By Rijorat-AG, Advanced-Gamer.net You hear the crack of a whip. One of your fellow crewmates screams out in pain. You and your fellow men have been at sea for six months under the tyrannical leadership of Captain Drake. “Row you scurvy dogs! Row!” he yells. You constantly find yourself wondering how you ended up working for such an evil man. Supposedly he’s doing a good service to the Crown by delivering goods to the New World. But really you know that he’s getting rich off you and your fellow crewmate’s blood, sweat, and tears. Your thoughts constantly turn to the finer points of a pirate’s life and how you could become rich yourself simply by doing the world a favor and relieving all the Captain Drakes out there of their precious cargo. You hear footsteps behind you. “What are you daydreaming about?” The whip cracks. Angry, you make a grab for it. Lo and behold you catch it. Furious you rise up and rip the whip from the captain’s hands. Shock spreads across his face as he realizes what’s happening. You advance on him. The other men see what’s happening and they too rise. The captain grabs for his sword. You step in and punch him in the face; you grab his sword and yank it out of its sheath. You place the tip upon his neck, and simply say “I think it’s time for you to leave Mr. Drake….” A few hours later with the former captain and his fellow officers stranded on a small island, you and the men set out to make your fortune in The New World. Your background in the game is that of young lad whose family had been kidnapped by a ruthless man and carted off to the New World. Once you come of age you book work on a ship headed to the Caribbean so you can begin searching for them. Along the way there is a mutiny and you take control of the small ship. Your destiny lies ahead, and the path you take is up to you. When you start out you have no real goals, other than survival and eventually finding your lost relatives. Bringing up your information screens will give you an idea of the kinds of things you can strive for as a pirate. Fame and money are pretty much givens, but you can also search for your lost relatives, hunt for buried treasure, gain rank with the four factions, woo governor’s daughters and hunt down other pirates, amongst a range of other activities. The primary screen that you will deal with is the overview map. On this map you navigate your ship through the waters of the Caribbean Sea. You will see cities, ships and other interesting locations. Attacking ships just involves getting close to them. Once you decide to attack a ship the game moves into a close-up view of the waters surrounding the ships, and you begin navigating your ship into position to either fire at or board the other ship. Generally you’ll want to soften up the enemy ship with your guns. Being able to out-maneuver your opponent is a tremendous advantage. So believe it or not, you are probably better off using a small fast ship, and just keeping treasure ships in tow to carry your goods. You can have up to eight ships in your fleet, but generally only the one you are on will enter combat. If you outfit your small ship with some powerful guns and speed modifications, you can often run circles around your opponent as you gradually wear them down. There are several types of ammunition that you can use. Normal cannon balls will sink a ship in a heartbeat; often you really don’t want to do that so instead you use the chain shot or grape shot. Chain shot will destroy a ship’s masts and make it a sitting duck. Grape shot does less damage to the ship, but is devastating to the crew. You will see the enemy crew shrink very rapidly under a constant barrage of grapeshot. Your decision of ammo should be based on what you want to get out of the plunder at the end. If there’s a named pirate on board, or you haven’t worn down an unnamed pirate’s crew/ship enough before boarding, you will have to fight a duel before capturing the ship and its plunder. Swashbuckling is a fairly simple combat system, generally involving the dodging of your opponent’s blows and following up with your own strikes. Hit your opponent enough times and your opponent either gives up or jumps overboard. Winning allows you to choose what to do with their ship, crew, and goods. Losing will put you to sea on a small vessel with a minimal crew and force you to pretty much start your career over. Personally, I don’t recommend loosing. After winning a few ship battles, you will want to head for a port city. A port city allows you to gather information, hire new crew members, fix and upgrade ships, buy and sell goods, and talk with the resident governor. The resident governor is your ticket to gaining rank with one of the four main factions (English, Spanish, French, and Dutch). Gaining rank gives you faction specific advantages (i.e. cheaper goods in Spanish towns). Gain a high enough rank and you can try to woo his daughter. Wooing the daughter involves a rhythm style dancing game. The daughter will give you directional hints as to where to go next (i.e she points left and you should move left). If you impress her with your dancing, she will give you a gift, and you can continue to woo her, all the way up to marriage if you wish. Of course, you don’t always have to enter a city with peaceful intentions either. Instead, you can take your crew to shore a distance from the city and then assault it via a turn based combat game. If your side out lasts theirs, you will seize and plunder the city. You may even be given the opportunity of installing a new governor belonging to a different faction. (Very advantageous if you are, say, allied with the English and are deep in Spanish territory where there are no friendly ports). Assaulting a city isn’t the only reason you might take your crew to shore. You also have quests to find buried treasures, lost cities, and of course finding your lost relatives. All of those involve navigating on the land via various “landmarks” like Aztec pyramids, peculiar shaped rocks, and dead trees. With many different mini-games and side quests, there is a lot of variety in the types of things you can do. All of it is optional, with your fate as a pirate ultimately lying in your hands. The graphics are definitely a step up from the classic version of this game. Firaxis has done a wonderful job with the art. Don’t expect state of the art graphics, but real nice cartoon style images. Some of the sequences look almost like they could be a 3D rendering of the traditional Disney style cartoon. The good looks coupled with the fitting sound track results in a very nice presentation. While I have yet to have the game crash on me, other individuals have apparently experienced some technical issues where the game occasionally crashes. Fortunately it auto saves constantly so even if it does crash, you should be able to pick up right where you left off. The game is essentially like writing an autobiography as it happens. While there are several different ways to go about it, many of the in game mechanics will become rather repetitious, such as the sword play. There is only so many times you can enjoy watching a similar series of antics played out on screen. Repetition leads to boredom, which leads to you not wanting to play this game over and over. Expect to play this game a few times through, before putting it up on a shelf, only to be brought out in the event you can’t find something newer and more interesting to play. One more important thing to note is the difficulty level. On the default level, this game is ridiculously easy and will accelerate the effect of the repetitious feeling. If you want to make this game last, do yourself a favor and increase the difficulty level. Sid Meier's Pirates is a fun game to play. I enjoyed playing the original version, and it was so nice to see a fresh revision of that classic. As a strategy game, this is first rate. The various quests, ship to ship combats and city assaults make for a very enjoyable experience. Unfortunately the action sequences, while entertaining at first, grow very repetitious over time. The dancing, swashbuckling, and even dealing with the governors really drag on after you’ve played through them a few too many times. Don’t get me wrong, they can be challenging if you up the difficulty setting. However, there is only so many times that you can see a felled captain trip, fall into some flames, and then jump overboard to put out those flames. Overall I really liked the game, I just wish they had put a little more variety in the action sequences.
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
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