Reviewed: January 1, 2005
Reviewed by: Jason Porter
Publisher
Atari
Developer
Firaxis Games
Released: : November 22, 2004
Genre: Adventure
Players: 1
ESRB: Teen
9
7
8
10
8.9
System Requirements:
Screenshots (Click Image for Gallery)
Far removed from the brutal and desperate reality of the buccaneer's life back during the 1600s, the popular image of pirates is one of handsome, daring Robin Hood types with a roguish streak and an overwhelming lust for life, liberty and adventure. They have hundreds of islands with skull-shaped rock structures from which to choose their pirate hideout, and they regularly bury their treasure for no legitimate reason other than to give later thrill-seekers the chance to dig it up. Real pirates almost always spent their loot, or occasionally deposited it in a safe bank somewhere in Europe. But who cares about that? Buried treasure is way cooler.
The Caribbean pirate of the seventeenth century is one of the most romantic and exciting character archetypes in the popular mindset. So what better way to present the ideal pirate's life than in a video game? Sid Meier's Pirates! is a remake of a much older game with the same name, by the same Sid. However, as Mr. Meier himself said, technology has finally caught up with his vision, and it was time to remake the game into what it was always supposed to be.
And just check out this chest full of features:
- Experience an all-new story built upon the most fun and compelling features of the original Pirates! game
- Live out multiple quests through a non-linear, open life timeline where every decision poses distinct challenges and possibilities
- Witness the consequences of your actions in current events throughout the Pirates! world
- Battle, overtake and command 27 different ship types, enhanced with assorted ammo, cannon and other upgrades
- Take on various foes including merchant and military captains, ferocious pirates, evil gentry and even rival suitors — each with different skills and abilities
- Confront enemies on board ships, in seedy taverns, on the ramparts and even at the Governor’s mansion
- Wield weapons — or anything within your reach — as you fence against foes
- Engage in fierce naval battles fighting single enemies or multiple ships
- Sneak into towns, escape out of prisons, navigate around adversaries and surprise unsuspecting vessels
- Dispatch landing parties of buccaneers in strategic battles to take over entire cities
- Increase your riches and impress the governor’s daughter with your charm, fame, heroism — even your dancing abilities
- Collect items (swords, spyglasses, armor, hats, coats, etc.) that improve skills or provide other new benefits and view them in a new inventory system
- Enhance your gameplay experience with downloadable content including flags, sail emblems, character skins and more
As those of you who have played the original Pirates!, or any of the illustrious Sid Meier's other great games (like the Civilization series) already know, this newest game in the pantheon is open-ended. Very few open-ended games are really enjoyable to sit down and play for hours on end - except for a few titles like Age of Empires and The Sims, most bog down in meaningless micromanagement - but Pirates! is one of the exceptions.
At the start of the game, the player is given a chance to name their rakish young soon-to-be-pirate, and pick a specialty which will somewhat affect how easy certain aspects of the game are. It is unfortunate that there are no options for customizing the young fellow's appearance, but I'll get to that in the graphics section.
After a brief set-up movie in which the evil Marquis de la Montalban sells the main character's entire family into servitude because the ship that was carrying their fortunes home had been lost at sea (the main character barely escapes), players are given a chance to choose their starting allegiance by picking which nation's immigrant ship they will sail to the New World with. The next cinematic shows the wicked ship's captain pushing the immigrants to mutiny, sparked by his attempt to steal the main character's family heirloom medallion. Your character leads the mutiny and therefore becomes the new captain, ready to sail the Spanish Main in search of treasure galleons and spice traders.
The four main nations of Pirates! are the English, the Dutch, the French and the Spanish. Each allegiance has its own drawbacks and benefits, but one of the coolest things about the game is that it doesn't forget that you aren't just a privateer under contract from one nation to sink another nation's ships. You're a full-blown, black-hearted pirate captain, which means that you can gain rank with as many nations at once as you choose to.
The first thing to do is visit the governors of each nation's larger cities and obtain a letter of marque (a writ from a nation authorizing piracy against another nation). After that, depending on whose ships you sink and whose governors you're willing to escort to new cities, the various nations will be either pleased or increasingly angry at you. A very impressed nation might eventually grant you the title of Duke, provided you ransack enough enemy cities and sink enough of their military payroll ships. As a Duke, all ship upgrades and repairs are free in any of that nation's ports, and people of that nation will be eager to join your crew when you set sail.
On the other hand, a nation that constantly suffers your attacks may refuse to let you even approach their cities and begin firing upon your ship from afar, forcing you to either storm and take the city by force, or sneak past guards in the dead of night to get where you need to go. Storming a city is much the same as it was in the old Pirates!, but with nicer graphics. You'll get an assortment of Pirate (melee) and Buccaneer (ranged) units, plus an elite unit of Officers. Opposing you will be the city's garrison, plus any natives the city is able to recruit to their cause. The action is simple turn-based, stat-based strategic combat, with modifiers for cover and terrain height.
Aside from that part of the game (which suffers from slow unit movement, but is otherwise enjoyable), most of the other things to do in Pirates! are in real time. Firaxis really tried to hit all the bases with this game, and the number of things to do are almost endless. It helps to view Pirates! as a series of interlocking mini-games, rather than just one type of game. Fancy some buccaneer romance? Work your way into favor with a governor to take his daughter dancing (a mini-game), duel for her hand and eventually win it in marriage.
Duels are yet another mini-game, and an enjoyable one at that, complete with cinematic flourishes like acrobatic leaping, use of props and even a button to mock your opponent. When engaging in sea combat (to capture the treasures they are carrying, the main purpose of the game for many of us), your flagship goes up against one or two enemy ships. Learning what angle to ride the wind, when to fire a broadside and how to initiate a captains' duel by ramming the opposing ship are all fun and easy to do.
There's so much more to write about that it's staggering, including economic manipulation, smuggling goods, quests for lost cities and more. The most amazing thing about Pirates! is how well the entire system is tied together. Despite the occasional awkward moment (the wait times in the city siege mini-game are a good example), every aspect of this game is almost flawlessly tied together. Each area has its own specific rules and commands to learn, but the numeric keypad takes care of almost all of them, so learning how to dance a mean cakewalk when escorting a young maiden to the ball doesn't really feel all that different from learning how to mercilessly beat a dueling opponent on the deck of a burning ship. The simplified controls hide a surprising amount of depth, but make it so that players don't have to learn the feel of a new set of keys to press for every little thing they do.
Another great thing about Pirates! is the attention to detail that it exhibits. It's not just "wouldn't it be cool if you were a pirate," it's a fully realized vision of just how cool it would actually be. All the little details are here: eye patches, Jolly Roger-motif hats, the hero swinging on ropes across decks, your pirates singing a chanty after a great victory, even the waving of swords instead of handkerchiefs at your wedding, which look utterly out of place in the beautiful garden where the ceremony is held, and show the influence of films such as Robin Hood: Men in Tights on the game.
About the only thing missing is a parrot. I don't recall seeing a single one - unforgivable! But really, almost anything else a pirate-lover could ask for is here. And at least the game acknowledges its shortcomings: sometimes a bartender will lean in close and whisper, "Where's yer parrot?"
If anything is a bit lacking in Pirates!, it's the game's graphics. This isn't to say they aren't reasonably clear, and the facial expressions on the characters are a sight to behold indeed. However, the fact remains that overall, the graphics look a bit on the rugged side. Cutscenes in particular have a rough, jagged look to them. This could probably be fixed by maxing out the graphical settings, but I have a pretty new computer and the maximum level of quality still slows the game down profoundly. For people running on the minimum requirements to play, this is simply not an option, and so the rough cinematics will be what most of us are left with.
Coming back to those facial expressions, I can't get over how... well, how expressive they are! It's rare that a truly 3D game can give its characters this level of expression. Part of it is that Firaxis went with a slightly cartoony way of doing them, rather than trying for realism and subtlety. All the expressions are stage faces, exaggerated and amped up for us, the audience. Still, exaggerated or no, they're an impressive feat.
My other complaint is that the pirate players will control during their adventure cannot be physically altered by the player in any way. True, he ages (an impressively subtle process), and can earn sashes and plumes depending on his rank with various nations, but every game will be following the story of the same pony-tailed, blue-eyed, B-movie-jawed pirate hero. At the very least, being able to pick a custom outfit for him would have been nice, or maybe a choice of skin, eye and hair color. Our hero is expressive, likable and dashing to look at, and of course he can be named whatever a player wants. But some player control of his appearance would have been a welcome addition nonetheless.
During the bulk of gameplay, the people aren't visible because you're navigating your fleet around the Caribbean. Ships and cities look pretty nice, and the level of detail has a slide control (though again, maxing it out caused some noticeable performance problems). The islands themselves are smoothed pretty well, too. It all looks pretty nice. Just don't expect some amazingly gorgeous backdrop of the type seen in adventure games. Pirates!, like all of Sid Meier's games, is about the gameplay. Everything else takes a backseat to that. And in light of that consideration, I have to admit that the graphics are really quite nice. There's just nothing that will exactly blow your mind.
There isn't too much to write about this game from a sound perspective. The package is generally good, with the music being a high point. It's stock pirate movie stuff, full of fanfares and adventurous themes, and plays in the background during several of the mini-games as well as at certain points on the world map (such as when you leave a city, or when you defeat an enemy warship). The chanties that your pirates sing (or rather, mumble) are real-world tunes that can be recognized from films and just folklore ("blow the man down," anyone?), while the rest (I think) has been composed specifically for the game. During dances, the music is true to the time - well ordered, neoclassical stuff that's easy to get the rhythm of. The only problem is that there wasn't much music overall. Some more background music would have been a nice addition.
Instead of true voice acting, Pirates! opts for a Zelda-like voice sample system, whereby various characters make noises that sound like words, but don't actually mean anything. Since the game is, in a way, a simulation, this makes some sense. True voice acting would have been nice at some points, but the samples are fun and varied. Occasionally they're quite funny, too: when challenging the captain of the guard to a duel in a tavern for bothering the barmaid, the main character pushes his chest, points outside and flings his best insult: "Chupan!" This had my girlfriend and I pretty much doing the same thing to each other for a week or two (except for the dueling bit).
Generally, voices in this game are used as sound effects, to accentuate rather than illustrate. Pirates! has lots and lots of sound effects besides the voices, though. There are several different cannon-related sounds, splashes, musket fire, sword clashing noises, creaking masts and more. Everything is as one might expect: just vibrant enough to be removed from reality, but realistic enough to create a vibrant world.
Well, this is the $64,000 question, isn't it? Sure, there's a story: you've got to do something about that wicked Marquis and rescue your family, right? But there's no penalty for completely ignoring the story and just lording it up all over the Greater Antilles. Pirates! is truly open-ended, though it is true that some things offer greater rewards than others.
If you want to play No-Beard the Conqueror and ransack every town you find in the name of your favorite nation, you can do just that. If you'd rather settle into a sedentary lifestyle of trading goods for profit between friendly cities, or smuggling between enemy cities, well, it's your prerogative. Fancy marriage as young as you're able? Take the "Wit and Charm" skill set, pick up some dancing shoes and a ruby ring and get freaky. And trying something new can have unexpected rewards, too: you're highly unlikely to ever see even a tiny piece of a map to one of the lost cities of gold if you don't win the heart of an influential governor's daughter. This leads to that, which leads to the other thing.
Everything in Pirates! is interconnected, and the unified feel and look of the game really makes it still feel like one game, one game with a thousand possibilities. When you're finally ready to retire from the free life, the game takes into account how notorious your pirate is, whether or not he married, how many quests he finished, how much gold he plundered and a number of other factors and gives you an end story based on all of it. It also tells which job your character retires to. Depending on the level of difficulty and how well you did, it might be anything from a pickpocket all the way up to the next governor of the island he retired to. This detailed ending screen gives you yet another incentive to play it through again, just to see what other outcomes there are.
All in all, the way Pirates! manages to blend simple, intuitive interfaces with an insane amount of different things to do makes it one of the most replayable titles I've ever had the pleasure to review. It's right up there with the Civilization series for entertainment value, and it won't get old much faster than those games did, either.
There is little in this world that cannot be made more enjoyable by the addition of one of two things. The first is monkeys. The second is pirates. Although best when together, one or the other can be more than enough to provide excellent entertainment. Sid Meier's Pirates! is a perfect example of this truth.
Guided by great swashbuckling movies and books, this game is a blend of the very best that simulation games have to offer, with all of the raucous entertainment of a good pirate film. It has quality graphics and sound, but the really important thing is that it is so much fun to play, it would hardly matter if it looked like a ColecoVision game.
The fact that it's such a fun game, so easy to get into while still offering a nearly endless number of options for veteran players, makes it one of the best values on the market today as well. And come on. It's about pirates. You know you love pirates. So go out, set sail and pillage yerself a copy - ye won't be disappointed, 'lubber.