Arrgh! Fly the Jolly Roger! Pirates be back! (Sid Meier's Pirates! (PC))

Member Name: SWSt

Product:	Sid Meier's Pirates! (PC)
Date:	21/01/06 (531 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Entertaining, colourful, open-ended and lots of variety. Unbelievably addictive.

Disadvantages: Disappointing ending, possibly limited re-play value

Note: I'm aware this is a long review, but there’s so much to this game it’s the only way to do it justice. To help you out, I’ve split the review into the following sections: The Game, Morale, Locations, Swordfighting, Attacking Towns, Treasure Maps, Escort Missions, Family, Dancing Subgame, Graphics, Music, Controls, Gameplay, Lastability and Conclusion.

The Game
The basic idea could not be simpler: you have a ship and want to make your fame and fortune. If you really want to, you can do this the honest way, buying goods cheaply in one port, and selling it for a high another. But hey, where’s the fun in that? The game’s called Pirates for goodness sake! Get out their and act like a real man! The real fun is to be had in attacking other ships and towns, finding buried treasure and generally terrorising the Spanish Main and being a bit horrible!

At the start of the game, you must choose a nationality from English, French, Spanish or Portuguese. This choice may (or may not!) influence the way you play the game as you will need to build up alliances, so that you have friendly sea-ports to visit, when needed. The 1600s were a volatile time, with countries declaring war on each other and making peace all the time and you’ll need to keep your eye on who is currently at war with whom. For example, if you are playing as an English captain and try and land in a French port when England and France are at war, you might get a rather frosty reception (they may even fire on you as you try to enter port.) Sink a lot of French ships, though, and English ports will welcome you with open arms and confer titles upon you.

Morale
One of the key aspects of the game is keeping the morale of your crew high. Crews with high morale will follow you into battle; with low morale, they may start deserting or even mutiny. Morale can be kept high by lots of activity – attacking ships or ports and generally finding money and treasure will keep them happy. Take them on too long a voyage or spend too much time on personal projects like finding your family and they will start to become discontented. You can also keep them happy by dividing up the plunder occasionally. However, don’t do this too often, or their share will be small and they will feel insulted. A good tip when dividing the plunder is to sell everything you have except one ship, then go on a sea battle and get as many of your crew as possible killed. That way, when you divide up the plunder , there’ll be a larger amount to divide amongst a smaller group. As you can see, Pirates is not a game for the morally strong!

Locations
There are two basic locations in the game (although these offer far more variety than it sounds): on land or at sea.

On Land
On land generally means you are visiting a town: here, there are a number of things you can do. You can visit the merchant to buy or sell goods (little tip: don’t bother buying – it’s far more fun to attack other ships and steal their goods!). You can visit the shipwright to get ships repaired or upgraded (as you progress, you can buy add-ons for your ship to make them faster, stronger or better armed). The inn plays a central part of the game. The barman will provide you with gossip, including, on occasions, the location of ships packed with treasure. You can also recruit crew members – the larger your fleet, the bigger the crew you will need – but you will also need to feed them! You can also meet retired pirates, who will offer to sell you items – the most valuable of which are treasure maps. Occasionally, one of the old sea dogs will be pestering the barmaid, so you can choose to jump in to defend her honour. Win the ensuing swordfight and she will also give you useful information.

The other key location on land is the governor’s palace. Here you can find out which countries are at war and, if you’ve been attacking that nation’s enemies, you may be rewarded with a title and some land. Acquire a high enough rank and you will be entitled to free ship repairs or upgrades for your ships. You can also meet the governor’s daughter and try to impress her – with a long-term view to getting married. Like all good sailors, you should have a girl in every port, so flirt away! If you impress the daughters enough, they, too, will give you information.

From these two basic locations, the gameplay flows. You simply sail around, landing in different ports and try to amass as much fame and fortune as you can. This is effectively done via a series of repeating sub-games.

Sea Battles
When you encounter another ship, you can choose to attack it if it belongs to a hostile nation. You then switch to 3D view containing your ship and the ship you are attacking. You can fire your cannon to cause damage to the other ship and keep doing that until it either sinks or surrenders. Alternatively, you can ram it to board it and enter hand-to-hand combat. The computer intelligence on sea battles is quite pleasing: attack a ship which is bigger than you and you might be in trouble. On the other hand, if you have a bigger ship, the opponent might choose to surrender straight away (except other pirates who always fight to the death.) You also need to use the wind to position yourself for the best line of attack, and keep your eye on what your opponent is doing. Other tactical considerations are that the more cannon you have on your ship, the more damage you will do, and the larger your crew, the faster you will be able to re-load and go back on the offensive. A great deal of care has been taken to ensure that sea battles are somewhat realistic, yet also fun. For example, you can see the damage you are inflicting on the enemy ship and the effect it has – hit the sails and the ship be sluggish and difficulty manoeuvring , destroy its cannon, and it’s a sitting duck. It’s often fun to torture a disabled ship by simply sailing round it and firing on it!

On defeating a ship (assuming you haven’t sunk it), you can plunder it for its gold and other goods. You can also choose to take the ship and some of its crew with you (usually a good idea if the ship is not too badly damaged) or plunder it then sink it.

Sometimes you will also run into other pirates. Defeating these increases your reputation and helps you on your way to the goal of becoming the number 1 pirate of the age.

Swordfighting
If you choose to ram the ship, you will enter swordfight mode. Confront the enemy and beat them in single combat to take over their ship and possibly get some useful information. Swordfighting is probably one of the weaker parts of the game. There are only a few basic moves to master and, to be honest, you will probably never need the defensive moves. After a few goes, you will know the right time to strike – wait until your opponent raises his sword and then nip in and strike him first. After a while, swordfighting becomes a bit of a chore due to its repetitive nature.

Attacking Towns
Once you are stronger and have built up a large crew, you can even attack towns and plunder them. Doing this takes you into a turns based strategy game where you do battle with the town’s garrison (towns have different strength garrisons and the size of their garrison determines how difficult it will be to beat). Successfully wipe out the garrison and you can plunder the town (which generally will yield more money than attacking ships). This aspect of the game is fun, but limited and, unless you set yourself a real challenge by attacking a strongly fortified town with just a small crew, it’s unlikely you will have much trouble winning. This is probably one of the major criticisms of the game generally that it is too easy to do well, even on the higher levels.

Treasure Maps
Of course, being a pirate is all about “X marks the spot”, so you will often come across treasure maps. These will give you a location saying “somewhere near” a town name. You have to sail to the town then identify (from the features on the map) the exact location. Land your ship, take a party out to dig and hey presto! the treasure is yours. Digging can occasionally be frustrating as you need to be digging in just the right spot to find the treasure – be slightly to the left or right of where it is buried and you will find nothing. Having said that, it’s usually fairly easy to identify where you need to dig and there is a reasonable margin for error, so you don’t have to be pixel perfect in your positioning!

Escort Missions
Occasionally, you will be asked to escort a ship to another port. Usually these carry either a new governor o treasure. Completing the mission will, of course, buy favour with that nation. However, if you want to be a real pirate, you can wait until you get into the middle of the ocean and then attack it, taking the plunder for yourself! What’s interesting here is that your actions affect other parts of the game: stop a governor from arriving in his new town and the town will be plunged into chaos, causing it to weaken and leaving it open to attack (probably by you!). Similarly, rob a treasure ship and the inhabitants of its destination may riot when they don’t get their wages.

Family
The other side of the game is the hunt for the members of your family who were abducted into slavery. This is essentially the same as looking for treasure. Defeating enemies will give you information as to their whereabouts and you then have to find and free them. Re-uniting your family will increase your happiness and fame. However, spending too much time on personal projects like this will increase discontent amongst your crew.

Dancing Subgame
Initially, when chatting to a governor’s daughter, they will be very cool with you. However, as your fame and fortune grows, they will become more receptive, and let you escort them to the ball. This takes you into a dancing subgame similar to the ones available on the consoles. A direction arrow flashes and you have to press the corresponding key to perform that move. Act in time and you’ll dance like a pro, press it too late or press the wrong key and you’ll stumble. At the end of the dance, if you’ve done well, the governor’s daughter will reward you, possibly even agreeing to marry you. Do badly, and you will lose her favour. The dancing subgame is probably one of the trickiest to master at first. However, it does introduce you gently. Initial dances are short, with only a limited combination of keys. As the game progresses, they get longer and more complex. However, like most of the subgames, once you’ve played them a few times, they’re not really that difficult.

Graphics
Unsurprisingly, the graphics on this game are a huge improvement over earlier versions. The colours are bright and the map when you are sailing the sea is in full 3D and it’s always clear where you are going. You can see other ships coming from a distance and decide whether to avoid them or move in for an attack. The main graphics in the sub-game are also done in a cartoon style, adding to the sense of fun and giving everything a bright look and feel.

Music
The music too is great. Each subgame or location has its own short tune and you’ll quickly find yourself humming and whistling along to each of them. Similarly, the sound effects are great. As you pass other ships, you can hear the sailors calling out to you; in a sea battle, you can hear the boom of the cannon and the cries of the enemy sailors as they are thrown into the water! Whilst the sound effects are minimal, they are highly atmospheric and really add to the look and feel of the game.

Controls
Controls are really logical. Although there are a number of sub-games, the same basic controls are used. For the first hour of so when you play the game, you will probably have the instruction booklet in front of you. After that it’s (excuse the pun) plain sailing. It’s also great to see controls affected by your status in the game.

Gameplay
Of course, the graphics, sound and control may be great, but without a decent game behind it, it could still be a disaster. Thankfully, Pirates has not neglected this area producing a game that pulls you in from the moment you set sail. True, the game is essentially just a series of subgames connected by sailing around the ocean, but they are great fun! This should be boring, because it’s just a sequence of the same events repeated over and over (swordfight, attack a ship, visit port, attack a ship etc.) However, the fact that the gameplay is so open-ended really does make it worthwhile. It’s entirely up to you what you do: you can be indescribably horrible and attack everyone, or target certain nations. You can suddenly switch allegiance so that nations who expect you to be friendly find themselves being attacked. It’s also very easy to get distracted. You set off on a mission to escort a governor to his new colony, but come across a massive treasure ship on the way and can’t resist the temptation to attack it!

The game is also frustratingly addictive. Despite the fact that the subgames are pretty limited, there’s always that temptation to just play for another few minutes. The beauty of the game is that you never really know what is going to happen next. Just when you are becoming a little bored and decide to call it a day, you arrive in port and can’t resist just visiting the governor who tells you about your long-lost sister. Well, it would be rude not to rescue her straight away, wouldn’t it? So you climb back in your ship and sail off. On the way to meet her, you come across several enemy ships which need relieving of their cargo and so on…. Next time you look at the clock, you suddenly realise that another hour has passed!

Lastability
My only real criticism of the game is over its long term appeal and repeat play value. Eventually, as your character’s health starts to fail, you will be forced to retire. This is one part of the game which has never been that satisfactory in any of its incarnations. On retiring, all you get is a screen telling you what became of you after retirement, how much money you earned in your career, family members rescued etc, and that’s pretty much it. After spending so much time on the game, this is a real anti-climax.

Secondly, when you’ve invested so much in your character, it’s difficult to go back and start again from scratch. The first time I retired, I just couldn’t face going back to the beginning and having to build up a new character. It took me a few months before I was ready to set sail again. Once I did, though, the game proved just as addictive as ever!

The other disappointing aspect to the game is that these is no on-line gameplay option. How cool would it have been to battle it out with other pirates from across the world! Perhaps something for Sid Meier to consider for Pirates 2?

Conclusion
These are fairly minor criticisms, though, the game itself is utterly fantastic and I would highly recommend it to anyone. The open-ended nature of the game means you can really play it however you like and you’re not locked into a particular mode – you can change your strategy and attitude as often as you like. The open-ended nature of the gameplay means you really have no idea what’s around the corner and have to react to situations as they occur – just like life in fact! Better still, the game is now a couple of years old, so can be picked up cheap, both new and second hand, and should run on most PCs bought within the last few years.

For the record, the minimum specs are:
Windows 98/SE/ME/2000/XP, 1GHz processor, 256Mb RAM, 8x CD-ROM drive, ATI Radeon 8500 or GeForce 3 graphics card, 1.4Gb free hard disk space, Direct X 9.0

Well, what are you waiting for? Get out and start terrorising the Spanish Main now!

Summary: A game well worth parting with your hard "earned pieces of eight" for