Sid Meier's Pirates!
Added August 1st, 2005 by Grandest
Introduction:
Ahoy matey! Grab yer cutlass and hat ‘cause we’re headed fer the Caribbean! Here we have Pirates! a videogame all about, guess what, pirates! Brought to us from gaming legend Sid Meier, who was made famous by his acclaimed simulation titles on the PC side of things, including the popular Civilization series. Originally made for the PC can this game do it right and throw off its PC gaming shackles to become a great console game? It sure can!
In the game you take control of an 18-year-old swashbuckler right off the heels of having his family sold into slavery by an evil Marquis. Okay, so it doesn’t have an original story, but, in true Sid Meier fashion, it’s all about the gameplay, and what it has there is really creative and fun.
Gameplay:
This game plays extremely well for a PC port, so those who had qualms about the strategy game legend porting a game to a console rest assured, it plays great. I would even say that if you sat someone down to play it that didn’t know it was a PC port they wouldn’t believe you when you told them.
Ahoy matey! Grab yer cutlass and hat ‘cause we’re headed fer the Caribbean! Here we have Pirates! a videogame all about, guess what, pirates! Brought to us from gaming legend Sid Meier, who was made famous by his acclaimed simulation titles on the PC side of things, including the popular Civilization series. Originally made for the PC can this game do it right and throw off its PC gaming shackles to become a great console game? It sure can!
In the game you take control of an 18-year-old swashbuckler right off the heels of having his family sold into slavery by an evil Marquis. Okay, so it doesn’t have an original story, but, in true Sid Meier fashion, it’s all about the gameplay, and what it has there is really creative and fun.
Gameplay:
This game plays extremely well for a PC port, so those who had qualms about the strategy game legend porting a game to a console rest assured, it plays great. I would even say that if you sat someone down to play it that didn’t know it was a PC port they wouldn’t believe you when you told them.
Gameplay is made up of several mini-games including arcade-style ship battles, sword fights, button press sequences, ball room dancing, sneaking, and land based strategy elements. They all mesh together nicely and, for the most part, they fit in nicely. The game moves along at a nice pace and you can get a lot done in a short span of time. You can be battling it out with ships one minute and the next minute swing onto a ship killing off the enemy crew before taking on the captain. There is also an element of politics in the game. I can hear your groans, but it isn’t too complicated and it takes a background role to the other parts of the game.
At the outset you align yourself with the English, Spanish, French, or Dutch. As you progress you can gain rank in each of the different country’s navies. Each rank comes with a bonus, be it lower ship repair costs or easier recruiting in those country’s ports. It’s also nice that you can play at all the different countries right from the start of the game. I actually started with the English, but quickly gained more favor with the French. It adds some depth to the game, but doesn’t really change the gameplay if you’re with one country instead of another.
Ship battles, the real meat of the game, are fun and fast. You can have up to three different kinds of cannon shot for your ship (cannonballs for hull damage, grapes for crew damage, and chain shot for sail damage) and there are a “boatload” of upgrades that you can purchase for your ship from hull fortifications to new cannons and sails. The battles aren’t too complicated, but there is some strategy that you can delve into. Will you sink the ship or board it and take it as your own? Will you use chain shot to slow down the faster boat or risk letting it escape to use grapes and try to slow it down by killing everyone on board from afar? The battles are fun and it’s cool to see how different the ships are when you engage in battle with them, from the fast sloops that are able to dodge cannonballs to the slow galleons that can unload from 16 cannons on either side.
The sword battles are also fast and fun. Here there are only a few buttons to worry about. There are your standard attacks and blocks along with a few special attacks that can achieve greater damage, but leave you open to a counter attack. There are many things available to upgrade your character, from perfectly balanced swords to metal chestplates and single-shot pistols (your character can actually use two of these at once). It was a disappointment to see that the battles are all pretty similar and that the pistol only acts as a bit of leverage at the beginning of battles and cannot be used directly by the player. The AI is fairly good, but it can be easy to outsmart once you attain the better faster swords.
There are no life meters for your characters, but if the number of crewmembers that you brought aboard with you drops to 1, your character will forfeit and the same goes for the enemy. If you board a ship with a crew that greatly outnumbers yours, you will enter an extra mini-game where you go through a number of button presses as your character performs some actions. It was fun the first few times, but there are only a few variations on the mini-game and it isn’t very hard to beat so it quickly becomes a chore.
The dancing is fairly straightforward. You just watch the screen as your character moves and you press buttons as they appear on the screen and if done correctly, the lovely lass falls for you. This mini-game also has some upgrades for your character in the form of dancing shoes, but this portion of the game is so easy that they really aren’t worth acquiring for your character. This portion of the game becomes a chore fairly quickly but can be easily avoided, so it doesn’t detract much from the game.
The land based strategy portion of the game comes up when a nation has a high enough bounty on your head to fire at your ship as you pass by. If you have enough men you can opt to attack the city to obtain yourself some more loot. This mini-game is a turn-based strategy game like Sid Meier’s Civilization games and, based on your style of play, can take a little more time to become accustomed to. It is also the mini-game that you will probably play the least amount of as it can take some effort to raise and keep a large enough crew to attack most cities. Like the Civilization series, this game takes place from a top down view as you watch your units battle it out with the enemy. You are offered either melee sword attacks, if you’re close enough, or ranged attacks, if your enemy isn’t close enough to attack directly. The game also takes into account your height and the cover that the terrain offers you. If you’re high on a hill above the enemy or in a forest, you will wreck more havoc on the enemy. This game isn’t too boring, but it’s not really fun either; it’s an optional game though so you won’t have to play it very much if you don’t wish to.
At the outset you align yourself with the English, Spanish, French, or Dutch. As you progress you can gain rank in each of the different country’s navies. Each rank comes with a bonus, be it lower ship repair costs or easier recruiting in those country’s ports. It’s also nice that you can play at all the different countries right from the start of the game. I actually started with the English, but quickly gained more favor with the French. It adds some depth to the game, but doesn’t really change the gameplay if you’re with one country instead of another.
Ship battles, the real meat of the game, are fun and fast. You can have up to three different kinds of cannon shot for your ship (cannonballs for hull damage, grapes for crew damage, and chain shot for sail damage) and there are a “boatload” of upgrades that you can purchase for your ship from hull fortifications to new cannons and sails. The battles aren’t too complicated, but there is some strategy that you can delve into. Will you sink the ship or board it and take it as your own? Will you use chain shot to slow down the faster boat or risk letting it escape to use grapes and try to slow it down by killing everyone on board from afar? The battles are fun and it’s cool to see how different the ships are when you engage in battle with them, from the fast sloops that are able to dodge cannonballs to the slow galleons that can unload from 16 cannons on either side.
The sword battles are also fast and fun. Here there are only a few buttons to worry about. There are your standard attacks and blocks along with a few special attacks that can achieve greater damage, but leave you open to a counter attack. There are many things available to upgrade your character, from perfectly balanced swords to metal chestplates and single-shot pistols (your character can actually use two of these at once). It was a disappointment to see that the battles are all pretty similar and that the pistol only acts as a bit of leverage at the beginning of battles and cannot be used directly by the player. The AI is fairly good, but it can be easy to outsmart once you attain the better faster swords.
There are no life meters for your characters, but if the number of crewmembers that you brought aboard with you drops to 1, your character will forfeit and the same goes for the enemy. If you board a ship with a crew that greatly outnumbers yours, you will enter an extra mini-game where you go through a number of button presses as your character performs some actions. It was fun the first few times, but there are only a few variations on the mini-game and it isn’t very hard to beat so it quickly becomes a chore.
The dancing is fairly straightforward. You just watch the screen as your character moves and you press buttons as they appear on the screen and if done correctly, the lovely lass falls for you. This mini-game also has some upgrades for your character in the form of dancing shoes, but this portion of the game is so easy that they really aren’t worth acquiring for your character. This portion of the game becomes a chore fairly quickly but can be easily avoided, so it doesn’t detract much from the game.
The land based strategy portion of the game comes up when a nation has a high enough bounty on your head to fire at your ship as you pass by. If you have enough men you can opt to attack the city to obtain yourself some more loot. This mini-game is a turn-based strategy game like Sid Meier’s Civilization games and, based on your style of play, can take a little more time to become accustomed to. It is also the mini-game that you will probably play the least amount of as it can take some effort to raise and keep a large enough crew to attack most cities. Like the Civilization series, this game takes place from a top down view as you watch your units battle it out with the enemy. You are offered either melee sword attacks, if you’re close enough, or ranged attacks, if your enemy isn’t close enough to attack directly. The game also takes into account your height and the cover that the terrain offers you. If you’re high on a hill above the enemy or in a forest, you will wreck more havoc on the enemy. This game isn’t too boring, but it’s not really fun either; it’s an optional game though so you won’t have to play it very much if you don’t wish to.
The sneaking portions of the game come up when you are escaping from jail, or when you want to enter an enemy city but you either don’t have enough men to attack or you just don’t want to. It’s pretty straightforward and pretty easy. You move your character through the streets from a third person viewpoint and that’s basically it. You can just run through for the most part, and if you run into a guard you just have to mash on the A button to knock them down and get away without any consequences. This game isn’t too much fun either, but it’s easy to get through, so it doesn’t take much away from the experience.
The revenge story can either be ignored or followed through as you progress through the game, but you mainly fabricate your own character’s story as you take to the seas. Gameplay never gets too tedious, but keeping morale up can get to be a bit of a chore and traveling on the seas can get to be slow when your ship is undermanned or if you’re sailing against the wind. There are also varying difficulty levels and a wide variety of ships to choose from to help keep the gameplay fun and fresh.
There really is quite a bit of stuff to do in this game, from wooing the governor’s daughter to hunting down Spanish treasure ships, and there are a lot of ways to play the game. You can also end the game at any time and divide your plunder with your crew and retire. Upon doing this, the game generates stats and a little epilogue for your character that’s fun to read. They also threw in a fun multiplayer mode for up to 4 players on a single Xbox where you can test each other’s mettle in the ship battles. If you’re alone, or you just want to fill out extra spaces, there are bots available to play against. The game also supports online scoreboards, which adds a competitive edge to the game if you have some friends on Live with the game. Firaxis has also included the downloadable content feature so later down the line you can expect more content to spruce up the game.
Graphics:
This game has some very nice graphics. Much detail was put into every bit of the game from the main character to the hulking wooden ships. The environments are also nicely detailed with jungle-covered islands and the stripped hulls of ships caught among the rocks at sea. It’s nice to see your character age over time and it’s also cool to see his uniforms of the different countries change as he ranks up. They’re not the best out there, but they’re pretty and they get the job done and more.
The revenge story can either be ignored or followed through as you progress through the game, but you mainly fabricate your own character’s story as you take to the seas. Gameplay never gets too tedious, but keeping morale up can get to be a bit of a chore and traveling on the seas can get to be slow when your ship is undermanned or if you’re sailing against the wind. There are also varying difficulty levels and a wide variety of ships to choose from to help keep the gameplay fun and fresh.
There really is quite a bit of stuff to do in this game, from wooing the governor’s daughter to hunting down Spanish treasure ships, and there are a lot of ways to play the game. You can also end the game at any time and divide your plunder with your crew and retire. Upon doing this, the game generates stats and a little epilogue for your character that’s fun to read. They also threw in a fun multiplayer mode for up to 4 players on a single Xbox where you can test each other’s mettle in the ship battles. If you’re alone, or you just want to fill out extra spaces, there are bots available to play against. The game also supports online scoreboards, which adds a competitive edge to the game if you have some friends on Live with the game. Firaxis has also included the downloadable content feature so later down the line you can expect more content to spruce up the game.
Graphics:
This game has some very nice graphics. Much detail was put into every bit of the game from the main character to the hulking wooden ships. The environments are also nicely detailed with jungle-covered islands and the stripped hulls of ships caught among the rocks at sea. It’s nice to see your character age over time and it’s also cool to see his uniforms of the different countries change as he ranks up. They’re not the best out there, but they’re pretty and they get the job done and more.
Audio:
The sound in the game is also very good. From the booming of the cannons to the different styled music of each nation, the sound quality is very good overall. There aren’t very many voiceovers, only for a little bit of narration, which means there is a bit of reading while you listen to a few grunts in place of speech. I don’t mind it, but I know that some people that hate to read in games might be a little put-off. The excellent sound effects in all of the sword battles and ship-to-ship combat really make up for it with their quality though.
Controls:
As a general rule most games ported over from a pc control like a drunken sailor trying to captain a galleon all by his lonesome, so it was a very pleasant surprise to see how well this game controls. The ships handle smoothly and the sword battles give you a great deal of command over what you can do without being overly confusing. Steering the ships can be a little perplexing at first because you have a static view, which can lead to some going left when you meant right and vice versa. This is pretty easy to overcome though, and after about 15 minutes of sailing you’ll be fine. It’s also nice that they put in a control layout for each game that’s easily accessed by pressing the back button at any point during gameplay. All the menus are also easy to navigate and don’t feel as if they were made for a mouse. Overall it’s a very easy to control game.
Replay:
This game has a fairly high replay value. There are many things to do, a variety of different ways things can turn out, and your choice of difficulty levels. The game also boasts several different unlockables. The Xbox Live scoreboards are another reason to play through again to see if you can best your friends. The promise of downloadable content adds some more replay value to the game. A whole game can take as little as a day to complete or as long as you want, depending on your play style and how much you want to do as one character. The multiplayer mode they threw in is also nice, but you won’t find yourself playing it too often. If you aren’t into the more mini-game style games you might want to rent this one.
The sound in the game is also very good. From the booming of the cannons to the different styled music of each nation, the sound quality is very good overall. There aren’t very many voiceovers, only for a little bit of narration, which means there is a bit of reading while you listen to a few grunts in place of speech. I don’t mind it, but I know that some people that hate to read in games might be a little put-off. The excellent sound effects in all of the sword battles and ship-to-ship combat really make up for it with their quality though.
Controls:
As a general rule most games ported over from a pc control like a drunken sailor trying to captain a galleon all by his lonesome, so it was a very pleasant surprise to see how well this game controls. The ships handle smoothly and the sword battles give you a great deal of command over what you can do without being overly confusing. Steering the ships can be a little perplexing at first because you have a static view, which can lead to some going left when you meant right and vice versa. This is pretty easy to overcome though, and after about 15 minutes of sailing you’ll be fine. It’s also nice that they put in a control layout for each game that’s easily accessed by pressing the back button at any point during gameplay. All the menus are also easy to navigate and don’t feel as if they were made for a mouse. Overall it’s a very easy to control game.
Replay:
This game has a fairly high replay value. There are many things to do, a variety of different ways things can turn out, and your choice of difficulty levels. The game also boasts several different unlockables. The Xbox Live scoreboards are another reason to play through again to see if you can best your friends. The promise of downloadable content adds some more replay value to the game. A whole game can take as little as a day to complete or as long as you want, depending on your play style and how much you want to do as one character. The multiplayer mode they threw in is also nice, but you won’t find yourself playing it too often. If you aren’t into the more mini-game style games you might want to rent this one.
Summary:
Pirates! is a pretty fun game. It offers a great deal to do and is a perfect pick-up and play game with variety and depth so that it doesn’t get too old too quick. Some of the mini-games become old more quickly than the others, but these get the least amount of gameplay time so they don’t detract much from the overall experience. It’s a nice change of pace from all the first person shooters out there and it does enough right to make it stand out from all the clutter currently on the market. It’s also nice to see a game that’s just fun in and of itself, without trying to shock you with over the top violence or the like. They kept to a pretty mild portrayal of pirates while keeping the pirating spirit in there so it’s all good. Keep in mind though that it is just a bunch of mini-games, and while fun mini-games, they can get repetitive, especially to those that enjoy more story-driven games. For most people, though, the mini-games will hold their value for a long time.
Overall this game provides a swashbucklingly good time through fun mini-games and a great theme.
Pirates! is a pretty fun game. It offers a great deal to do and is a perfect pick-up and play game with variety and depth so that it doesn’t get too old too quick. Some of the mini-games become old more quickly than the others, but these get the least amount of gameplay time so they don’t detract much from the overall experience. It’s a nice change of pace from all the first person shooters out there and it does enough right to make it stand out from all the clutter currently on the market. It’s also nice to see a game that’s just fun in and of itself, without trying to shock you with over the top violence or the like. They kept to a pretty mild portrayal of pirates while keeping the pirating spirit in there so it’s all good. Keep in mind though that it is just a bunch of mini-games, and while fun mini-games, they can get repetitive, especially to those that enjoy more story-driven games. For most people, though, the mini-games will hold their value for a long time.
Overall this game provides a swashbucklingly good time through fun mini-games and a great theme.
Our Rating:
Breakdown:
Readers:
87
Gameplay:
Graphics:
Audio:
Controls:
Replay:
Graphics:
Audio:
Controls:
Replay:
88
87
85
85
87
87
85
85
87
6928
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