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Very Fun Game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 16 / 19
Date: November 24, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I loved the original game.

Here are my thoughts:

- This feels like the original. Has more options.
- This game is uncomplicated, so easy to play or learn.
- "Dancing" isn't so bad, has rewards, and can be skipped.
- Sword fighting feels like the original. On harder levels
the 3 attacks and 3 defenses become more important.
(you basically strike and push, or get struck and pushed
until you or the enemy captain hits a wall, water, fire)
- This game is VERY fun to play.

It isn't a FPS, nor strategy or RPG, so what makes it fun?
- Rank awards, fame setting and lifetime achievements
- Daughters giving gifts and info
- Looking for treasure
- Taking over other ships, great fun fighting sea battles
- Sailing wherever you want, whenever you want.

Lovers of the original will get what they think they'll be getting. New comers will enjoy it. The replay will earn the price of this game. Sid Rock!!

Repetitious Pirating

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 13 / 14
Date: January 28, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I'll state it right up front; Sid Meier is a game making genius. Civ II is perhaps the greatest game of all time. So what happened? Civ III was fatally flawed and now Pirates looks like a huge misfire. I love the whole pirate concept, I love sailing around the Caribbean and visiting cities like Nassau, San Juan and Havana. The problem is that the game seems pointless and repetitive. I danced with every Governors daughter, found all my family members, collected all unique items but so what?

So how is it repetitive? Regardless of the city they all look the same; Tavern, Shipbuilder, Market. Same same same. The fights are the same. The opposing captain may have a slightly different uniform, the swordfight might be on a different part of the ship but they're all essentially the same. It goes even beyond that. The villain who captures your family needs to be caught in order to extract information on each ones whereabouts. Except that when you catch him he only offers one small piece of information. So you capture him again and again and again.

The game sets you on apprentice level to start with and I quickly, VERY QUICKLY, managed to upgrade my ship to the limit, purchase every single unique item and kill eight of the nine top pirates. At that point money was completely useless. I had nothing to spend it on except the occasional diamond necklace or ruby ring. I suppose I could work for a large estate but it seemed like an awful small reward.

Some of the fights were an exercise in frustration. If the ship doesn't have the wind behind its sails it moves like a badly wounded hippo. If the opposing ship is positioned into the wind you may find yourself flailing about unable to move as the other ship pounds on you. The positioning of the ships seem to be set at random so it's not even like you can use this information to your advantage.

There are lots of things to do in the game but it's hard to figure out why I might want to do them. I can assault a city, I can lead a new governor to a city, I can urge pirates to attack a city, I just can't figure out WHY I want to do these things. Even simulators like SIM City have a point. Build a cool city. In Pirates you can build up a fleet, collect a treasure pile and gather a pirate gang but before you know it you have to divide the loot and you lose everything you've collected except for a tiny percentage of the loot.

I think the fatal flaw in this game is when you ask yourself `Why am I still playing this'. I know that a game isn't working when I keep wondering when it's going to get better. Sid Meier will always be a legend in my book but a game really should have a desirable goal.

Sid Meier has done it again

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 12 / 13
Date: February 14, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Sid Meier is a genius. Whenever you see his name on the front of a computer game box, you know the game is going to keep one philosophy in mind: Fun first. It's a GAME.

Happily, that philosophy is in full effect for Sid Meier's Pirates!. A Pirate-simulation game that oozes fun, cheesy stereotypes, and Yo!Ho!Ho! all over it, that I would not have been surprised if Johnny Depp appeared somewhere in the game. In multiple interviews, Sid Meier has repeatedly stated that during the design of a game, whenever realism of a setting and fun gameplay conflict in a gaming decision, fun always is selected. Good for him. Leave the reality to whatever edition of Flight Simulator is out this week.

The game uses a story of the wrongful imprisonment of your family to seek vengeance for the injustices imposed on them and you. As fate would have it (and as it is explained in the opening cut scenes of the game), your mission of vengance leads you to the command of your own vessel in the caribbean. But who cares? It's pirate time! And what a great time it is.

The gameplay is similar to the real-time simulated worlds observed in Grand Theft Auto, where life goes on whether you participate or not. You can go anywhere. Trade with anyone. Attack any ship. Plunder the caribbean. Charm the hearts of several governor's daughters. Seek buried treasure. Become the most feared pirate in the seven seas. A respected trader. A hero in one country, an outlaw in another. All at the same time. There's swashbucklling swordfights! Ship to ship battles! Become an admiral, a nobleman, perhaps governor of your own town. If not, that town can be attacked and plundered by your crew anyway. There was something else...oh yes, revenge for your family. Well, you can get to that eventually. Or not, it's your choice. Right now, the beautiful governor's daughter in Santiago needs wooing at the next ball, right after you use that map you bought in VeraCruz to dig up blackbeard's hidden treasure.

As you can tell, I love this game. It comes from a simpler time, where games were made simply for the buyer to enjoy, not suffer through. The graphics are beautiful, the art design captures the romanticized version of pirate life perfectly, the sounds and music are not just perfect, they are appropriately timed.

The only con I have for this game is the lack of a tutorial. However, the game is so easy to learn and play, it is quite forgivable. The other problem is the occasional crash to desktop. It's not too big a deal thoug, because the auto-save feature and the ability to quick-save anywhere when sailing minimizes this flaw.

One "flaw" that many reviewers seem to point out is the repetitiveness of the gameplay. I'm sorry, but I don't see that as a flaw. Do you repeat several actions? Sure do. Are certain cut scenes replayed over and over again? Of course! But I don't find the overall gameplay repetitive, because MOST games have repetitive gameplay. Think about it: How many games of Madden football look and play exactly alike? All those fighting games break down to the same few moves for each character. And every shooter out there has one core repetitive feature: point gun, shoot. Sid Meier's Pirates! also has repetitive actions, but includes a dynamic caribbean setting that changes based on the way you play. You may perform the same actions in a swordfight or dance, but I guarantee no 2 games will play out the same. You can start your career sailing under the flag of one of several nationalities, you can change the beginning skill of your hero, there are several time settings used for the caribbean that change the overall starting point for each nation, and the end result of the gameplay is up to you. There is no set goal. You can save your family or not. Retire as a swashbuckler or the hero of a nation. Doesn't sound repetitive to me. The only game that comes close to this is another pirate game, Port Royale 2. Although Port Royale 2 has even more options available, the complexity of the gameplay minimizes the sheer fun available. If you want a complex 17th century caribbean merchant/pirate simulator, try out Port Royale 2. If you are in the minority of gameplayers that can handle it, congratulations. If you are like most of us, and want a pirate game that allows you to enjoy the setting, is simple to learn and play, adds plenty of depth and variety to enrich the experience but never sinks you in details, then Pirates! is for you. Generally, if you are tired of the same old shooters, too full of themselves RPGs, strategy games that require a PhD to understand how to play, this game is right up your alley. Easy to learn, nothing to master, just plenty to enjoy.

Fun & Addictive - Not Difficult

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 9 / 9
Date: March 28, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I just bought this game and already am addicted. I do agree with some of the other people's gripes about the repetitive nature of the game - there are several places where the animation and sequence of character interaction is identical and could be mixed up a bit. The graphics are awesome and the views when sailing the seas is great - the colors and the overall flavor of the Carribean is well represented. The game is almost too easy when playing in the lowest 2 levels. I found it very hard to beat named Pirates in the 3rd level, however, so I'm sticking with Journeyman level for awhile until I get more practice with the sword fighting.

As a woman, I have the usual complaint I have with most RPGs which is lack of female characters - in this game, you don't have the option of playing a female pirate. I would like to see an expansion pack with a female lead character. The romance storyline would have to be altered for that character, but the female character could have a relationship with another pirate. Speaking of the romance storyline, I found it extremely difficult to get the steps correct when dancing with the governor's daughter until I found an online game guide that gave the sequence of steps which follow a set pattern of 4. This made it easy to learn and without that guide, I doubt I would have ever mastered that aspect of the game. I also wish that the personal status screen would keep track of all the romances your character has - not just the one with the highest rating. The character should be able to have several different romances simultaneously, but the status page only keeps track of one. I also wish the pirate did not age so quickly - my first character was too old to fight well at 35, so on my next character, I found that not dividing the plunder was the best way to keep him from aging rapidly, thus allowing me to get further with the character. The drawback to this is carrying around too much gold that you risk losing to another pirate in battles at sea. I wish there were an option of burying your treasure - as far as I know, this isn't possible. Since you can find hidden treasures that other pirates have buried, you should have the option of burying your own treasure.

I hope they make some improvements and put out a new version - with female characters as well as some of the other enhancements that it needs. Still, this is a very fun game.

Know what you are buying.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 12 / 15
Date: November 24, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This is one of the least expensive places on the internet to get this new version of the game. But this is not the Limited Edition which costs a bit more. The Limited Edition version has interviews with the game development team, special mods, and some original artwork, developer diaries and alternative packaging concepts. But, if your not interested in all this other stuff not part of the game itself, save your money and order it here.

Questions about life

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 12 / 15
Date: May 16, 2005
Author: Amazon User

A couple of people here have said that this game causes them to question what they're doing with their lives. I agree completely. Especially since I got this game at the early end of spring and have been playing it since.

It's a lot of fun and gets pretty addictive--especially with all of the side missions and whatnot. The problem I've faced is that I've sat there at my computer for hours, just trying to get that one last piece of map to the lost city of incas or some junk like that...but to do it, you've got to dance with the gov's daughter..or the next gov's daughter..or the next...or find Col. Mendoza...or something like that. Suddenly I realize that I've been sitting around, inside, wasting hours of what could have been a highly enjoyable day...a day that is now gone forever....

So now I have one less day left on this earth (I am presuming here that my staying inside and playing Pirates! all day did not cause me avoid being hit by a bus or something...and I am also discounting the likelihood that sitting inside all day with my butt on the chair fingering the keyboard has further advanced the buildup of arterial plaques that may, in fact, have caused this waste of a day to additionally shave off another few minutes from my lifespan), and all I have to show for it is that I found the freakin' lost city of the freakin' Incas. It's this sort of epiphany that occurs as the rays of the westering sun finally begin to make their way into my office window and I realize that the day is almost done.

If I had any actual balls on me, I could have been gazing at that selfsame westering sun (although admittedly at a very different moment in space-time) from the deck of an actual pirate ship somewhere in the Straits of Molucca or in the Sulu Sea, ready to find out what the next day or two was to bring. After all, it's only about 30 hours worth of air travel and another 1-2 days of land/sea until you, too, can be in a place where there are still real pirates committing real piracy and generally keeping the world an interesting place.

The only thing I have left to do in this game is to find and capture a ship of the line (one of which, to date, I have not even seen in the game), outfit it with all upgrades and its full complement of cannon, and then try it out on a few war galleons to see how it does.

A few quibbles with the naval gunnery that I don't particularly like too much: First, I wish that you could outfit with bow- and stern-chasers to allow for limited firing along the axis of your ship's keel. These types of guns were common and it wouldn't kill them to allow you to have a couple. Second, I wish that you could have guns in a variety of shot-weights. After all, actual ships could have anything from 4-pounders to 36-pounders and everything in between. This would give some flexibility to take longer shots that do not completely wreck your chase for when you want to sell it to the shipwright. Third, I think that the progressive reloading of the guns is bogus. Guncrews in real life do not reload guns one after another in sequence. Generally, I would expect most of the guns to be loaded within roughly the same amount of time (probably a bell-curve distribution with a few loaded earlier and a few loaded more slowly). Finally, I wish that when you were battling two ships at once (say, cargo ship and escort), you could have the ability to run right between 'em and have your ship fire both broadsides at once. There is nothing grander in naval tradition than running right between two poncy french vessels and letting 'em have it both ways. Not to mention that they generally would hesitate to fire at you because of the danger of hitting their sister ship.

Overall, the game is fun and addictive. The problem is that it's sooooo repetitive and (ultimately, in the grand scheme of things) boring that you truly begin to question your own manhood for having sat there and played it all day. I would only recommend this game if you are fully self-possessed and very confident in your value to the world. Otherwise, you might find yourself standing up from a long session with this game feeling eerily similar to the way you felt that time you spent 3.5 hours ona Sunday morning watching Carleton Sheets infomercials, peppered only with a little variety by remote-flicks over to the little midget twins and/or big fat chef tony and his miracle knives.

A fine update of a classic game

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 8 / 8
Date: August 08, 2005
Author: Amazon User

When I purchase a game the only question that really matters is, "Was this game fun to play?" On this mark Sid Meier's Pirates certainly delivers.

This game is what I would describe as a "pick up and play" game. There is virtually no need to read the instructions, the learning curve is very forgiving.

The game play is open ended, you have a choice to sail for four different nations and you can play any style you wish. You can sail as a privateer, a merchant or a pirate. There is a main story line, which you can choose not to follow, and even though it is a common cliche it still delivers more then just an average amount of satisfaction in completing it. Otherwise, you can opt to just sail around the Caribbean and attack ships your nation is at war with, attack ships of all nations or just deliver commodities to a from various islands as a merchant.

I found that I enjoyed creating my own goals for the various playing styles this game has to offer. When playing as a pirate, I worked towards become the #1 pirate in the game. As a privateer, I tried to sink or capture at least 500 enemy ships. Finally, as a merchant, a good goal to attempt is to become a millionaire through trade alone.

As for the criticism that this game become too repetitive, too quickly, I have to disagree. I will grant that if you play this game for hours on end it might seem to get repetitive. If you pursuit a variety of goals and limit your game play exposure to just an hour or so per sitting you will enjoy this game every time you set sail.

If you found this game of enjoyable, and you have an interest in the history of (...)

Fun and Adventure in the High Seas

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 9 / 10
Date: June 19, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Welcome to the world of 17th-Century Caribbean life: a tropical paradise of blue skies and seas teeming with unpredictable weather and the scavengers of the deep: Pirates! In "Pirates!", the famous and respected Sid Meier offers another one of his trademark games of quality and fun with this swashbuckling delight.

You begin as a youngster who is orphaned by the capture of your family members one stormy night by an evil Marquis who decides to take revenge on your Grandfather through no fault of his own. Escaping the quick unfortunate turn of events, you vow revenge as time goes by. Years pass, and as a young lad of 18, you enter a tavern and sign for a ship seeking employment. You are given the choice to choose which nation to serve: England, France, Netherlands, or Spain. After making your choice, you set on to the seas. But the abusive tyranny of the captain to his crew is too much to bear, and the men mutiny. Overthrowing the Captain, they elect you as the replacement and from then on it's an adventure to seek a fortune and your long lost loved ones.

"Pirates!" is a feast for the sight and senses. The luminous blue of the seas are rendered visually by well-done graphics. The different choices the player is offered make for hours of addictive gameplay. One can attack any ship of choice, capture it for one's use, sack it's loot, acquire men or valuable crew members if available, or receive vital information concerning the whereabouts of one's family members or villains one has to pursue. The ships are rendered in historical detail, giving one a historical lesson on the vessels of yore, detailing their use and function, informing the player on the choice which to use to suit his/her benefit. Players can decide to attack places, where one can fight land battles (one of my favorites) and capture the area and transform it into a colony of the country the player chooses. You can look for lost cities and hunt for Pirates' gold in hidden corners of the Caribbean via "Treasure Island" kind of maps. Visiting taverns are customary, as one can recruit men and receive information and valuables from the bartender, barmaid, and a mysterious traveller. One can trade goods and valuables with merchants across the Caribbean, and one can also romance governors daughters through dancing and gifts; if you get lucky, you might even marry one!

But there are numerous catches. Your men get restless. When they've stayed at sea for too long, they would like to get back on land and enjoy (spend) all of the loot. As Captain, one has to balance one's desire with that of his fickle crew. You and your men also have to eat, so you will always be preoccupied by that ever dwindling food supply. If you are defeated by the enemy captain of a ship you are attacking, you can be jailed for months; or just as worse, be marooned and lose all the gold and valuables one has acquired, and to top that, the ship/s one had. Why is this doubly important? Because one of the great things about the game is your character ages: Pirating can be tough on anyone, so by the time you reach the age of 30 there is a gradual and noticeable decline in one's character: your swordfighting skill diminishes, your dance steps are not "in tune" as they used to be, and your reputation is at stake, making the recruitment of men much more difficult. Time plays a huge factor in "Pirates!". One also has to play with national allegiances: if you risk antagonizing every country by attacking their ships and colonies, you run the unenviable situation of having no place to have your ships repaired and refit, and no accomodating refuge to purchase goods and to refit one's crew.

You will also have to go through the added delight of squaring against the foremost Pirates of history: see if you can better much vaunted scoundrels like Blackbeard, L'Ollonais, and Henry Morgan in the vast seas of the Spanish Main!

As fun and as compelling as "Pirates!" is, the wholesomeness of it's approach which makes it palatable to almost everyone turns out to be it's foremost weakness. After a while, the repetitious nature of the game, with the similarity of it's scenes and the narrow framework it revolves on, grows wearisome and tedious. There is no blood and gore for the touch of realism, nor do the crew mutiny, the bane of every Pirate captain in history. These detract from the challenge the game could have further offered.

All told, this is a delighful game to pick up when the mood is right. I never thought I'd be interested in any PC game other than those of a military nature, but "Pirates!" broke the ice. Strategic without losing it's entertainment value, this one's a keeper.

It will be a good game...when patched

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 9 / 10
Date: January 25, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I recently bought the CD version of this game. Since I'm a huge fan of Sid Meier's games I'd been waiting for its release with much anticipation, and couldn't wait the get my hands on it... During the first 15 minutes of play it was all joy: the game looked very nice and fun (while a little too simple for Sid's games)and I was content with the product, then while sailing the world, the movemement started to s l o w d o w n ...
The game became really unplayable. I found that saving and reloading, or changing screen configurations, solved the slowness for a while, but then it would return every two or five minutes. When in slow motion, the sea battles are a nightmare and the treasure hunting even worse. I was running the game in a P4 3Ghz computer with 512 Mb of ram, NVIDIA GO 5700 graphic card running XP, and there was no way to fix this problem. After checking on some internet forums, I found that technical issues with the program were quite frequent an that mine was common. Since then I'm eagerly awaiting for an official patch of the game and my advice to you is to wait until a new release is available before buying this game. It will avoid you much dissapointment and frustration...

It'll Plunder Your Time

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 10 / 12
Date: May 19, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Pirates is pretty easy to learn and a lot of fun right from the start, and like the best computer games, takes an awful lot of practice to get good at. It is also minutely detailed, so much so that even after playing for dozens of hours there are many delightful surprises to be discovered. For example, one of the ship upgrades is "copper plating," which strengthens the hull of your ship. After getting it, you might notice that during a sea battle, one of the tiny little cannonballs coming at you will bounce off your hull once in a while! Pretty nifty, and a very telling example of the careful way in which this game was designed.

In any event, if you haven't figured it out, the subject matter of the game is seventeenth century pirates in the Caribbean. The object is to sail around and attack and plunder boats and ports of French, English, Spanish and Dutch colonists. The idea, of course, is to get rich, by taking their gold or selling their plunder, but there are other goals also: tracking down and defeating other pirates; hunting for buried treasure; discovering lost, ancient cities; and finally rescuing your family, several members of which were captured and imprisoned before the game starts.

On a grand scale, there's a lot to think about. Your character, for example, eventually gets older and weaker as the game progresses, so to be successful, you have to decide what is best to accomplish early on. Your crew is another problem. A large crew means faster reloading time after broadsides and more men to man the prizes you capture, but a large crew also requires lots of food and lots of money to keep it happy. Like other aspects of the game, it's a real balancing act.

You have to be careful who you attack and how often. If you go after one nation too aggressively, they'll close their ports and come after you. This is particularly true of the Spanish, who have the most ports and the most ships. Sure, it's easy and fun blasting away at the multitude of Spanish trade galleons and treasure ships roaming around, but you sure don't want to find yourself damaged and listless off the Spanish Main, hundreds of miles away from a friendly port. Not pleasant, that.

Smaller things must be considered as well. When you enter a port, for example, there are things you need to buy, particularly special items or ship upgrades. Often, there's not enough money to do both, particularly keeping in mind that you have to keep your crew happy as well. Of course, you may have some stolen goods or even prizes to sell, but these fetch different prices in different ports. And if you sell a prize, you lose storage capacity, so you may not have the luxury of waiting around until you find the best price for your goods. Again, lots to think about.

The physical skill of the game pretty much revolves around three things: ship-to-ship battles, sword-fighting, and dancing. The ship-to-ship is probably the most fun and easiest to learn, but there is much to take into account as it's very realistic: wind direction, wind speed, the sway of the ship when releasing your broadside, the direction and size of the other ship, and whether to use round shot, grape, or chain shot. It is really well done: the sound is terrific with booming explosions and crashes, shrieking men, and the sea racing under your bow; and the graphics are a delight, with your little ship maneuvering in the green sea, and the arc of the cannon balls in the air either exploding into ships or splashing harmlessly beneath the waves.

On the more difficult levels just about every sea battle short of a sinking ends with either boarding the enemy or being boarded by him, which means that the scene cuts to your captain and the enemy captain engaged in a sword-fight. It's one of those two-dimensional Mortal Kombat kind of things: depending on his swing you duck, jump or parry; you yourself can thrust, slash or cut. If you lose the sword-fight you lose the battle, which isn't necessarily catastrophic, but the goal is NOT to lose, so you have to be good at this. If you get offered a chance to practice, do it. There's a lot of sword-fighting in this game, more than just about anything, and though initially challenging, it must be said that it ultimately becomes a bit tiresome. Thankfully, these fights usually last less than a minute or so.

The last important skill is dancing. When you enter a port, you have to talk to the governor in order to find out who his nation is at war with and to gauge your standing with his. After a few visits he will ask you to dance with his daughter at that evening's ball. You may wonder why something like this is here--in a game about pirates--particularly since it is the most difficult thing in the game to learn. But it's unavoidable: if you refuse to dance, you will miss a crucial number of missions and advantages. The funny thing is that, as frustrating as it is initially, it eventually becomes enjoyable. In fact, about the third time you get it right--with the "camera" zooming in on the swirling, colorful dance partners and with the elegant and lively music--you may find that it is quite beautiful.

A couple of gripes: First, some of the items--the pistol, the gold cross, the shrunken head--are completely useless. They should not be in the game and the creators released it knowing this. Secondly, the tone of the game is just a little too Disneyish. The hero is a clean-cut, boyish-looking fellow, there's no blood at all, and the music is right out of a 1935 Errol Flynn movie. A touch more grit would have been nice.

But for that, though, be prepared to spend hours if not days playing this. It's practically impossible to tear yourself away from it: there is always so much that needs to be done! Along with everything else, this is what marks it as a great game.

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