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Arr...tis a good genre, and a good game

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: January 04, 2005
Author: Amazon User

No doubt riding on the success of Pirates of the Caribbean and his own Civilization series, Sid Mier has once again brought us something we can become hopelessly addicted to.

The premise of this game is that as a young boy, this evil Baron guy kidnapped your family and took them into slavery. Well, now you've come of age and you gotta to get your kin back and see that the villian is dealt with. But along the way you have to attack other pirates, gain crew, raid cities and learn how to dance.

The swordfighting aspect is pretty good, as is the ship fighting aspect. There's lots of strategy in this game (no surprise) which should keep you on your toes.

The quests are also quite involved, as you could end up chasing someone around the spanish maine before you actually get a chance to whoop him.

Alas, there's a few things about this game that make it less than what it could be.

1) The cutscene before you duel is cool the first few times, then it just becomes an annoyance.

2) Dancing sucks. My advice to you is to turn up all the graphics and the screen resolution prior to seeing a governor/going to a ball. This will increase the graphics load on your comp and make the game run slower. While in most cases this is a bad thing, the slower dancing sequences will give you time to catch and react to the hand signals, hence improving your odds of not getting rejected. You'll want to set the game to lower graphics once the ball is over, otherwise the rest of the game will be slow as well.

3) You should be able to pull up next to a town, walk in and attack it. But you can't. You have to be a considerable distance away, then walk across the island to it. Boring. If you're going to do this, at least have an option of speeding up/slowing down game time.

All in all, a very worthwhile game. Sid shows us why his games continue to sell the way they do, and while I never played the original Pirates, this game is damn good on it's own.

An excellent and very playable remake of the classic game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: May 08, 2006
Author: Amazon User

As someone who spent an inordinate amount of time playing Sid Meier's Pirates in its first incarnation, way back on a Commodore Amiga around 1990, I was very excited to see this remake released recently with Sid in charge.

Many people have already reviewed the game play, so I will write mostly on how the game compares to that years-ago version. In this new Pirates:

- The graphics are really pretty! Notably the water/map scenes are beautiful, as are the ship-to-ship combat scenes. Sound effects are very nice too in these same areas. It's not fair to compare it to the old version, but it's completely a new game from this angle.

- Hand-to-Hand combat is still simplistic, though more complicated than before. Combat is almost always the same and your personal reflexes/tactics have little to do with actual success. You still have to do it to play the game.

- There is a lot more in the way of quests, allowing for more goal-oriented game-play, but the quests tend to be repetitions of the same. So instead of one lost family member to find, there are four. Instead of one pirate's lost treasure, there are 10. Etc.

- More variety in general: Additions include native villages (and war canoes), more named pirates (and matching pirate havens), more small towns, more to do.

- Ships are customizable and there are artifacts that improve your abilities, both of which I believe are new to this version.

- Overland combat is much smoother, but overland travel is very difficult to navigate (disorienting). For some reason, you can't attack/pillage an undefended town/village/outpost. That doesn't make any sense to me... There is no longer any trading fire with a hostile city's fort (though they can fire at you).

- There is a very annoying addition while in town, the "formal dance" in which you try press the right keys at the right times (though the same does help you if you mess up too many times in a row) to do a good job of dancing with a governor's daughter, thereby impressing her and making her more likely to marry you.

So in summary, the game has all the ease of play that the original did, but is much prettier with some nice new features and a lot of added activity, without taking away from the feel or look of the original. The only negatives added to the game are not core parts of the play and can be circumvented easily enough. You can start playing in five minutes never having touched the game before and play for just a few minutes, or you can research the nationalities and historical periods, really get into the game, and play for hours.

Highly recommended both for new players and fans of the old version.

Meh

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 5 / 8
Date: September 27, 2005
Author: Amazon User

So here's the story- a couple of years ago, I played the original Pirates! on NES. I was like AWESOME game- they should come out with a rerelease, the same, just with better graphics. Then, amazingly, they did.
I bought it the first day it came out and it was everything I had ever hoped for- for about 10 minutes. Then I was like, wow, this is really really repetative. They need some story line. and more interesting fighting. and some customizability for your character. and to just totally ELIMINATE dancing.

Real pirates don't dance with governer's daughters. They kidnap them.

BEWARE! Does not work on ANY Intel video chipsets

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 8 / 17
Date: December 01, 2004
Author: Amazon User

The game is great but it does not work on ANY Intel chipsets!

Sure, all you computer experts out there already know that when your computer (DXDIAG) shows 64 MB of video memory with an Intel chipset, this is "borrowed" memory and NOT hardware memory (whatever that means!).

The result is that unless you have a separate video card with separate video memory, YOU CAN NOT PLAY THIS GAME.

This should be on the system requirements page ... not some computer-geek-speak about T&L hardware video required! What does that mean to the average person?!

where are all those stars comming from?

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 6 / 11
Date: May 21, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Yeah, i remember those days playing on the C64 computer. They just copied the game one-to-one. Okay, the graphic is much better but there is just no difference. No new ideas and the game is very random. I was very disappointed about pirates and was hoping it would be a new pirates, not an old pirates. How about pirates II ? After 10 years, there should be a pirates II and not just a new copy of it!
P.S. You can download this pirates (for the PC version), called pirates gold from kazaa. You will notice barely a difference! (yeah, the graphic a little)

Another frustrated customer

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 4 / 6
Date: December 03, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Add me to the list of those who simply could not get this game to run. My machine more than exceeds the requirements for the game, so that isn't the problem. Tech support was, as usual, unresponsive. Judging from the reviews listed here, as well as the frustrated posts on Atari's message boards, its at best a crapshoot whether this will run for you or not.
Suggest everyone pass on this one until its reliability is no longer an issue.

Don't buy

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 5 / 9
Date: January 06, 2005
Author: Amazon User

[...]

I have a brand new comp with a gig of ram and a nice video card. This game crashes every two minutes. So tell me, what is so great about a game you can't play? Frankly I say everyone just band together to sue Sid Meier because they pushed out an untested product which they had to know then sold it to unsuspecting consumers who eagerly bought the hype. In short, they robbed us blind and I want my money back Sid.

To be more technical the graphics are fair though the water is pathetic as is the sky. Any 3d game like half-life or killzone has TEN times better graphics. The game concept is fair in that the quests and battles are ok assuming you don't crash every two minutes like me then why bother? The characters are ok but dude what is with the block type animation. That is like so ten years ago. And why don't the people that you meet speak english instead of computer gibberish with text underneath? Weak. A neat idea would have been to have the french speak french with text subtitles and Spanish, spanish, English, English. You get the idea. You guys put no time or thought into this game. The storms don't effect the sails. There are no fish in the ocean. Dolphins, whales? Give me something to believe it is real.

The makers of this game should be ashamed for putting out such trash. I love Sid Meiers games too. I only by Sid games but after this I will not buy another game from Sid Meier.

Buggy but beautiful

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: May 01, 2005
Author: Amazon User

A very fun and wonderful updated version of the old PIRATES & PIRATES GOLD games that we all know and love from the 80's and 90's.

It isn't easy to improve on one of the greatest games ever made but it is done from the addition of Missions and Pirates havens, to the quest for revenge to the various types of shot and upgrades to the ships.

The Land combat is MUCH better as is the use of landmarks for treasure maps.

The fly in the ointment and it is a BIG one are the bugs. This game made my 6 month old system crash and crash again. There seems to be an issue with some Intel graphic chips that I was able to resolve after about a week. It is the reason why this game gets the 3 star rating. People want this stuff working out of the box. If a computer tech like myself has to spend days chasing down a fix (which was NOT provided by the publisher) then most users will not even want to try.

Fun at the beginning, boring after a while

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: January 22, 2005
Author: Amazon User

The game is very nice at the beginning. First sailings and fightings are cool.
But after a while, you keep doing the same things, seeing the same things... Sail a little, engage a ship, maybe duel, and go to the nearest town to sell the stuff you got, etc.
And everything just takes sooo long.
The most boring part may be dancing. You just press one key depending on what sign the woman is showing with her hand. How fun!

Firaxis made great work on graphics and music. But they forgot the game. So Pirates! became a mobile phone game with great picture&sound.

Keep your Hands better away!

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 5 / 10
Date: December 04, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Well i was a great Fan of the "original" Pirates! and the "gold" version on my C64 and Amiga a few years ago :P. I really hoped many years for that 3rd Pirates release, and was glad as it gone gold.
After the first Minutes of play i was totally confused...
I would say it is almost exactly the "old" Pirates, and that will be the games fate too. What means - yeah for sure was Pirates! in the past the best simulation game ever and of course it should have and has a place in the best games ever hall of fame - but to bring out almost exactly the same game, without any really new ideas, just an (not really impressive btw) "graphic-update" - is a shame. The gameplay was amazing on the original pirates, it was a milestone in game-history - but this is just a product without any new impressions, its like i alrdy played it many years and i was bored actually 1 hour after i started to play - All looks the same, there is not really a challenge, the first 4 difficulties are a way to easy (lol u can actually own a city with 500 soldiers with just 250-300 Pirates if u know how to do it), the dances with the governours daughter just annoys and i wont mention "sneak into town" ^^.
All in all - if u never played Pirates! or Pirates gold! on the old C64/Amiga Platforms, and u arent an adult or want to buy it for ur kids - well its not the badest decision. The Gameplay is perfect for a 12-15 year old kid, and they should have many fun with it. All other players, specially "long-time-gamers" and the peeps that played the original Pirates! like me - Keep ur hands away from that product! The gameplay of this game was maybe incredible in the past - but today its a way to boring. Hell, Pirates of the Carribeans made more fun, and i hated that game ;P

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