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Sneak preview...shh...

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 11
Date: June 26, 2003
Author: Amazon User

It seems like I'm the first person to get my hands on this wonderful game. I won't go into a lot of detail for obvious security reasons, but I will say this game is EXCELLENT. It took me an hour or two to get used to the gameplay, but once I figured it out, the next 5 hours flew by. I was so upset when I had to give it back! Like I said, for security reasons I can't give any details about unreleased games, but I had to tell someone how awesome this game is!

Great Pirate Game, But You must be patient!!!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: July 07, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This game has the best water effects I've seen (Yes better than Morrowind)! The waves swell and recede on the shorelines and sharks even swim around while you battle on the wavy seas. The sunsets and storms are awesome to behold. Moonlight reflests off the waves at night! Towns are also done very well and each town is looks different. You will have to be patient in order to build up your money and fleet, but it is well worth the effort. Exploring is the key to finding better weapons and treasures to sell for gold. The will let you go anywhere, but that doesnt mean you will survive! I fought my way through a skeletion infested cave and found a nice 4 barrel pistal, but could not fight my way back at this time. Saving is very important in this game, because you will die often at first, but it gets better. There is a main storyline to follow, but you follow as you want. You can borrow money from loan sharks (for a 3% fee of course) or you can loan them money (for a nice little 3% commision) too. To build your reputation you will have to complete quests and deliveries. When traveling on land you will see seagulls, butterflies, lizards, undead monkeys, bandits, waterfalls, beaches, undead skeletons, sweaying grass, trees, ,bushes, and shrubs. At first I wanted to hate this game when I keep dying, but once I got the hang of fighting and battling on the open seas I grown to love this game and cant stop playing (Which Its time to free myself from the English prison so I can sink some pirates matey :-)

Pretty darn good.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: July 06, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Pros:
Graphics - INCREDIBLE. Jaw-dropping water effects, gorgeously rendered sailing ships, beautiful land environments. The characters are also well rendered, although they could use a little more diversity.

Sound - Despite a few bugs (see Cons), the ambient sounds are great. Marketplaces sound like marketplaces; taverns sound like taverns; jungles sound like jungles. The music, although a little repetitive, is well matched to the subject matter.

Character advancement - Familiar RPG-type experience-points-based leveling up, but with the added incentive of a new special ability (chosen from a list of 30 or so) available to you each time you gain a new level. Your officers share in your XP boons and level up themselves, so you can tailor your staff into a well honed fighting (or commerce) machine.

Fun factor - C'mon! You're a privateer, or a merchant, or a pirate! You get to sail around and get into battles, and drink and dice in taverns, and visit gorgeous tropical cities from four hundred years ago! How could that NOT be fun?

Free movie ticket - Included in the package is a voucher for a ticket to the movie version of Pirates of the Caribbean.

Neutrals:
AI - NPCs are often breathtakingly dumb (e.g., your officers will follow you up narrow staircases with locked doors at the end, and will not move out of the way when you turn around and head back down), but sometimes pretty good, which means it's head-and-shoulders above many other AIs out there. Still pretty annoying when you provide all your officers with pistols, and they only want to use their swords.

Plot - I haven't played the game all the way through yet (or maybe even a quarter of the way--who knows?), so I can't say for sure on this one, but so far the plot is rather ho-hum. There are flashes of something more exciting (and I've run across the Black Pearl ghost ship twice, offering a tantalizing glimpse into the Disney-tie-in portion of the plot) but so far it's involved a lot of errand-running for various governors. In comparison with the compelling "You-are-the-messiah" plotline of Bethesda's *Morrowind,* a search for a golden idol that unlocks a palace somewhere is less thrilling.

Combat - A little too oversimplified, and it's often hard to tell, in a big melee, which guys you're supposed to be attacking and which are supposed to be helping you. But better than many other roleplay combat systems nonetheless.

Cons:
Character lock - Every now and again, the game decides that you need to relinquish control of your character, so an NPC can catch up to you and either talk to you or beat you up. When authorities catch you smuggling, for example, your character finishes the transaction, and then just stands there for the next twenty seconds to give the various soldiers and police-types time to surround you thoroughly. Frankly, if I were a 17th century ship captain and were about to be arrested and/or attacked, I'd make a run for my dinghy and get the heck out of Dodge.

Bugs - These range from the minor (characters with mismatched vocal tracks) to the truly annoying (locking your character in place to await an "event" that never occurs). Fortunately, in the case of the latter, the load and save times are relatively quick (~5 seconds for a save, ~20 seconds to load).

Gameplay - Only in comparison with the incredibly open-ended Morrowind is this a con, but since I was hoping for more of that type of gameplay, I've got to list this here. The plot has a tendency to shoehorn you into specific sequences of actions, often placing your ship in battles it's not yet equipped to fight. Maybe I'm just not very good at the game yet, but I'm not enjoying having to do three minutes of sailing, after which my ship gets destroyed half the time and my character gets killed during boarding the other half, over and over and over again. Adding to this, the save feature is unavailable in the main sailing mode. I find this kind of do-it-over-and-over-til-you-manage-to-get-it-right gameplay to be kind of boring, and it's the kind of thing I play games like Morrowind to avoid.

Control scheme - Slightly wonky, and uneditable. This made the already pretty steep learning curve nearly frustrating enough for me to give up early on. I eventually got used to it, but, Bethesda, being able to un-invert the look-stick would sure be nice for those of us who don't use flight simulators all the time.

Quest book - The game relies too much on your journal in some spots, and doesn't put all the relevant information into it in others.

Overall:
Despite the flaws, this game is far better than the average hack-n-slash roleplaying game. While it's hard for anything to equal the depth and playability of Morrowind, Pirates of the Caribbean is still the best X-Box game this year.

Now, if only the movie promised to be anywhere near as good...

game incomplete

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: August 04, 2003
Author: Amazon User

It seems to me that the programmers were rushed to finish this game in order to release at the same time as the movie (which has nothing to do with the game other than ships and pirates).I encountered many bugs(crashes) as i reached higher levels and obtained larger ships.
The dungeons are intolerable there is basically no reason to go into them and theres no auto mapping feature so you dont know what way youve been and then the skeleton regenerate so you may fight the same skeletons over and over.
Theres also lots of pointless jungle areas with nothing to explore. they just waste your time and make you run ( more like a geritall jog)through them.
The game is way too short and the end is a major let down. I was actually stunned to find that i had gotten to the end of the game so quickly (15 hrs of game play). Perhaps if you do all of the side adventures it may bring you up to 20-25hrs max unless you are completely inept and die constantly without saving you games regularly.
Also the character is very limited in movement. he walks jogs and swings a sword . He can not jump!!!!
The good thing in the game is the sea battles they really did a fantastic job in this respect the whole thing is excellent in this respect with the minor exception of when you control your own guns and have the enemy in front of you on the larger ships you cant see the enemy because the sails screen them out .
overall i found pirates black kat much more enjoyable and even along the same lines when it came to the sea battles but far more enjoyable to explore and way more stable to play.

Problems

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: January 06, 2004
Author: Amazon User

The game is Great, I have spent many hours playing it I have'nt had any complants on the control of the game,however if you have alot of patience you will enjoy it. the game freezes up ALOT and has some problems with loading.Overall it's a good game.

This game rox

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 3
Date: September 15, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I dont know where the heck the other reviewers are there reviews from. Either they played the game for a couple of seconds or they just plain suck at video games. I have yet to see any bugs and the controls were acually easy to get used to. I found the game to be just as good as morrowind, if not better.

Not what I expected!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 4
Date: August 22, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Like so many, I thoroughly enjoyed the pace and excitement of the movie and was therefore very disappointed to find a game with the same name but nothing in common. Sure, there are pirates, swordfights and sea battles, but I expected something following or and extension of the theatrical release. This game doesn't have any of the characters and is hard to manipulate. Not only do you need to collect a tremendous amount of objects to move from level to level, but there is so much you must master for simple tasks. Very disappointing!

Curses of the caribbean

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 14
Date: September 18, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This video game rocks the house man!!!!. Jack Sparrow is so cool man!!!!. My dog is so cool man!!! THE END man

pirates of the caribbean

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 1 / 13
Date: September 20, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I had a problem with this video game. It came damage, I never can see the video game.
I was explain the problem but I never recived any solution at this problem.

A great looking xbox game:

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 17
Date: April 26, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I bought this game and I think it will be great to play.
The graphics are (...)! I liked the movie so the game should be just as good. Anyone who is looking for a PPG xbox game with state of the art graphics, buy this one.

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