore contracts and -10% to fuel. The trick is, the smaller the port, the larger the bonuses. So you have a reason to keep smaller ports and the ships that can service them.

There is some ship customization. The Feeder I started with had three levels of Hull and Engine upgrades, which increased range and speed respectively. There was also a license upgrade that would allow me to carrry what appeared to be hazardous waste. Unfortunately, there does not appear to be options for custom paint or appearance (other than your ship name emblazoned upon the stern and bow).

I remember reading a comment somewhere saying that the music was repeatative and annoying. To me, it sounded like every port had it's own song. And each port felt VERY unique. I'm already developing favorites and least favorites.

The only meh item I encountered dealt with other ship traffic. Large ships move fast and looked intimidating at first, but it turns out they can stop on a dime and give the player right-of-way. I would have liked to have seen navigation lights and right-of-way implemented (and fines for failure to obey maritime traffic laws).

Anyway, back to my ship. I'm saving up for a fleet. And I'm naming all my vessels after internet porn sites.

This is the first game I purchased via the Steam recommendations. I am certainly not disappointed. So far, I have 10 hours in the game, and I feel addicted.

This is a fairly simple simulator/logistics game. The game has a tutorial, and I'm playing through it. However, if you played similar games, such as Cities in Motion or Railroad Tycoon, then you can probably figure this out. You buy a ship, get a contract, and then deliver the goods. You have investors, you can take out a loan, and your ship will need fuel and maintenance. From that standpoint, it is very easy. As you get more ships, you gain more capacity but lose some capability. Eventually, you can create company specific contracts that require delivery of a certain good to a certain location; at this point the complexity starts to become apparent. To keep it interesting, you also have to deal with storms, pirates, and fires at sea.

While the game is fun to play, it still needs some polish. I've had a few popup notifications remain on the screen. I can play through them and sometimes get them to disappear, but its a bug. While there are hazards, like storms and pirates, they purely random rather location specific, thus avoidable. For example, I had a piracy near the Canaries, and I hit a storm with one vessel while another vessel sailed through the same area at the same time without the storm. Personally, I find these oddities to be minor imperfections and potential room for growth in the development. Overall the game is very solid platform and is good enough for this early release.

A larger area for growth is the games focus on cargo container shipping. I commented about this in relation to US ports on the forums. I was happy to see the game designer respond within hours of my comments. While my request won't go fulfilled for now, I'm satisfied knowing that they understand the issue.

I'm definitely getting my money's worth from the game. I think the game is playable for most ages. If you are into sims like this, you'll love it. If you prefer FPS games, then you'll probably hate this game as it is not meant for you. I recommend this to all the simmers out there.

I am not much of a game player, but have always been interested in the shipping business and business simulation. I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed playing this game. Some people will enjoy the docking of the vessels in the various harbors. As you gain experience you will be able to get to and from the dock faster. Some ports are extremely easy (Lisbon), and others, quite challenging (get one of the larger boats in and out of Vancouver). So people looking for a game that builds your skills handling various ships you will likely enjoy this.

There may be some small issues with the underlying rules. For example, was surprised I could pickup cargo from NY for Havana. Suspect that isn't a realistic route.--more likely such goods travel to an intermediate port first (like Halifax). Also, not totally sure the rules follow the Jones Act. But one can really spend time figuring out how to keep the vessels as loaded as possible, and efficiently moving the most TEUs for the most money. I didn't like it when my ships had less than 50% of the capacity in use at any one time. I found this more challenging then moving the boats around, and therefore I would sometimes just let the game dock the ship to save time even though it negatively affected my reputation.

Again, not a gamer, but surprised how much time I have spent playing and enjoying this game. If you like simulations, you'll probably find this entertaining, if not informative.

I am a Retired Certified Warehouseman/Dispatcher. This game plays close to the real world when it comes to Cargo Movement. With a few more Improvements, I believe this game could actually move into the Sim World, as a School Training Tool too.
Imagine that, having fun, and learning about the "Real World TOO!"
Wanna make a bet it'll never be picked up as such?
REAL School is supposed to be boring so you want to Grad and leave! Ha Ha....

If you never encountered the 90s classic Ports of Call Amiga game then this Tycoon merchant marine simulation game may open your mind to how oddly addictive and geeky this kind of game can be.

It kind of appears to be another version of the Ports of Call game brought forward into the 21st Century though some of the features such as a few entertaining, sometimes nailbiting minigames are sadly missing which kinda like takes a bit of the soul away from what made the classic so popular many years ago.

Despite a few shortfalls it is a nice translation of the old Amiga Classic where your family give you weird looks as you blurt the odd expletive trying to park a 400m long heavily laden ship moving at speed into what would probably be the shipping equivalent of a "tight parking space".

I hope this game has some sort of expansion planned in the future to include more types of specialised transport ships and more minigames to broaden the experience and truly bring the game properly forward from its ancestral past.

I found iceburg avoidance amongst other things a nice quirky addition that is sadly missing in TOTSCo. Where I would have expected the sucsessor to PoC go would be to expand on these minigames for getting through storms, pirates, customs inspections and so on and so forth. Despite this the campaign adds some "depth" into the simulation though I'm not too sure if it has the same charm as PoC.

I do wonder what is up with the optmisation of the graphics. I expected some exceptional water physics and ship modelling, sadly its not quite anywhere near 2010 graphic standards let alone 2014. Maybe more to follow in future patches and updates?

I'll happily wait for the hard working Devs to throw us a bone now and then. In the meantime I'll continue to bemuse my family at playing a game of pure Geekdom! and yet again make another attempt to park this 400m long monster of a ship and beat my best time without a nick in the paintwork!...I hope. ^^