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sucks

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 19
Date: August 12, 2006
Author: Amazon User

this is a very bad game the play is long and uneventful you sail the sea find your fam then die

Sid Meier's Pirates

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 22 / 41
Date: October 04, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This game isn't Sid Meier's Ninjas! I just have to accept that and review that game I actually played instead the potential awesomeness I could've played. In opposition to the PC version, the XBOX version has some hastily tacked-on plot (something about having to save your family from an evil baron.) Like I'm sure everybody else did, I choose to ignore all that in lieu of terrorizing the French.

You may remember that Sid Meier is responsible for the insanely addicting Civilization III. Pirates! is a bit of a change of pace in terms of scope - instead of overseeing the fate of an entire civilization for several thousand years, you're limited to taking charge of a single pirate crew in the Caribbean from the mid- to late-1600s. (Since most pirates never got past the wizened age of 45, this makes sense.) After naming your captain and choosing a proficiency (most would choose to improve their dueling prowess, but I choose Wit and Charm for more effective wooing) you're given control of a small ship.

Sailing around and just randomly attacking passing boats can be highly amusing, if not totally broken. Case in point: I was in my insignificant sloop when I saw the Queen Anne's Revenge sail right on by. Channeling my inner Johnny Depp, I decided to go in for the kill. Out-gunned and severely outmanned, I knew the first volley of 15 cannonballs (in opposition to my three) would knock me right out of the water. Instead, I found myself to be... unharmed. I then did what any completely insane pirate would do--bashed my pathetic heap of timber against the legendary ship.

Onboard was the fearsome Blackbeard, flaming beard and all. After a suprisingly easy game of Simon Says that required all of three button presses, I had slain the most fearsome pirate on the high seas and taken his ship. If that isn't evidence of a game in need of balancing, I'd like to know what is!

(Speaking of Blackbeard, my dad is writing a miniseries all about him. Check it out.)

That's basically an apt description for the entire experience: an abundance of strung together mini-games. You've got the "dancing to win the affections of the governor's daughter" game, which I prefer to think of as "virtual finger torture." Other examples include the "laying siege to a city" pseudo-RTS and the "sneaking into a hostile area" stealth portion. Needless to say, playing gets to be repetitive in a big hurry.

BOTTOM LINE: I'm not saying you won't be highly amused for a couple of hours. Quite the contrary. Once the novelty wears off, though... I'm afraid you might come to the same horrified realization that I did. You're just playing the illegitimate child of a Mario Party game.

OK, but not great

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 2 / 5
Date: August 12, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I liked Pirates years ago when I first played it on PC, and was looking forward to trying it on Xbox. While the game is fun, and parts are very amusing, it grows monotonous after a few hours.

The sailing dynamics are somewhat realistic, and the ship-to-ship combat is usually quite good. The swordfighting was interesting until I found a 'hole' that involves taking a particular weapon and merely hitting 'A' over and over again ... that took all the challenge out of all but the most terribly outnumbered swordfights. The Pike-and-Shot battles on land are adequate, though you grow tired of them soon enough. The game's worst feature, in my opinion, is the dancing. It's long. It's annoying. At the higher difficultly levels, it's difficult. (I'm not a twitch gamer, and even if I was, I'd save my talents for twitching something *other* than ballroom dancing). Luckily you don't *have* to bother with the dancing, but you give up an element of the storyline and some nice loot doing so.

Overall, I played the game for about six hours before growing tired of the repetition. It was quite easy, even at higher difficulty levels, to go and capture the best ship in the game, and proceed to wipe the floor with everything I ran into. Then it simply became repetitive, as even the 'hard' fights were none too difficult.

Sid Meier missed the mark on this one

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 2 / 4
Date: August 10, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Pirates! would have been good about 10 years ago. But the graphics are sub-par, the gameplay is terrible (swordfights are basicly a series of A A A X A A A), the story is hokey, and you spend most of your time doing missions which are carbon copies of the mission you just finished, the ship battles require more luck than actual talent and the trade system is flawed. I've enjoyed Meier's games since the beginning, when he relased the original Civilization, but this game if VERY lacking. I did get about 5 hours of gameplay out of it, but that was becaus I was waiting for something cool to happen, and it just never came.

Not bad

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: July 20, 2007
Author: Amazon User

It's a good game overall, but the fight scenes are kind of lame. The multilayer is really cool with your friends. THe best thing about it is that it's one of the backwards compatible games for the Xbox 360 so you can play it on both consoles!

Strangely addicting even though it's far from perfect.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 13 / 14
Date: October 25, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Parents: I have absolutely no idea why they gave this game a "T" for teen. The content in this game is light hearted and humerous for any age. Understanding how to play might be a bit tough for energetic little ones, but chances are if they are patient enough to books read by themselves they'll be old enough able to handle this game with no real problem. Be aware though that this game is direct towards those types who like games that usually involve a good deal of time (think monopoly, risk, chess, checkers, ect.)

Everbody I know who has played this game loves it and I...I am not sure why. This game is incrediblely simple and repetitive with a lot of stuff they could have packed into it left out. It has almost zero story. The mini games are few and always the same. Graphically the game is pleasing and the music is happy and positive, but after a while all the environments are pretty much the same. Basically, you could finish the whole game in a few hours if you wanted.

Yet, it's still so fun that you can just keep playing it over and over. It's one of those unique game that you play for about a couple hours a day and it never gets old. Time just flys when your playing this thing and I don't I'll ever really understand why. It only has about four minigames in it, yet me and the rest of my family still find it hard to put down.

I know it's a refurbed classic but...

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: July 25, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Of course all the things you can do are great ideas, but how you can do them and what you spend your money on gets old, fairly quick. The game progresses from real easy to difficult and the controls for swashbuckling are too limited for the type of increase in difficulty. The rest of the game play gets repetitious and the same old routines are too linear to retain their luster.
Great for a rental, for sure!!

Fun but....

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 5
Date: October 23, 2005
Author: Amazon User

it's fun but all the same. I can take out a frigate with a pinnace, then a warship with the fig. Same dances, same battles, same same same same same.... Why use anything but grapeshot? Get the girl, there's another that looks the same in the next port waiting for you.

XB Sid Meier's Pirates

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 5
Date: January 17, 2006
Author: Amazon User

This is a good game however it grows tiresome very quickly. The gameplay although fun at first is very repetitive. There are a limited number of animations and cut scenes and the backdrops for the dancing, fencing, and battle minigames are the same every time with only slight variations. There are only so many times you can fence with an opposing ships captain, go to a port (all of which look exactly the same), sell the prize, and dance with the govoners daughter before it all starts to get old. The main game quest is also very repetitive. You chase the evil baron raymondo around repeating the exact same scenario 16 times in order to recover your missing family members. Also there are very few ship upgrades. Overall it is a good game that plays well but wares out quickly.

Know going in...

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 7
Date: July 26, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Before you buy this game, know going in that it is not one game, but a collection of mini-games. Unlike other Sid Meier turn-based titles (e.g. Civilization) where strategy and forethought are paramount to achieving one objective (in many different ways), Pirates keeps you busy performing mind-numbing, monotonous tasks. The fact that there's an overall "plot" or "quest" means very little. The plot in Pirates is about as meaningful as getting the high score for solitaire AND Tetris. Clearly (as other reviews suggest), some enjoy these little games -- and you might, too. Just don't go in with the wrong expectations like I did.

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