Probably because of all the ballooha surrounding the latest chapter of Pirates of the Caribbean (which I unfortunately haven’t had the chance to catch on the big or small screen), I found myself installing my copy of the Sid Meier game and enjoyed several hours of role-playing as a scourge of the Caribbean Isles.
Assuming the role of an English pirate (who I sheepishly named after one of the Brits from the office), I proceeded to gather crew, sail the seas, pillage towns, engage governors’ daughters in flirting and dancing, visit the taverns, trade with merchants, hunt down pirate treasures, defeat other pirates, capture or sink ships, do land battles, install new governors, buy special items, track criminals, manipulate other captains and Indians to ransack towns, escort and defend ships, divide the plunder, upgrade my flagship, and most importantly, track down my family which is the main yet not so urgent objective of the entire game.In Pirates, you’re a young chap whose family has fallen on hard times, an a notorious Marquis has captured your family and sent them to the most difficult of places in the Caribbean. You begin your journey to find your family by signing on as a deck hand and in a convenient mutiny you gain a ship and a small crew to begin your career as a pirate.
This is one enjoyable game with high replay value. A lot of options are offered
from the onset, and your choices on difficulty, era and skills determine your performance in the game proper. A higher experience level entails a bigger share of the loot, a skill in fencing enhances your swordsmanship while a skill selection of wit and charms helps you win as many governors’ daughters as there are ports.As a British Admiral (promotion is due to fulfilment of tasks beneficial to one nation, many of which are listed two paragraphs earlier) in my most recent game, I decided I wanted to convert all Dutch and French ports into English ones. So, I gathered around 200 crew and proceeded to lay siege to French and Dutch towns in the northern hemisphere of the Caribbean. As of last night, the only one unconquered French town remained (the town had 512 soldiers against my measly 200 pirates) and I managed to win back Antigua under British rule after France successfully conquered it months earlier.
The mixture of mini-games – sword-fighting on boarded ships, in taverns, in garrisons; turn-based land-battles between city armies and your conquering horde; dancing with the buxom daughters of governors (one of the hardest mini-games) – all make the pirating experience more realistic and enjoyable. The game is so open-ended that it’s really your decision how you want to progress in the game. You can even decide not to do the main goal of finding your family members and just accumulate as much wealth and fame as possible, if you want.
One of the more difficult things in the game is making sure your crew is happy otherwise, you can expect a mutiny to happen and you’ll find yourself marooned on an island. Maintaining crew happiness is an analyzable blend of total crew number, the current loot you have, the food in store, how long you’ve been at sea, among others. I’ve checked gaming websites on how to make sure your crew is happy but apparently everyone is at a loss on how you specifically maintain crew happiness. You just have to make sure you have plenty of stores onboard, make quick visits to ports and towns to relieve boredom, snatch special items that make crew morale ok (like a violin) or try and get a Quartermaster who ensures discipline on your journeys. Otherwise, if all things fail, divide the plunder.All in all, the game is fun, intuitive, and makes you think and strategize, the last being a trademark of any Sid Meier game. I’m sure I’ll be spending a lot more days playing this game for a while.
Ahoy, hoist the anchor and set the main sail! We be pirates and there are lots o’ ships awaiting plunder, yarr!!!
