The Pros: Addictive gameplay. You start out with a clean slate, able to persue whatever pirating dreams you might have. Whether they're trading, sinking ships, or gaining faction with any or all nations. The game world is huge and the controls are simple to use. Tons of minigames. You'll be swordfighting, engaging in turn-based combat, even doing a rhythm based game which rewards you for pushing buttons exactly in synch with the music. Gorgeous graphics. Every apsect of the game has been given the full 3D treatment, and it's great to see your character dance appropriately, sword-fight, or fire cannons against enemy ships while you navigate the Carribiean. All the nobles and their daughters look like their 17th century counterparts, and the pirates and ship captains you battle wear outfits resembling their nations and rank. Great period sound. Pianos and harpsicordes dominate the soundtrack, and the fire of cannons and sound of the winds make you really feel like you're in the Carribien. The Cons: For all the open ended-ness, the game quickly becomes repetitive. The game is shamefully easy on the first two difficulty levels, and then starts to become brutally hard. The game is basically a series of minigames, each of which increases in timing difficulty when you increase the level of the game. The gameplay remains the same, only requires more timing and/or patience. Sand-box mode is limited. Sure, you can ignore the main quest and sail around gaining wealth and fame, but in the end you'll run out of time and will be forced to finish up the main quests in order to advance the story and/or obtain larger, better ships. It's very hard to consistently pledge loyalty to a couple of nations because your crew becomes unhappy. If you're a high level French officer and you're in a predominately French area (even if you invaded multiple towns to convert enemies to the French flag), you'll often have to attack French merchants just to keep the crew happy. If you try to sail to an enemy of the French, often the already unhappy crew will mutiny before you can find an appropriate target. Slow periods of no action. Having to slowly sail east, against the wind, might seem realistic, but in the end, you'll find yourself purposely avoiding many eastern ports because it just takes too long to get there. Seeing as the game gives up on many other aspects of realism, it's a shame that the designers didn't simply add a minimum speed for your ships. Same can be said of ship-to-ship cannon fights when the wind is against you, which is basically every time you start a fight to the West of another ship. Weaker ships will flee without your ability to catch them, and stronger ships will somehow avoid your sometimes completely random auto-aim. Minigames can be unbalanced. Often on any difficulty level you'll find your lowly crew of 30 overcoming massive troop transports due only to your swordfighting ability, which is easily upgraded and the enemy patterns simple to figure out. Conversely, the dancing minigame can be outrageously difficult, as determining exactly what steps to use require heavy pattern recognition and a 90% near-flawless dance can be reduced to nothing in a couple of missteps. The rewards for dancing can be frustrating, as some daughters only give you the same information tips instead of item rewards. The trading area of the game is the weakest. It's difficult to easily find ports that require your goods, and often when you dock you'll find yourself more interested in the other minigames that you are in shopping around for the best price. It's far easier and profitable to just pirate constantly (hence the title) than it is to become any sort of legitimate trader. The game seems to promise a 1600's simulation of trade and piracy but falls short of that goal. Combined with the high mutinty rate of the crew and the difficulty to investigate Eastern ports that might fetch the highest prices for your goods, it's easier just to board enemy ships, do the swordfighting minigame, and sell those ships for cash. Currently, areas of the game are bugged. The Indians, Pirates, and Jesuits will always be friendly to you, making a bunch of item rewards useless and making those neutrals easy to exploit. However this bug works both ways, as sometimes you'll assemble a large combination Indian and Pirate group to "soften up" a fortified town, and you'll hear that they plundered the town - but when you arrive a moment later to conquer the town for your nation, 500 soldiers are still waiting there to tear your crew apart.
When I began playing 'Pirates!' I was captivated by the colourful graphics and allround atmosphere of the game. But slowly, as the hours past by, I realized there wasn't nearly enough to do and that the game was extremel... Read Full Review
Sid Meier's Pirates! is one of the few games that caught the essence of its predecessor and mixed with new technological features to create a magnificent game, both on gameplay and graphics, and why to do not mention, th... Read Full Review
