It may be they have a piece of information or an item that someone else wants to possess. Depending on the nature of your mission, you'll find each of these play some role during the story sequences. Moneylenders, traditional bankers, boat-shop owners, and a whole host of other characters seem to show up in each town. Traders and smugglers share some common ground, and there have to be merchants to actually buy all the stuff. Running errands around the world actually starts to get pretty exciting. Trading goods wouldn't seem to lend itself to a very rich storyline, but you'd be surprised. During the course of a Story Mode gaming experience, you get to partake in 100 distinct missions. The Story Mode includes the same characters found in Free Trade, but you get to learn more about what is motivating each character and why they have a stake in the game. This approaches a casual game in many ways. The Free Trade Mode has no story and just allows you to jump in and start moving goods. In the beginning of the game, you can choose between a game of pure commerce and a game where you get some story elements. Tradewinds Legends doesn't try to be more than a great example of what capitalism has always espoused: building wealth. If you understand how to buy low and sell high, this game is for you. There could have been more locations in the game or at least more attention paid to changing the scenery as you move through new towns and explore. Each port does feature its own design and the ships are designed differently to make your growing fleet look interesting on the horizon. The occasional battle keeps things interesting with a change of scenery, but Tradewinds Legends doesn't dazzle with cut scenes and wild animation. The world you explore is fairly static, since this is a game of building resources and moving from port to port with ships and goods. There is some great dialogue in the game, which would be even better if it had been recorded as voice-acting. The characters are well done, both for those you'll play and those you'll encounter in the game. Mostly sprite-based by the look of them with some nice effects to round out the scenery. The graphics for the download version on the Mac are excellent. Tradewinds Legends is a later incarnation because there were PC versions first, as is usually the case. If you haunt Yahoo Games, this might be a title you've seen before. Tradewinds Legends is one of those games I'd rather be playing than reviewing.

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