Sid Meier's Pirates for Windows PC

Sid Meier’s Pirates! for the Windows PC is a light action role playing game set on the high seas. It features naval combat, sword dueling, strategic military combat, land exploration, and much more. It is a remake of the classic PC game from 1987, but I cannot remember if I played the original or not. From what I read on the official game site (www.sidmeierspirates.com), the Xbox version of this game more features, including multiplayer ability, which kind of sucks for those who own this PC version.

The game starts out with a short video clip about a boy who escapes the fate of his family after they are kidnapped. He grows up to become a young pirate and seeks to find out what happened to the rest of his family and where they went. You start out as either English, French, Dutch, or Spanish and get your own small ship, then you travel from town to town meeting people and searching for clues. As you progress in the game, you will be able to take over bigger ships, win the hearts of governor’s daughters, and get clues to help locate your family. The core part of the gameplay is very fun, even if it does get a little repetitive over time.

What really makes this game interesting is that you can choose whether to be a fighting pirate or a docile one. There’s no way I can captain a ship loaded with cannons and not use them, so I go for the fighting method. Depending on what kind of ship you have, and there are plenty of them available, you can have a certain number of crewmen aboard, a certain number of cannons, and a cargo capacity of X number of tons. If you get involved with naval combat, you can either sink the enemy ship, or have your men go hand to hand and capture the boat. This allows you to score more treasure and goods, plus add more ships to your fleet. If the ship is too heavily damaged or you just don’t want it, you can always keep the goods and sink it.

The game is presented using a large map full of towns and villages on many islands. You pilot your ship using the number pad or arrow keys, and to enter a town you just pilot the ship into it. Naval combat is fought using the same controls as you circle the other boats while firing your cannons. You can choose different kinds of cannonballs to use depending on the enemy. Wind plays a heavy factor in this part of the game because you often find your ship having trouble lining up for a shot when the winds keep you from turning. After you board a ship, you must duel the enemy ship captain. This is pretty simple in how you just select your attack type and you need only hit him 4 or 5 times to win.

In addition to the naval combat, you can also attack cities. This is presented using a turn based combat system over a big grid. Each square has certain terrain that can benefit you or the enemy, depending on elevation and obstructions that might provide cover. You will have soldiers who are better at close combat and some musketeers who can do ranged attacks and you’ll have to find the best strategy to win. I’ve noticed that most of the combat in this game is based on numbers. If you have equal or more than what the enemy has, chances are you will win. If you try to attack 250 soldiers in a town with 120 of your pirates, like I did the first time, chances are you won’t get far.

In each town, you can visit the local official who will sometimes give you missions, promote your status, or even introduce you to his daughter. As you rise in rank, you will get discounts on items and repairs, plus it opens a lot of new doors for you. Wooing the governor’s daughter will also give you more special items in the form of gifts. One of the most common methods of getting the daughter’s attention is to dance with her. This is played sort of like a keyboard version of those DDR games where you have to follow her moves using the number pad. It can be quite difficult at times, but it pays off.

Also while in town you can buy or sell inventory, which is necessary to lighten your loads until you get more ships. Some towns have better prices on certain goods, so you’ll have to shop around. You can also have your ships repaired or upgraded with better sails or weapons. Finally, you can visit the local tavern to recruit crewmen, hear local rumors, or buy items or special mission information.

Mostly all you do in this game is go to town to get missions or goals, then go out and conquer, then return to the towns to collect your rewards. It can get repetitive after a while, but the special rewards and other incentives keep it interesting enough to compel you to play longer. The main story about your family only comes up every once in a while, but it helps keep things interesting. In the end, you can retire from the Pirate life and it’ll give you a rating on how well you played. This makes the game very replayable, which is key to making games like this work. You’ll have to put some time into this game, but I think you’ll enjoy it.

The graphics could probably have been a little better, but I think they are just fine for a remake. This game has some pretty low system requirements, so it’ll run on most any PC made in the past few years. Minimum requirements are a 1Ghz machine with 256 megs of ram and 64 megs of video ram. My laptop has an AMD Sempron 2800+ with 64 megs of my 512 total allotted to the ATI video card and this game runs very smoothly at 800x600 resolution. The sound is good, especially the naval sound effects and pirate-y music, but the characters all speak with slurred speech that isn’t of any language.

All in all, I think Pirates! is an excellent and unique game. It combines action with some role playing, and I think it delivers a lot of diverse gameplay. It isn’t as good as Sid Meier’s Civilization series, but I have yet to find any game that is. Now that this game has been out a while and the price has dropped, you might want to check it out.