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Saves me from breaking out my old Commodore 64

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 12 / 37
Date: June 18, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This was, unquestionably, my favorite Commodore 64 game. In my early teens I played it repeatedly. In retrospect it may have been a little repetitive. Sail here, sail there, sword fight, etc. etc. Still, I'm looking forward to reliving the experience. Plus, anything that Sid Meier actually had a hand in is going to be a great game.

Best open-ended strategy/sim ever!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 14 / 56
Date: July 18, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This may be a little premature, since this game won't be released until Nov. 14th, 2004. All speculation aside, I can't begin to calculate the number of hours I spent playing 'Pirates!' on the NES and its sequel, 'Pirates! Gold,' on the Sega Genesis. It was simply one of the most engrossing games I have ever played, and upon hearing of a new Pirates! for 2004, I think I actually started salivating. This is great news for all fans of this seminal game. If you've never played either title, rectify this terrible oversight in your gaming experience immediately. I think you'll be joining me and thousands of rabid fans in counting down the days until Nov. 14th! What made this game great was its open-ended gameplay. Go anywhere, anytime in "real-time" accompanied by great "Bounding Main" music (which I hope they incorporate in this newest incarnation). Your charcter ages, and that's about as linear as it got. Get rich/(in)famous/powerful before you get old and die. Kind of like real life. A Pirate's life, anyway! ARRRRHHH, MATEY!!! Welcome aboard!

How can you review something before it comes out???

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 29 / 142
Date: September 27, 2004
Author: Amazon User

It amazes me that people actually review something before it actually gets released (and there's no beta or demo version out either).

Yes, we all know the original Pirates was one of the most highly addicting/best games of all time. If this game is half as fun as the original it will be a huge success. However...all you have to do is look at some other "remake" games to realize sometimes this doesn't happen...developers "monkey" too much with the game play and it ruins the game (e.g. Master of Orion III). Wait until the game is released (or you've atleast played a demo or beta version before you rate something--otherwise it's just useless conjecture...)

No Beta huh?

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 33 / 95
Date: October 01, 2004
Author: Amazon User

As a beta tester, who has not played a version of this game beyond the original, I need to set the record straight.

All games and I mean all games are tested at least 6 months prior to release. Even crappy games have a beta, and there are beta testers who play the games and tell the company what they think.

These reports to the company include glitches, support issues, good and bad elements of gameplay, shading, color, painting, bleeding, rendering, poly issues, geometrical issues . . .

In addition, beta testers sign a contract that does not allow them to disclose anything about the game prior to the game's release. Nor are they able to allow their friends, family, neighbor, . . . to see the game.

With that said. I have a friend who beta's for fireaxis who tells me that this game is right on par with the sims2 for graphics, and easily as addictive as Civ3. I can't wait till it goes retail. I have already preordered my copy

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!!

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.

Pirates! Just like old times.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 402 / 417
Date: November 27, 2004
Author: Amazon User

If you have played any of the previous Pirates! games of the past, you will immediately recognize this game. The gameplay is essentially the same, with some added extras. The ship to ship battles play just like it did 15 years ago - and this is mostly a good thing.

Pros:
- Excellent graphics. The water animation is great looking.
- Varied tasks such as attacking ships and towns, finding treasure, finding lost family, keep you very busy.
- Easy gameplay. You can get into the game fairly quickly.
- Different "missions" keep you wanting to play more and more and watch your character progress.

Cons:
- Repetetive gameplay and animations/cutscenes. Everything in the game becomes tiresome when you have seen the same thing 20 times. There are only a few animations for each task in the game. Every town looks exactly the same also. There is no variety in the taverns, except for the colour of the hair of the "woman" at the bar. When swordfighting, there are pretty much 3 backgrounds that they take place. It is way too scripted also.
- No way to speed up sailing against the wind. Out of all of the things to make more realistic, they should not have picked this one.
- Sneaking into town is extremely boring, time consuming, and unvaried. There are two speeds to this - slow and slower.
- Even if you sail under one nation's flag, you can still earn promotions from other countries. The difference between being a pirate and privateer is practically zero.
- Limited upgrades to ships. While the game boasts upward of 20 ships, you can only add about 7 upgrades (sails, armour, etc). Unique/special upgrades would have been a nice touch.

Overall, it's a fun game and will keep you busy for many, many hours. However, you will become bored with it's repetetion too quickly. There just isn't enough variety in the game. Sailing and attacking ships is the best part of the game, and after a while, you will cringe at having to go into town for the 1000000th time to talk to the governor / dance with the daughter / fix your ship / trade goods. It's EXACTLY the same in every town, and that is my biggest gripe.

Buggy and PC (and update to review)

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 65 / 95
Date: November 27, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I love the original Pirates back in the C64 days.
This one? Well, it won't run. I'm not alone, tons of folks are having problems, and not just the same problem but a whole slew of them.

Can you say "Let's rush it out the door for the holidays?" Well, Atari sure can. Way to ruin one of the most anticipated games.

Oh, and a nice touch of political correctness: they've dropped tobacco as a trade item. Hey, ley's pretend there was no slavery. Oh, wait. we already do that.

Update:

I originally gave this game one star becuase it would not run. I finally got it to run, so I was able to play it.

The game is much like the original on the Commodore 64 was, and that is a good thing. That game was one of the greatest games ever put together. It's a "formula" game, but the formula is superb. Get ship, hire crew, pillage and/or trade, run missions, repeat.

The updated version changes the play very little. The sneaking into town (as a separate sequence) and dancing are new, and are not very good. Too long and tedious, and not in keeping worth the fast pace of the game. But these are things you don't really need to do, and you can opt to do as I do and simply avoid them.

One of Sid' greatest talents is easy to overlook, becuase it's always in front of you. The interface. While others are creating "simple" interfaces involving Byzantine collections of mouse menus and button combination, we have here a wonderful keyboard interface.

All maneuvering, fighting, etc. can be done right from the number pad and/or cursor keys. It's simple, fast, and intuitive. Any idiot can design complexity. Designing simplicity take genius.

The game is not without some issues, and there should be a patch soon to correct compatibility problems or at least one would expect such a patch soon. The game play itself has some minor quirks, mainly relating to ships "clipping" through harbors and other ships while in battle. None of these detract substantially from the experiencing.

So, now that I have played the games, well, it's as addicting as the old version was. If you have played the old C64 version (the ports to other platforms don't count, as those were just plain nasty) then you will want to get this. If you have never played the game before, then you must get it, as you have missed out on one of the greatest gaming experiences of all time.

I can't edit my rating, but I'd give the game 5 stars once it is working. Clearly, if it doesn't run on your machine it's a one star game.

KP

Maybe I was hoping for too much, but this is still fun.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 21 / 24
Date: November 29, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Bottom line up front: After 15 years, Pirates! is updated, and just about the only improvement is in the graphics. Just about everything is the same as the original - for better or for worse. It would be akin to Ford releasing the Mustang in 1964, keeping the same body style for a couple of more years, and not producing any Mustangs until 2005. Then, to top it off, Ford releases a Mustang in 2005 that has a 1964-era suspension, bias-ply whitewalls, and vinyl seats - but, it has some nice new colors! Would it still be fun to drive? Yes. But after all that time, wouldn't buyers expect more improvement? This buyer certainly would!

Sid Meier's Pirates! is a game that allows players to become a swashbuckling pirate in the mid- to late-seventeenth century Caribbean. This new version is an update to the original smash hit of about 15 years ago. You'd have thought that after 15 years they could have added a little more depth to the characters, but more on that later.

To summarize for those unfamiliar with the original, players control a pirate and they can sail around plundering ships and seizing the cargo and gold, or they can choose to try to make it big as a trader in goods such as luxury items, sugar, etc. In between all the sailing and looting or trading, the pirate can align himself with one of four colonial powers (France, Spain, England, Holland), woo the daughter of any of the several colonial governors, gain information from a barmaid, bartender, or mysterious stranger in a tavern, upgrade/repair his ship or fleet of ships at the shipmaster's or trade goods with a merchant.

Let me not parse my words: The real fun of this game is sailing, sea battles, and trying to find treasure, wanted criminals, or lost relatives. All the other activities like wooing the governor's daughter, sneaking into an unfriendly town, interacting with the townspeople, and fighting duels is repetitive and time consuming.

There are several levels (I think five, but I don't have my manual with me now) of difficulty from which to choose. So far, I've played only on the first two: apprentice and journeyman. It is pretty difficult to mess up on apprentice level - a player can completely ham and egg it in a battle and still manage to win. Slight errors in judgement, timing, and aim will penalize a player more in journeyman level, but not so much as to make it too much harder than apprentice. The increased difficulty has its rewards, though: players get to keep a higher share of the booty as the level of difficulty is increased!

The game's interface is very easy to learn - everything is done via the number pad on the keyboard. Players can also use the mouse to point and click their way around the Caribbean, but the number pad system is much faster and more accurate.

The player's pirate accumulates wealth, land (granted by colonial governors), special items (like balanced swords, dueling pistols, jewelry, etc.), finds lost relatives, captures criminals, defeats notorious pirates (like Cap'n Kidd), and finds buried treasure. The success of the pirate at these activities determines his rankings upon his retirement. He could end up as a governor, or a pick-pocket depending upon how successful he was during his career. Retirement?! Yep! You can't be a pirate forever. The pirate will actually age over time, and his reflexes and/or his charm will erode, which makes it harder to win duels, dance properly (when wooing the aforementioned governors' daughters), or put together a crew. Although I have never had a pirate long enough to see him age, I presume that I can retire him before he embarrasses himself - unlike some boxers that I can think of. Evander Holyfield, are you listening?

Things to like:
1. Simplified gameplay makes it as intuitive as the original.
2. Sailing around and plundering or trading.
3. Gaining rank, wealth and land.
4. Searching for lost relatives, criminals, or notorious pirates.
5. Did I mention sailing around and plundering or trading?

Things that are not up to snuff:
1. All the NPC-like characters (governors, barmaids, mysterious strangers, bartenders, motley crews) kind of look alike, depending on their nationality.
2. Not surprisingly, the governors' daughters all look alike, too. Some are "plain," "attractive," or "beautiful." Amazingly, the beautiful ones also show as much cleavage as a Victoria Secrets model.
3. No way to change how your pirate looks. It would be nice to be able to make the pirate shorter, taller, thinner, fatter, uglier, balding, etc. Heck, it would be nice to make the pirate a female.
4. On the easier levels, it is possible to get a promotion from a colonial governor even though your pirate might have just sunk three of his nation's ships. This may change at higher difficulty levels, but even at easier levels, this seems pretty weak.
5. Pirate character development is pretty weak to non-existent. No way to see how much a pirates' swordplay has been improved due to the fact that he has acquired the balanced swords special item. Players are unable to choose the clothing of the pirate, etc.
6. Scripted videos of vessel boarding, duelings, etc. are repetitive and mind-numbing after a while.

This is a very, very, fun, albeit shallow, game. It would have been nice if developers had updated the game so that players could customize their pirates a lot more - think about Sims in Sims 2, your golfer in Tiger Woods 2005, or characters from Diablo II. I mean, please try and take advantage of increased capabilites of the PC, people!!

NOTE: The Limited Edition DVD has some nice extras like different music clips, a wider variety of flags to fly on your vessel, an assortment of pictures to display on your ships' sails, a version of Pirates! Gold Edition, interviews, concepts of packaging art, and other pieces of art. Please note that the Pirates! Gold Edition will probably not work properly on today's blazing fast PCs. I installed it, and the ship battles flew by so quickly, that I couldn't even issue one order!

An excellent game and immaculate remake of a classic!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 9 / 11
Date: November 30, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Ah.... Sid Meier's Pirates! is a breath of fresh air in the redundant and slighlty lackluster genre that is strategy games. But this year has seen new innovations as developers try new things. Games such as R:tw, warhammer dow, and battle for middle earth attempt to set standards in this stagnant genre.

One thing that one must first understand is that this game is indeed a strategy game, not a roleplaying game or business simulation game. The game places you as young captain seeking to recover the family that was taking from him by a ruthless warlord. While in your adventure you'll participate in enjoyable sea battles where wind, the ability of your crew, your choice of ammunition, and your type of ship play a major factor in whether you obtain victory. There are tactical land battles where tactics such as flanking and cover play a pivotal role. Sword fights where countering your enemies moves are the key to victory, and the new aspect of sneaking into towns, which is similiar, oddly enough, to pac man except that you can scale walls and knock out guards. The sneaking is tedious, but then again, it is meant to be.

You can even try to woo governers daughters by dancing with them at balls. If you happen mess up and constantly make mistakes in this little game, you miss oppurtunity to gain valuable knowledge and certain helpful tools that benefit you on your adventures.

There are aslo small missions like escorting other ships, taking someone somewhere, finding treasure maps, or finding clues to locate your familys whereabouts. Every game starts off differently, so no game ends up being the same. Your actions also play major factor in how the world revolves around you; sink a merchant fleet heading to a town and the town wil suffer, sink a fleet caring soldiers and the town will go without suffient soldiers for awhile. You must also be ready to pay your men when the tie comes, otherwise a majority of them will abruptly and you'll be left with a skeleton crew.

The graphics and animations are beautiful. As you sail your ship you'll see ripples in the water, and watch as your sails readjust to the wind. Charcter animations are fluid, funny, and extremely well done. Hits on enemy ships send barrels and men (who can be rescued and added to your crew) falling into the sea.

In the end, this is game is nothing short of excellent. Yes it can get redundant at times, but since there are soooooo many things to do, you should never get bored anytime soon. You can be a pirate or trader its up to you. It is similiar to the original pirates! but surpasses it in almost every aspect to create an excellent and engaging game. Many expect this game to provide numerous new features to the original games concept, but what they must realize is that this is simply a remake, and a damn good one.

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