Sid Meier’s Pirates Review (no fat)

Game Description

Sid Meier’s Pirates is an intriguing and intricate role playing game that allows you the chance to become a pirate captain in the 1600s. While the pirate captain’s initial reason for taking to the ocean, is to avenge the family honor against a wrongdoing Spanish nobleman, the game is open ended to a significant degree. In other words, what starts off as a quest for vengeance leads an avid player down any number of watery paths in the Caribbean.

Your character is the scion of a wealthy merchant family that has been imprisoned by an evil nobleman. Estranged from your family since boyhood, you take advantage of escaping imprisonment by growing into a daring and cunning pirate ship captain… ultimately positioning yourself to exact vengeance, along with fame and fortune.

Sid Maier’s Pirates Gameplay

Through the course of the role playing adventure, a player will embark on hunts for valuable buried treasure, face tough and rough antagonists in battle and may even have the chance to win the lovely hand of a fair maiden from the exotic regions of the Caribbean Sea.

While the Xbox edition of Pirates is new to the marketplace, the initial concept for the game has been around since its initial release and publication way back in 1987. As a consequence of its extended presence in one form or another on the market, Pirates has been a game in real time development that has benefited from the feedback and suggestions of gamers of different sorts for nearly twenty years.

As mentioned earlier, Pirates is an open ended strategy game. Therefore, while being fast paced and interesting overall, the game requires you to develop a meaningful strategy for success. Again, faced with friends and foes alike throughout the winding sea course of this game, you need to develop strategies to benefit from the former while vanquishing the later.

Barring a catastrophe early in the game, your pirate captain character actually ill age over time. The ultimate goal is win and garner as much fortune and fame as possible while sailing the high seas. If the winds blow correctly, and you make the right strategic decisions along the way, a gamer can end up with his character in the “Pirates’ Hall of Fame” at the conclusion of rather intense play.

Sid Meier’s Pirates Visuals and Graphics

Visually, the game is nicely designed and constructed. Indeed, some of the visuals and graphics are crafted and created in a nearly lighthearted manner. For example, many of the enemies that your character and his worthy crew will confront throughout the game are uniquely drawn buffoons created with a dash of silly pomposity. On the other hand, the pirate captain and his band of warrior are a colorful, rather happy-go-lucky bunch of fellows who are entertaining to watch even when not engaged in a prickly battle of one sort or another.

Detail is important in this game and Pirates satisfies in this regard. The graphics, visuals and images have been fine tuned to the point that glimpses of fish and dolphins are seen around your battleship. Even the sails blow gently (or with brutal force) depending on the surrounding climes and weather conditions.

In style and design, one nearly hearkens back to the swashbuckler movies of days gone by -- the feature flicks in which Hollywood’s greatest icons dominated the screen.

Perhaps the only real drawback to be found graphically centers on an occasionally delay or lapse in uploading from scene. These blips, while not significant in the greater scheme of the game, nonetheless are noticeable and can be annoying to an avid player who wants and demands smoother flowing action.

On a rather more serious note, the game suffers from some stability problems that might cause you to end up facing a game crash. On the other hand, should this occur, the game has an auto-save feature that will bring you back to where you were at the time of the crash event when the game reboots…

Sid Meier’s Pirates Sound Quality

Pirates maintains solid sound quality overall. As with the graphics and visuals associated with the game, great care has been spent on the details associated with the game’s sound effects. Everything from the sound of seagulls flocking about to the seawater lapping against the boat to cannon fire raging away are done with a sense of honesty and believability that render the game -- from scene to scene -- uniquely captivating.

The experienced developer of Pirates has even ascribed an interesting and intriguing language to his pirate crew and other characters. While generally nonsensical in reality, the language spoken by the pirates lends a sense of additional mystic to the game.

Finally, Pirates has a solid soundtrack that includes both original music and interesting, historic ditties that will long be remembered and that truly add to the overall gaming experience.

Sid Meier’s Pirates 2 cents

Pirates is an interesting, intriguing and challenging role playing game that should captivate even the most jaded gamer. The main reason why the game is compelling -- and should remain so over time -- is found in the intricate storylines and creative play that changes and develops as the game progresses.

Because of the visuals and graphics, and the generally smooth manner in which the game plays through, you actually end up feeling as if you have been propelled backwards in time hundreds of years -- to an era of excitement, enchantment and suspense. Additionally, there are abundant replay opportunities with Pirates, meaning that with all of the possible variations it takes a long time to tire of the game itself.

… a definite collectable for all adventure seekers.

Sid Meier’s Pirates Cost

The game currently retails for $39.99US at the time of writing on the Xbox.