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Severely limited and absolutely no replayability

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: August 20, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I've never played the original Sid Meier's Pirates! but I have played "Cutthroats", which I found to be very lavish and expansive, despite severe limitations regarding commanding troops to besiege cities and other sorts of details.

This one has rather good graphics for a relatively small game, and plays well and fluidly. For my taste, it has far too great of a cartoonishness to it, which severely limits the potential for it to be as violent and cutthroat as... well, "Cutthroats". There's no throatcutting in this one---just a swing on a rope, a HAHA!, and a smirk as the enemy shakes his fist and goes "OOOH YOUUU!"

The campaigns as well follow an utterly ridiculous task of "Find Baron Montalbon" or whatever his name is, whom you defeat in battle and he gives you ONE PIECE of a multi-piece map to find a family member of yours. THEN you must track him down AGAIN (because you're apparently too stupid to have him tell you EVERYTHING then kill him) to get ANOTHER piece of that one map. Once you have all the pieces, you rescue your family member, never see them again, and have to hunt down THE SAME PERSON AGAIN AND AGAIN FOR MORE MAP PIECES for family members ranging from Aunts, Sisters, Fathers, Mothers, etcetera.

Then there's ridiculous quests involving lost cities and hunting down famous pirates from history all just smashed together in whatever year you pick. Despite supposedly gaining "infamy" for killing these famous pirates, you don't get anything except the number 1 slot on most famous pirates, and a lot of money.

A surprising feature which seems to severely limit my actions is that as soon as you start to gain successes, commanding multiple ships with a hundred or more men and lots of gold, morale starts going down the crapper at breakneck speed, to a point where even getting vast amounts of gold can't solve it---your best result is to either kill them off in pitched battles, or retire for a short while. This eats away a few years of your life before you return with a smaller crew and smaller ship.

About the only aspects of gameplay which are always entertaining are ship battles and turn-based, grid-based land battles. Ship battles are real time, involving simultaneous use of steering and sluggish firing to break down your enemy's ship and either destroy it, or board and force a surrender or fight it out on deck, where surprisingly your forces always seem to die quicker than the enemy's, no matter what. Land battles are particularly fun in execution and strategy.

But these are very, very small aspects of a broader game, which most of the time is spent sailing (and the wind almost always blows in one direction for months endlessly, making sailing take a LOT of gametime) and visiting cities to do the exact same dreck---get a few minor upgrades to your ships, sell some cargo, visit the tavern to recruit some random bandits, speak to a cloned barmaid about whatever (usually she doesn't give you anything important, just "ooh you so scary you is numba 1 pirate in the evar", or talk to some random guy in a corner offering valuable things like jewelry or maps or information).

Then there's DANCING! Every major town has a governor who has a daughter, who comes in three formats: "Plain", "Attractive", "Beautiful". Every time you visit, you do a little Olde English dance to Baroque harpsichord music, and you must press buttons properly in sequence or trip over your own clownshoes. She basically falls in love with you based on your dancing, giving her stuff, and killing her suitors. I haven't yet discovered if this has any relevance to the overall gameplay at all or is just an excuse to add another minigame into it complete with more cleavage.

Once you've reached an old age and are too sick to pirate (it will always be sickness that forces you to retire), you cannot continue on with your character. But really, you wouldn't want to. New games, no matter if you start in 1620, 1640, 1660, or 1680, are exactly the same as one another, with the exact same quests, games, technology, and pirates. This is a dumbed-down, kiddie-friendly version of historical piracy in the Carribean, and as such you don't get to "live the life" of a REAL pirate, complete with kidnapping, butchering people, scurvy, ransoming people for medical supplies (actual event: Blackbeard ransomed people for medicine), sex, drinking (Black Bart Roberts died because his ship was ambushed while his men were all drunk), etcetera.

Even Pirates of the Carribean was more violent and realistic than this game.

Being that they are of the same genre, I have to compare Cutthroats with Pirates. In Cutthroats, you can invade cities with massive armies of your men, including with cannons taken off your ship, have townspeople try to fight you off, then surrender and you can take them prisoner or execute them (including women and children), you have to keep your ship supplied not only with food but with gunpowder for the cannons, accessories like sugar and rum and tobacco for the men's morale, you have to buy guns and grenades and pistols if you want to arm your men for personal combat, lifeboats if you want your men to survive when the ship sinks, and wait in harbor for your ship to be repaired if damaged.

In Pirates, all you need is food and cannons. Everything else is provided, and repairs are done instantaneously. While landbattles are fun, they are only more fun than in "Cutthroats" because in "Cutthroats", the map is huge, and your men move at a snail's pace quite literally. There's no murdering, raping, pillaging, or anything that was synonymous with pirates.

A shell of what could have been a great game

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: May 23, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Sid Meier's Pirates is a mixed bag. The game is fun to play for a few days, but it's incredibly short and with little replay value unless you enjoy doing the same thing over and over again. It promises exploration and excitement, but delivers long periods of waiting for the wind to pick up and propel your war galleon across the sea. It supposedly has four different time periods of piracy to play in, but the only difference is in the level of fun, not difficulty or content. You get to swordfight with scurvy pirate captains, sneak into towns, attack towns and install new governors, trade goods, attack ships, buy items, recruit crew members, search for treasure and your long lost family, and even ballroom dance. The main problem is that every aspect of the game is simplified to its basic elements and rendered repetitious.

In the long run, the game is best for gamers who don't like to spend a lot of time on games. Pirates is fairly easy to play for a few minutes and come back to whenever you want without having to remember a lot of details. Unfortunately for me, the repetitious nature of the game has become far too tedious.

Fun but with a few faults

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: August 12, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This game is AWESOME when you first start playing it. The graphics and colors are excellent. It is alot of fun swordfighting, blasting cannons at ships, and many others. I wish there could of been a multiplayer feature built in to play with or against a buddy. I wish there wa smore to romancing the daughters also. I wish the top 10 pirates were a little more harder to catch as well. Once you find them and kill them, the challenege of finding them is gone and they are dead forever. It would of been nice to allow them to escape a few times or allow you to maroon them or walk a plank or something.

Overall the game is a B+ and is a good buy.

Awsme for a day!

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 2
Date: March 07, 2007
Author: Amazon User

If you get a chance to rent the PSP or XBox version do that, or wait till the game costs about the same as a rental because it's only fun for about day or 2 and then becomes very repetitious and boring.

When I first started playing the game I was amazed by the interactivity of the ocean, but soon became annoyed by the endless tiresom traveling from one city to another just to find the next part of a map. Everything looks the same and blends together after the first 3 hours of playing.

All in all, it's a great game to rent or pay less then $5 for, but don't buy it for $20.

Pirates? Yes. Repetitve? Yes.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 2
Date: February 07, 2007
Author: Amazon User

It could have been better. Sid Meier is a fantastic game-maker, and I hear the original was great. This is apparently a decent remake, however the repetition starts to grate upon you after your fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth time around. It's true that you can increase difficulty, which makes it a bit better, but still....Fights are very scripted and end ususally the same way. Dancing and socializing is more like playing "Simon Says." Perhaps this is why Pirates! went extinct on the high seas so many years ago? They all fell asleep at the wheel and were lost at sea....

Time to pilllege and plunder!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: January 23, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I bought this game on a whim and am so glad I did! I've stayed up later than I should have every day this week playing it and it is still just as fun as the very first time. What's better than fencing and treasure hunting? Nothing! It's worth every penny spent.

I am disappointed that I couldn't be a female pirate though. But I've gotten over it.

A great game - long play - great fun.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: January 12, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This is a great game with lots of play, good side plots, and a good story. Sid Meier has a knack for making great games. The play is fun, fast-paced, and runs for a long time. It is definitely worth the money.

No game

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 8
Date: January 04, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Amazon shipped us the wrong game. Our son was very disappointed. It appeared online that they had the game for our version of Microsoft but we received a game we couldn't use. When we called Customer Support they said they didn't carry the game for our version of Microsoft, after all.

Didn't get a chance to play it

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 6
Date: November 07, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I know others have written about this but someone needs to mention it again so it's in the latest reviews. This game did not work for me. It kept crashing 10 minutes into the game. My computer has all the right system requirements and I tried all of the recommended fixes. Apparently it's a common problem and a lot of us contacting support were unable to get help or solve the problems...(which are many, even with the patch..or latest version). I'm sure it's a good game but I wish I had seen the reviews about the issues because I wouldn't have bought it and spent the HOURS and HOURS of trying to get it to work.

tips

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 7
Date: August 01, 2006
Author: Amazon User

here are some hints ,
2) during sea battles always use the grape shot or the chain shot to defeat ships faster 2) at your first sword battle get the captain close toan opening then keep forcing the captain backwards to trow him off the ship.

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