Sid Meier's Pirates!

System: PC
Release Date: 2004
Published By: 2k Games
Reviewed by: Dave
Rating:

So I downloaded this game from Steam the other weekend. "Sid Meier's Pirates!" It's got Sid Meier's name right there in the title, so I figured it must be a quality game. Plus, the original version was released in 1987 and people had such fond memories of it that they released a remake in 2004 with updated graphics and such. I figured this was a can't miss purchase.

I'm not sure if it's even possible to have been more wrong. This game is not good. In fact, it's the exact opposite of good, whatever that is. If I were a reviewer for Gamespot, I would give it the dreaded 6 out of 10 rating and be fired for it. Since I'm not, I'll tell you the whole truth about the game instead of vaguely implying how much it sucks.

First, background: It's a mostly free-form, follow-your-own-path type game, but as is often the case, the developers sought to provide a canon back story for your character so you have some specific objectives to accomplish if that's your kind of thing. I'm not going to hold this against the game, (as you'll soon see, there's much much more to complain about) but just once I'd like to see someone with the balls to just release a completely free-form game with no or very minimal back story for your character and no real canon story to follow. The old RPG Darklands from Microprose was pretty close to this, and I can easily see how a game like Darklands could be vastly improved upon today with modern storage capacity what it is (the biggest problem with older free-form games is that they get repetitive really quickly precisely because the developers didn't have a whole lot of space to store a vast array of different types of quests and such). So, game developers, you have been challenged. Get to it!

The back story, for what it's worth, is fairly simple, even though it requires a five minute cut-scene at the beginning to explain. Basically your family owed some corrupt Marquis money, and he had your whole family clapped in irons and spirited off before they could repay the debt. You escaped, and grew up to become a Privateer (the game plays pretty fast and loose with the distinction between Pirate and Privateer, but since there was often little historical difference between the two in practice, I can let this slide too) and sailed the high seas seeking fortune, fame, and information regarding the whereabouts of your lost family.

Pretty simple back story, and it's a set up that could lead into a really great game. Except... there's no game. Seriously. The whole thing is just a collection of the same five mini-games that you play over and over and over. The first is the "sailing around" mini-game. This is the one you'll play most often, and easily the least fun. To be fair, it's not really a mini-game at all, it's just a navigation screen. The only reason it plays something like a mini-game is that there are targets you can choose to attack while you're sailing from place to place (other ships of various nations, other pirate vessels, and sometimes native ships like war canoes), and also because you have one constant enemy on this screen that you're always fighting: The wind.

See, the game plays fast and loose with history and reality pretty much everywhere. The naval combat includes such standard naval tactics as "dodging cannon balls" and "firing four complete 20-cannon broadsides in less than 30 seconds". The fencing is very much in the cinematic, swashbuckling tradition. You even get rewarded by your starting nation with a Letter of Marque right after your first act as a pirate, which was *commandeering one of their ships*. But the one thing the developers saw fit to get painstakingly accurate is the simple fact that plagued all sailors before the invention of the steam engine: You can't sail into the wind.

To be fair, the developers did concede on one minor front. You *can*, in fact, sail directly into the wind on the main navigation map (you can't do so during the ship-to-ship combat mini-game, however--sometimes you even get pushed backwards if you try). You can do it, but it's incredibly slow. This would be at least acceptable if the damn direction of the wind EVER CHANGED. On the lowest difficulty level, the wind blows constantly from east to west. On higher difficulty levels, it moves around a bit, but always generally blows east to west. This makes sailing west very easy, and sailing east very, very hard. You can cross the entire map from east to west in about two or three minutes, but you're looking at a 15 to 20 minute ordeal to get back. Yes, I know the prevailing winds in the Carribean blow from the east. But dammit, they fudged so many historical details for the sake of "fun" game-play, why the hell did they have to keep THIS one? Sailing east was so painful that I avoided it whenever possible--I'd save up objectives that I wanted to do that were on the extreme east of the map, then go do them all at once if I could, because I knew that once I sailed back to the west it'd be hell getting back.

Certain ships have an easier time sailing into the wind, and no, I wasn't just stubbornly sticking my prow in the direction of the wind and expecting to get somewhere--I learned pretty quickly how to tack into the wind and such. It just wasn't FUN. It got so bad that I'd just refuse to do some quests, and wait for certain others to re-pop on the other side of the map if I wanted to complete them.

The navigation map leads you to all the other mini-games. The next most common one is ship-to-ship combat. While playing the "sailing around" game, you often come across other ships of various nations (Spain, England, France, and the Netherlands) that are ripe for the picking. As you sail by them, you get the option to attack them, and this triggers the naval combat mini-game. The objective here is to either outright sink your opponent's ship (not very desirable usually, since you want to collect booty as a Pirate, and there's no booty to be had from a sunken ship) or force it to surrender to you.

It soon became clear to me that the best course of action in this game was simply to sail my ship directly into the other ship. I'm pretty sure this isn't how naval combat in the age of sail was conducted, but it's easily the best possible way to handle it in this game. Your main objective in taking other ships is to take their cargo and/or their crew. The best way to do this is not to freaking bust the ship up too badly so you can sail it back to port and unload the goods and sell the ship for extra cash if you don't want to just keep it. Firing cannonballs at the ship is counter-productive to this goal. If you bust the ship up too badly it'll take forever to sail back to port, and sailing around the map is already a huge hassle. Plus, you won't get as much for it when you go to sell it, or it'll cost you money to repair it if you want to keep it.

So yeah, don't bother with all the fancy naval maneuvers or long range gunnery or anything. Just sail your ship directly into the side of the other ship and trigger the NEXT mini-game.

Once two ships come together in the naval combat mini-game, one of two things can happen. Either the ship that got rammed will just give up, and you capture it, or you will have to board the ship and duel the opposing captain.

The fencing mini-game was at once the most fun and most frustrating one in the game. Basically each combatant has three attacks and three defenses, with each attack being thwarted completely by the opposing defense. High attack is thwarted with duck, mid attack is thwarted with parry, and low attack is thwarted with jump. Pretty simple. And on the lowest difficulty, fencing is insultingly easy. You don't even have to use any of the defenses, as the other combatants are so slow you can just whale away on them while they're trying to perform their attacks (you are vulnerable to a counter-attack while you're in the middle of winding up for one of your attacks if the other fighter is faster than you are--and on the lowest difficulty level, you're nearly always way faster than every opponent). On higher difficulty levels, however, the difficulty ranges from "insultingly easy" to "impossibly hard" nearly at random. Certain key villains who you meet up with are fairly easy the first time you fight them, and after that, become nearly impossible. They're so much faster than you that you barely have time to register which defense you need to hit before they're bashing the crap out of you.

Now, I'm the first to admit that I'm no FPS jockey. My reflexes and twitch-gaming abilities leave a lot to be desired, so I'm sure others would fare better than I against some of these opponents. But here's the thing though. The fencing mini-game is so repetitive that even for those people who were good at it, I suspect it would become mind-numbingly boring fairly quickly. It's just "stimulus/response" gaming. You observe which attack your opponent is performing, then perform the proper defense, then counter-attack. That's it. If you can do that properly, you'll never not win a duel. There's no strategy, there's no tactics. The animations are basically the same over and over, and there are only about four or five unique "maps" to fight on, at least two or three of which are on a ship. The goal of the fight is just to push your opponent all the way to the end of the battlefield, then the "win" animation plays for that battlefield, and that's it. Every successful attack pushes your opponent back a step or two. And you'll play this mini-game literally a hundred times or more during the course of an average game. To add insult to injury, this is the ONLY mini-game that advances the main plot as near as I can tell. So if you're bad at reflex gaming like I am, have fun trying to save your family!

So hey, you captured that ship by dueling the captain and winning (the laws of the sea being what they are, his crew was totally required to give up once they saw him bested in single combat!) Congratulations, you just had the most fun you're ever going to have playing this game. Capturing ships and stealing their cargo is pretty much what a pirate does, and you're going to do this over and over and over and over again as the game goes on.

So back to the "sailing around" mini-game so you can take your booty back to port and sell it. There are dozens of ports to choose from. Spanish strongholds, English settlements, French cities, Dutch colonies, and pirate safe havens. It's all here. Only problem is every single one is exactly the same. Apart from the prices the merchant is willing to pay for your stolen booty, and the fact that your rank with each nation determines what you pay for ship repairs and upgrades in ports of that nation, every single port in the game is essentially the same. You get the same six menu options in every single port. "Talk to the Governor", "Visit the Tavern", "Trade with the Merchant", "Consult with the Shipwright", "Divide the Plunder", and "Sail Away".

I'll talk about the first one, "Talk to the Governor", in a bit, as it often triggers the fourth mini-game. Let me quickly run down the other options here.

"Visit the Tavern" is just what it sounds like. You go to the local tavern, which looks exactly the same in every port, and meet the same cast of characters. On the left of your screen, there will probably be some guys you can recruit. So recruit them, as you can never have enough crew members (you'll see why when I get to the "Divide the Plunder" option). In the far corner is a mysterious traveller. He'll either offer to sell you something, or offer to tell you about some place he just went. Buy whatever he's offering if you can afford it, or listen politely to him describe what the Merchant in port X buys stolen goods for otherwise. Now talk to the barmaid. She'll either say she has nothing at all to say to you, or she'll give you some hint about the whereabouts of some person you may or may not be after. Very occasionally, she'll be being pestered by some surly local who you can duel. If you beat him, ten more people will suddenly be willing to join your crew! Go recruit those guys post haste! Now talk to the barkeep. He'll either gossip with you like the barmaid, or he'll trigger the fencing mini-game if there is a criminal holed up in the tavern (you'll know in advance if there's one here, because someone else will have told you at some point). If there's a criminal to fence, do so and collect your reward. If not, take note of the gossip and move on. That's it. You've finished the tavern. And the good thing here is, you don't have to learn anything new about taverns ever again, because EVERY TAVERN IN THE GAME is exactly like this one.

Now back to the main menu, and on to "Trade with the Merchant". This screen is easy. Hit "Sell All". Yeah, that dude in the tavern told you that in some other port they'll pay you way more for your spices, but it's such a goddamn hassle to get over there that it doesn't matter. Just take whatever this guy is offering and move on. If he has any guns you might consider buying them, or if you have too many guns for the number of ships you have you might consider selling some to him--the same goes for food. But 99.999% of the time, you'll come to this screen and just hit "Sell All" and move on.

Now "Consult with the Shipwright". Repair any ships in your fleet that are damaged. If he offers ship upgrades, purchase them for your flagship if you haven't already. Sell any ships you don't want anymore. Now you're done with the Shipwright!

"Divide the Plunder" is next. DON'T DO THIS. Seriously, never do it unless you have to. Here's the deal with dividing the plunder. Remember those guys I told you to recruit? Well, they're only in this for themselves, naturally. I mean, they're all a bunch of bloodthirsty pirates, they don't give a good goddamn about your quest for your lost family or whatever the hell you keep going on about. All they want is for you to make them a lot of money. At certain points during the game, pretty much no matter how much you try to keep them happy, your crew will get pissed off and basically force you to come to port and take this option. When that happens, go ahead and do it. It's pretty much inevitable, but try to put it off as long as possible. When you divide the plunder, basically you're left with 10% of whatever cash you had on hand, plus your flagship and 40 crew members, and that's it. Now start all over building up your fleet and crew! The game is completely rigged in this fashion so you can never get too powerful. Eventually your crew will demand their share of the phat lewtz and then ditch you, forcing you to start over. Here's a hint. Once you're in port and are ready to divide the plunder because your crew is all pissy, make sure you spend as much of the damn loot as you can before they make you split it up! Buy everything in town that isn't nailed down. Don't bother with the goods from the merchant, though--your crew will just consider that part of the booty and sell it before dividing the gold anyway. But make sure you go through all the other menu options and buy any special items the mysterious dude in the tavern might be selling *before* you let your scurvy-ridden crew take their share of the cash.

"Sail Away" is pretty self explanatory.

Now back to the beginning. "Talk with the Governor" is the first option you get on your town menu, and you'll pretty much always want to do it. But you'll learn to do so with great apprehension, because it might mean you have to go dancing.

Yeah, that's right. Among other things, all Governors have daughters, and all Governor's daughters want to go dancing. With you. Repeatedly. Part of the "scoring" system for the game involves wooing Governor's daughters and I think perhaps marrying one, although I never really got that far. If you successfully woo one on your visit, you will often be rewarded with information about known criminals, (this is how you know which taverns harbor criminals!) a reward of a special item, or information about one of the game's two main villains. But usually in order to get this information, you gotta dance for it.

I'm not kidding about this. The fourth mini-game is fucking BALLROOM DANCING. It's more "stimulus/response" gaming at it's finest. You watch the Governor's daughter's hand movements, and you press the number pad in the direction she indicates. That's it. Do it right, and she'll reward you. Do it terribly wrong, and... Well, I don't know. I never got it wrong enough to find out what happens. The difficulty of the dances increases with the game's difficulty level, but I never got above the second difficulty level, so I don't know how hard dancing gets. And honestly, I don't care either. This is hands down the worst fucking thing about this game. It got so that I hated going to talk to the Governor, because I might have to dance with his fucking daughter. Refusing to dance with her lowers your rep with her, and makes it so you miss out on some valuable items and/or quests. So you pretty much want to do it. But it sucks so goddamn bad that you'll hate every second of it. It's like two minutes of pure hell watching a stupid animated chick wave her hands around and pressing the right button. And it's stressful, because you don't want to fuck it up because you want your trinket and/or your quest. And like fencing, you'll do this upwards of a hundred or more times in the course of a game. If I ever meet the guy who decided this mini-game would be a good idea, I'm gonna kick him in the jimmy and then take a shit on his head when he doubles over. And still he'd be getting off easy.

Apart from dancing, Governors also hand out promotions if you've done right by their nation, or vague threats of reprisals if you've been indiscriminatly messing with their shipping. I'm not sure if the vague threats every become less vague, or if action is ever taken against you. Sometimes if you mess with a nation's shipping too much, they'll close their ports to you. This can be a huge hassle if it's Spain, which it will be, because they own most of the damn map and their ships are by far the most numerous and best for plundering. But they forget about it fairly quickly, so it's not that big a deal. And you can always just sneak into town and do your business that way. Sneaking into town is sort of another mini-game, but I don't really count it because it's pointless--just wait until the country forgives you and go into town normally and avoid the hassle, or just go to a different nation's port. If you really piss off a nation, they might send pirate hunters out after you. It's really just more empty threats though, since usually you can either just outrun them, or sink them at your leisure--since other ships cannot force you into ship-to-ship combat, all fights on the high seas are completely at your discretion. So they can sail around shooting cannonballs at you, but unless you get truly unlucky, they'll never be more than just a nuisance.

So that's pretty much how ports go. Every single port in the game, with just a few exceptions, has those same exact options. The only exceptions are smaller towns, where you'll talk to the "mayor" instead of the Governor. Good thing is, THESE FUCKERS DON'T HAVE DAUGHTERS. Bad thing is, often they want you to escort them somewhere. They always like to pick places east of your current location on the map too, so it'll be a massive hassle to do it. Jesuit Missionaries are basically just like small towns, only the mayor is now an abbot, and he'll want you to escort immigrants instead of himself. The third exception is native villages. Here the tribal leader will often ask you what town he should go plunder. I'm not sure what the hell the point of this is, soI always just picked at random. Have fun storming the castle, chief. Finally, you have pirate havens, where the Governor is replaced by the "Captain" (if he's not out at sea) and, like the tribal chieftain, he'll ask you for advice on which towns need plundering. Again, I just picked at random. Honestly, I avoided small towns, missionaries, and tribal villages as much as possible, since they seemed almost completely pointless and the few quests they had for you were often painful escort quests. Pirate havens I visited and just treated like a regular city, except for the fact that I got to randomly send pirates out somewhere. I'm sure somewhere in the depths of the game there are reasons why you'd want to curry favor with the natives, the Jesuits, and the pirates--but I lost interest in the game long before I figured out why, so these places on the map basically just became annoying distractions.

Finally, we come to the fifth mini-game: A turn-based land-combat strategy game. I could never quite figure out exactly how to reliably trigger it (if you send natives or pirates out to a town, it seems like you yourself can then go choose to attack that town, but not every town gives you the option for whatever reason), but once you do, it's Pirates vs Soldiers in a battle royale! This mini-game actually isn't horrible, so obviously it's the one you'll get to do the least throughout the game. You maneuver your troops and fight a Civilization-style turn-based battle against them until one of you wins. If the pirates win, you get to plunder the city. If you really smoked them, you get to choose a new Governor (basically, you can change the city's owner this way. If you plunder a Spanish port for instance, you can install a French, Dutch, or English governor afterwards. Sadly, you can't pick yourself as governor and just keep the place. That would have been too much fun.) If the soldiers win, you get clapped in irons and have to either wait out your sentence or bribe someone to set you free. Either way, you eventually get back on the high seas with just one ship and you start all over, so don't fucking lose!

As I said, this is the most fun mini-game of the bunch, so obviously it's the one you do the least. It can be hard just recruiting enough guys and keeping them happy long enough to be able to field enough pirate troops to even have a hope of winning one of these fights, and the fact that I never figured out exactly how to reliably trigger the ability to sack a town didn't help either. Too bad, as more sacking of towns and LESS FUCKING DANCING would have been awesome.

So what's the point of playing these five mini-games over and over? Well, remember the story-line? You're searching for your long-lost relatives, right? Well, here's the thing about that. There's two people who have information about where your family members are. There's the evil Marquis what stole them in the first place, and some henchman of his named Baron Raymondo. So you gotta track these guys down, attack their ships, and defeat them in a duel.

Repeatedly.

No kidding. At some point someone in the game (usually a barmaid, barkeep, or Governor's daughter) will tell you something like "Baron Raymondo, who has information about your lost family, was spotted near Port Royale!" So you'll sail your happy ass to Port Royale, and if you haven't waited too long, Baron Raymondo's ship will magically appear nearby, and you'll be able to attack it. Once you board his ship, you'll fight him mano-a-mano. Beat him, and he'll give you part of a map that reveals the location of one of your family members.

Now you get to do it all again!

Seriously--I wish I were making this up. Apparently you play catch-and-release with this guy over and over, and each time you find him, hijack his ship, and beat him into submission, he'll only give you PART of ONE map. Why you don't just chain the guy up in your ship's storeroom until he decides to cough up everything he knows is beyond me. It's easily the worst implemented part of the game. Had they done something as small as just changing the name of the guy each time, it wouldn't have been half as bad. But the idea that you capture this guy, then release him after he only gives up a fraction of what you want is ludicrous.

The Marquis is exactly the same deal. The only difference is that he usually gets knocked overboard after your duel, so there's an excuse as to why he keeps showing up over and over. And "among his papers" left behind on the ship, you find pieces to a map revealing his secret hideout. I have no idea what is in the hideout or what you do when you get there, since I was never able to defeat the Marquis more than once. He's fairly easy the first time, then suddenly is awesometacular at sword fighting the second time. Plus, it doesn't help that you freaking age as the game goes on and your skills deteriorate, further stacking the deck against non-twitch gamers like myself.

So that's pretty much the whole game. I'm sure Pirates! aficionado could tell me there's SO MUCH MORE to the game that I'm missing, but seriously, fuck them. Anybody who likes playing the same five mini-games over and over and over and over again isn't worth listening to imvo.

Buy this game from Amazon.com!