Ahoy, matey! Arrrghhh, shiver me timbers!
Okay, I'm done with the pirate talk now and the rest of this review will be in sensible English. With the success of the movie Pirates of the Caribbean and the popularity of pirates in general, it made a lot of sense to make a pirate game. As I played Sid Meier's Pirates!, I just kept thinking...
Damn, how come no one thought of this before?
When you start the game, there's a little movie explaining where your character came from. Your family is enslaved by the evil Count Montalban, and only you escape. You grow up and you end up as a sailor. On the voyage, the captain is particularly harsh and you lead a mutiny. The men pick you as captain.
Okay, the
story was getting good, but then there's a big g a p. When the movie is over, you're a full fledged pirate. You can attack any ship without remorse. Basically, you become a killer, with nothing to explain it, and this hurt the enjoyability of the story a lot for me. In the GTA series, your character is a badas s because he was already a thug. In Mafia, your character becomes a mafioso because he went to the Mafia for protection from a rival gang. In Pirates!, one day you're a sea captain, the next day you're a full fledged pirate?
Why? How? When? Where? (Who? What?) Inquiring minds want to know. To me, video games are at their best when they do a good job in
storytelling, and this game only did an average job. Some parts just don't make sense. The evil Baron Raymondo knows where your missing relatives are. So when you track him down and then beat him in a fight, you'd expect him to tell you where they are right?
Wrong. On the Adventurer difficulty level, he gives you 1/4th of a map showing where your lost relatives are. Not only does this get tedious as you have to fight him 16(!) times and go treasure hunting with the confusing maps, it just
doesn't make sense. If I'm a pirate, I'm holding this guy at gunpoint until he takes me to every single on of my relatives. Why does my pirate let the evildoer go everytime he gives me 1/4th of a map? This whole 1/4th map business does make sense when a mysterious traveler in a tavern sells me part of a map of some pirate's treasure. That does make sense, because well, weird things always seem to happen to pirates' buried treasure and their maps. If only poor Mr. Blackbeard could just open a bank account. Anyways, it's ridiculous that I have to fight the same guy 16 times to find out where my family is.
What also doesn't make sense is that if you lose a battle, your ship gets taken and if you have another ship, you find yourself on it with no explanation. What makes even less sense is that if you lose a fight with that Raymondo and you lose your only ship, the game shows a cutscene of you being marooned and you getting picked up by another ship. The problem is, when you're done being marooned and you're on that other ship, Raymondono's ship is still there! Did he wait around for me? When you lose, I'd like to see my pirate get captured and have to fight his way out or be sent on a little canoe and have to try to make it to land or something. Y'know, like in the movies.
This game plays a lot like Freelancer, except it takes place in the high seas. Your ship rides around the Carribean and you control where it goes and who to fight. Unlike Freelancer, in
Pirates!, you are at the whim of the wind, and if the wind is against you, it will be a royal pain in the butt to go to Havana so you can chase down and beat Raymondo for the 15th time. If the wind's with you, then you move at a pleasant speed. When I was going to a faraway destination, I found myself pointing my ship in the right direction and pulling out my guitar to play a tune while I watched my ship move s l o w l y to its destination.
Gameplay is nicely varied. In Freelancer, you just point and shot at your opponents. In this game, you either try to destroy the other ship, or try to board it and fight. And with the different types of ammo, there are various strategies to use. If you're vastly outnumbered but your ship has more guns, use the Chain Shot to damage your opponent's sails. Once their sails are gone, they can't move, so use the standard Round Shot until the ship is destroyed. If you vastly outnumber your enemy, steer towards them so you can board and destroy them. With the various types of ammo and upgrades, ship warfare is decently varied. You will also end up in various duels, which end up really into button mashing frenzies. Various items you get also help your performance here. You can also sack hostile towns, which ends up into a Risk-like game. You have 3 types of troops, and you take turns (like in Risk) and try to eliminate opponents. You get attack bonuses for Flank Attacks and for attacking from higher grounds, and you get defense bonuses for taking cover in trees and stuff. You also get to try to romance governor's daughters. If you dance well, they will give you items and information. If you keep pursuing them, you will have to duel their jealous fiance and if you win, you will return to find them kidnapped. The same routine happens everytime and you will come to wonder why all these engaged women keep leading you on and why there are Colonel Mendoza (the guy who likes to kidnap these women) clones all over the Carribean. You can marry a governor's daughter too. Only one though, much to the dismay of polygamists and Fable-players everywhere.
Why do this stuff? All these things give you
Fame points, the main goal of the game. You also get points by getting titles all the way up to Duke, which you get if you do things that please a certain country. Wealth, land, defeating the top 9 pirates (which include Henry Morgan and Blackbeard), defeating wanted criminals, etc all give you fame points. The amount of Fame Points determines what happens to you when you retire. If you do poorly, you might end up as a Pickpocket for the rest of your life. If you do well, you might become a governor yourself. It's all up to you. Your life is in your hands. You can do anything you put your mind to. Blah blah blah blah.
Oh yeah, you want to know how this game looks. It seems to be pretty easy on my computer, but
graphics for the most part look very good. The high seas look wonderful and all character models look very pleasantly cartoonish. My only problem is that there aren't too many character models. All Spanish governors look the same for example. All barmaids look the same except some are black and some are white. All bartenders look the same. All merchants look the same. And so on and so on.
Keeping with the theme of repetitive-ness, the
dialogue is stale and repetitive. All the barmaids say one of about 5 different scripted things. All the "mysterious strangers" in the taverns offer to sell you something or give you information on some town. All the bartenders say 1 of 5 scripted things. Dialogue actually sounds like gibberish in this game, like the Sims, except it's not cute here. Yeah. Music is very pleasant, and it's got that 1600's vibe (not like I would know). But the music in the ballroom is nice, cannons and stuff sound cool.
Controls are a minor travesty. Since I played this on a laptop, I didn't have a number keypad. You can't reprogram controls, and you can't use a controller. So I ended up clicking the buttons on the lower right hand corner of the game, which made dancing incredibly difficult. It's only a minor nuisance for the rest of the game (you can use the arrow keys to turn), but in this day and age, there's no excuse to not have reprogramable controls. If only they spent a little more time...
That's the vibe I get with this whole game. Despite all the negative stuff I've pointed out, the game is incredibly fun. There's so much to do. I'm currently looking for my uncle while single-handedly taking over the Spanish Empire, one fort at a time, and becoming an English Duke along the way. The game feels rushed. Maybe the dialogue issues would've been cleared up with more time. Maybe more time would've meant more character models. Maybe more time would've cleared the bugs and the Mendoza clones. If you've ever had a remote interest in pirates, and like the idea of having the whole Carribean to explore while rescuing your family and looking for buried treasure, get this game. Just know that with a little more work, this game could've been better.
Story: B-
Graphics: A-
Sound: B
Control: B-
Gameplay: A
Stability: A+
Overall: B+
xo,
underdawg
Completely Unrelated Reviews
The Laptop I Played This on.
Freelancer Review.
Mafia Review.
