User Reviews (1 - 11 of 48)

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A "detailed" Pirates game

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: November 11, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Very detailed game that should provide a more hard-core and detail oriented person some time-alone fun for many, many hours. Visually exciting with a steep learning curve, this game offers the opposite of the "Sid Meier's Pirates" gaming work load. Very hands on and all the small details are on you, the gamer. Avoid the easy-to-aquire cheats: Will ruin the gaming experience. I purchased the game for a low price, so overall good buy.

Average

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: July 24, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I was so excited to finally find a copy of this game and eagerly awaited for it to arrive....excited until I played it. It is nowhere near as exciting as I thought it would be having read all the reviews. I mean it's ok for an average game but that's it. The only really good part is when you are at sea in your ship. At sea, the graphics are really good. Watch out for those storms though. I have been playing for about 4 hrs or so now and those storms sink my ships every single time. Must be some trick to survive them I guess. We shall see. If you find this cheap somewhere, pick it up. But I wouldn't spend too much money on it.

awesome

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: November 21, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This is simply a fantastic game-incredible complexity, I don't know hao they crammed it all in-the se-battles , the Duals-you can play this game for months and still discover new things-one of the most complex detailed games ever made.

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.

the game that could have been

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: September 12, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This game could have been a great game had bethesda finished it. I am sure that they were pressed for time but to release a defective product there is no excuse! they should have recalled the game. insted ,all they did was issue an e-mail to stores to expect returns. and even if you follow the step by step instructions from the bethesda site on how to keep the game from freezing or reseting it does not work, believe me I tried many times! the game is rather fun when it's not malfunctioning however it becomes quiet irritating when you have been at sea for an hour sinking ships only to see your game freeze!!! arggghhh!!! so i could not take it any more and returned the game back to the store for a full refund. DO NOT BUY THIS GAME ALL OF THEM ARE DEFECTIVE!!!! SHAME ON YOU BETHESDA SOFTWORKS!!!

Become the master of the Caribbean

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 5
Date: January 29, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Free-form gaming... probably the best thing ever invented. Fire upon pirates, fire upon the French, and become Commodore of an Armada worthy of the Queen. Hire smugglers, hire officers, buy and sell weapons, and become an assassin, trader or pirate.

Ahhhh, the suckiness...

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 7 / 10
Date: July 28, 2004
Author: Amazon User

The ride was awesome, the movie was awesome, this game is honestly the worst Xbox game I've ever played. It doesn't even have anything to do with the movie or the ride, they just took an old russian computer game that nobody knew about and renamed it. A cheap attempt to earn an extra buck by fooling people with the movie's success. Some people seem to have liked it, but I have no idea why. You do whatever you want though, just don't say I didn't warn you.

Bethesda Software Makes CRAP

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 11 / 13
Date: June 25, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Ok...I liked Morrowind. I really did, until it started crashing...a lot. I mean if I didn't save every 10 minutes, it would crash. I got SOOO far and then it became UNPLAYABLE! (...). SO I should have known better when I picked up Pirates of the Caribbean. Admitedly, it started off being a fun game, but it started crashing right from the start. At first it was a minor hassle as I always save as often as possible. But then, with increasing frequency, it would either freeze or I would get a white screen and it would reboot the X-BOX.

WHY IS IT that the only X-BOX games I have that crash are from Bethesda? Disney should be ashamed for letting this piece (...) software company make their product. The graphics are not even good! Hitman 2 has awesome graphics and uses a better engine. Also, the directional controls are terrible! Morrowind had better controls.

I know I am coming across as just angry, but I just finished trying to win ONE sea battle and every time I get close to the finish, it freezes and/or crashes me. I am taking this piece of junk back to the store for store credit. And if they won't take it, I'll eat the $19.99 and flame Bethesda to anyone who listens.

Don't get me wrong, I really like the idea for this game. I like Pirates and it has SO much potential. But they just jury rigged this game. To many inconsistencies. Too many poor graphics. TOO MANY F*&#ING CRASHES!!! WHYYYY?! NO OTHER GAME I HAVE CRASHES AT ALL!!

If you are a serious gamer, don't bother with this slapped-together piece of junk. If you are a casual player with a lot of patience and don't mind doing the same thing over and over and over, then buy it. But as for me, I think someone should go to Bethesda, find their quality control person and their testers and kick them in the junk. I will give you a shiny nickel if you do!

Suffice to say, I will never, ever purchase another title from Bethesda and I recommend you save yourself the aggravation and avoid them like the plague. Microsoft should void their license to create games. And yes, I did file an official grievance with Microsoft over Bethesda.

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.

Buggy but Great !!! (See Work-arounds, below)

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 34 / 37
Date: February 20, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Yes, this game needed a few more months of debugging. Yes, it was probably rushed to market to coincide with the movie, and Bethesda should receive 50 lashes for putting revenue ahead of quality. (Consider buying a used copy rather than a new one!)

But the bottom line is - this game is a Masterpiece. It's a "Five Star" game with one star subtracted for bugs. (See my workarounds, below).

It's all there - the quests, the commerce, the sword/gun fights and of course the ship battles. All done to perfection. I will focus on the ship battles (below), because there simply isn't a game out there that competes with this aspect.

You can be whatever type of character you want to be - it's wonderfully open in that respect. You can be a pirate (of course), a pirate hunter, a merchant (yawn) or follow the main quest thread. I found the quests to be a "sideshow", but they do supplement the open game play.

Ship Battles: You have both a third person "god view" and an on-the-deck, look-over-the rail view. Both are needed. You use over-the-rail to get a sea-level view, with zoom available through your "spy glass" which yields additional information on the ships around you ,e.g., number of cannon, crew, sail damage, hull damage. You get better spy glasses as the game progresses, reveailing more and more information.

You use the "god view" when you're doing tight manuevering and trying to avoid coliding with other ships, e.g., when boarding.

And what are you looking at?... simply the best ship graphics ever programmed in a video game. Wind blowing the sails in the right direction (and wind determines speed if you get the default setting off of "arcade", set if to "realistic"), holes in the sales, cannon flashes in the distance, exquisite water splashes when the shots miss, and your own cannon smoke blowing by your face in the over-the-rail view. You can almost smell the gunpowder!

Refreshingly, the ships move at realitic speeds - in other words, they're very slow. No turbo-ing to avoid cannon balls, you have to play the wind and do what sailors did for centuries, learn to sail.

Like Morrowind, you have 10 Skills and about 25 Special Abilities that enhance your performance and those of your officers. The skills of you officers complement yours, e.g., you typically have high Melee and Leadership, a Cannoneer has high Accuracy and Rate of Fire, a Navigator has high Sailing, etc.

WORKAROUNDS:

1. Corrupted Saves - do NOT overwrite an existing saved game. Always delete it to create a new save location. Problem solved.

2. Missing Officers - this one is annoying. You can only have (8) eight officers in addition to yourself on your own ship. Any officers added beyond 8 will cause one of your existing officer to disappear. So manage that carefully. I lost a lot of good officers in my first game until I realized they were "deserting."

Also, if you hire a new officer, and try to put him on another one of your ships (you can have 3 ships in addition to your own), the program deletes one of the officers on the additional ship. In fact, it creates a duplicate of the new officer on both your ship and the additional ship. The only way to deal with this situation is to avoid putting more than one officer on the additional ships (the Captain). The captain is unaffected by this bug. I typically make the captain a Cannoneer.

3. Difficulty - like Morrowind, this is a very difficult game at first. Many of the complaints about the game are simply a result of not figuring out how to play well. For example, Luck plays an incredibly important role in surviving on the open seas, when sailing from one island to another. With a "Luck" skill of "1", you will be hunted down by pirates and blasted by storms every 15 seconds. With a "Luck" skill of 10, the Carribean turns into your private lake. I always invest heavily in the Luck skill right at the beginning of the game.

Another complaint is that the Officers get killed in sword fights. That occurs when you are outnumbered (use lots of grapeshot before boarding) or send great cannoneers into a sword fights who have a Melee skill of 1 (duh!). Hire enough officer to allow your officers to specialize. You can only have three of your 8 officers active at any time, make sure you activate the ones needed for the current situation. For example, use your Navigator and Cannoneer for the sea battle, then replace them with your Melee fighters to board vessels; insert your Quartermaster when your ship needs repair after the battle, or when purchasing goods at the store on land.

4. Land Movement - this is awkward. You use the left thumbwheel to move in all directions. You use the right thumbwheel to look up and down in the "Forward" view option, and in all directions (independent of movement) in the "Directional" view option. (My guess is they did this to facilitate sword fighting. Evidently the "A" button is better to swing your sword than the right trigger. When your right thumb is always punching the A button, you can't be using your right thumbwheel to change your view.)

You can look in all directions while on land, contrary to some other reviewer comments I saw posted here. You simply have to turn your character around to see that way.

There is also an annoying "feature" with doors and walls. When you stand next to them and turn around, the view changes 180 and you see the front of your character instead of the normal position behind him. This is hard to get used to.

5. Miscellaneous - there is an occasional lock-up, so save your game frequently. (I always save before I board my ship.) This may occur once every 20 hours of play.

The "dissappearing officers" can lead to bigger problems in quests. One of the main quest characters that was supposed to join my crew was lost in my first game. That ended the main quest thread.

Sometimes a merchant will ask you to deliver cargo to the wrong island. You're supposed to deliver it in less than 30 days, so you may have to save it and figure out which island is correct.

Enjoy!!!

TR

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