Brian's Pirates! Review
12.02.04

Hey, I picked up Sid's new version of Pirates last week - just before Turkey Day - and good 'ole Sid, he's made another big winner. One of the best parts is that for all of old veterans of the original, you can jump right in and start playing. What's different?

Well, to start, the graphics update is truly, beautifully done. The sailing map gives a nice view of the nearby waters including names of shoals and reefs like Skull Rock and Deadman's Reef. There's even labels for the major waterways like the Windward Passage. The storms vary from the friendly clouds that give you a nice nudge to black, lightning clouds that can damage your ship if you get struck. The sound is also very good, giving you fair warning of approaching storms.

Each town has its own allegiance, usually Spanish, French, Dutch and English. There are also a few pirate havens, Jesuit Missions and Indian Encampments. The towns vary in size from tiny outposts to the Capital in the Caribbean for that nation. When you sail by, you even get a sound cue on the nationality and its size.

Nearly all the menu choices for engaging the enemy ships to the Town menus to the Ship repair screens are pretty much the same as the original. Though now when you wish to use your Wit and Charm's skill on the Beautiful Governor's Daughter, you have to do it through the Dancing mini-game. You and the daughter occupy the center of the dance floor with 4 more couples at the corners of the room. It's a 3rd person perspective. The music starts and the daughter gives you queue's with her hand gestures as to what the next move is. Doing the dance step adequately keeps you from stumbling when you miss it entirely. Doing the moves perfectly gives you a flourish and a happy giggle and wink from the daughter. The number of sequential flourishes are measured on a beating heart at the top center of the screen. The more back-to-back flourishes, the bigger the heart gets and the more squeals of joy the daughter emits. Once the dance finishes, you get a screen of you and the daughter and what she thinks of your dancing. You will either get to kiss her hand or a resounding harrumph! Once you do impress the Governor's daughter - and you should impress many of them - she will give you tidbits of information. She might even offer you some small gift like a brace of pistols, a pirate's puffy shirt or a spyglass!

In fact, when you go to the tavern for news and gossip from the tavern owner and bar maid, there is a stranger who offers treasure maps and town information and will occasionally offer an item for sale - dancing shoes, leather vests, compass, swords, salves and herbs to preserve you age.... I think the list is pretty large of these specialty items.

For your ships, there are now several types of cannon shot - grapeshot to reduce the enemy crew, chain-shot to reduce their sails and the standard shot for hull damage. You will also come across Surgeon's, Shipwrights, Cooks and the like to improve a different aspect of the sailing part of the game. Ports also offer different services and upgrades like cotton sails, bronze cannons or triple bunks.

The tactical ship combat is pretty much the same as before. Try to dance outside of your opponents broadside while trying to rake him from stem to stern. There are some occasions where you will find a fat juicy merchant ship or Treasure ship that has an escort. Attacking one means you attack them both, hence two opponents to deal with. The grapeshot is especially fun as sailors get blown off the ship and into the water. Ships will fight to the end or strike their colors and surrender. If you board them you will then have to face the ships captain or even the Evil Baron Raymondo in a duel.

Once again, the dueling is pretty much the same as before. You get a meter of your advantage in the duel as well as both crews total - because they are fighting too. It even tells you what weapon your opponent is using ( I could never remember in the original game if the yellow shirted guy was the rapier or was it the green shirted guy? )This is the most stylized part of the game, in my opinion. I've read that Firaxis wanted the game to be more of a Pirate Movie feel than anything else. The fencing mini-game fits this perfectly. The sword moves are very broad and exaggerated as are your moves to avoid blows. Its paced just right to keep you on your toes.

You do the same sort of missions - finding your sister, uncle, aunt.... As well as tracking down the pirates holding them. There are some new missions thrown at you which is nice and with the new places to explore - the pirate hideouts, Jesuit missions and Indian camps - they have their own assortment of available choices. There is still the balancing act of pleasing the crew, pleasing your loyalties to whichever nations you chose and pleasing yourself with what you want to do for extra status - "Man, why did I have to run into the Treasure Fleet?!?! The Spanish Governor will probably promote me if I leave it alone, but the crew's itching for a fight!"

You do age in the game and it's noticeable in the dancing cut-scenes and in the treasure finding cut-scenes. There is also the same sort of ranking when you retire, but it's a bit more verbose and descriptive on how your life is after the pirate life has faded.

This is definitely another great Sid Meier game - or rather a great modernization on an already great game.

Additional Comments by Brian:

I've only done the land combat a few times myself, but it is turn based. In fact it's a bit chess-like as units cannot pass through friendly units. It starts with a placement phase where you can change where the computer drops your units. I don't know what determines the types of units, but I've seen Officers, Pirates and Buccaneer units for your side. Indians, Soldiers and Cavalry for your opponent. There might be others, but I haven't seen them yet. There are facing rules, hence you can get flanking attacks. The Buccaneer units fire pistols or rifles and are ranged combat units. Pirates are melee units and Officers are melee specialist units.

Its essentially you move, I move sequence. You can either fire - if you can - or move. Most units get two space moves, facing changes count as a move. There are panic rules, so units will break and run. I have not seen any moral rules like Sid's Gettysburg game where you could rally your troops to rejoin the attack. I had initially thought that the Officer unit was a leader unit. But it didn't help rally my panicked unit. I guess Pirates don't rally all that well. But when I attacked with it, that Officer unit kicked some Spanish militia a#*!

The terrain will vary from city to city and maybe even game to game ( I don't know if the terrain around Porta Bello will change from each new game or not, but its quite possible ). There is grassy open terrain - which will give the cavalry a bonus attacking you and no cover for those musketeers, forests to hide in and ambush the skulking French and blocking terrain which might help you create choke points to destroy the English.

It's not Sid's Gettysburg game engine (which I've read they first tried to use and then discarded) but it is easy and intuitive and doesn't break the flow of the game. Though this mini-game probably does take the most time to get through.

I've also just tried playing at the middle level (Journeyman I think). It was getting a bit too easy on the second to lowest difficulty. Note, the original game had 4 difficulty levels, if memory serves me. This version has 5 difficulty levels. I could never have any fun in the original beyond the 2nd lowest level. That corresponding level in the new version is still a lot of fun, but once I've picked up the controls and figured out the ships I like, has gotten a bit easy. So I've gone up one more level of difficulty and soon thought it was going to be no fun at all - you only start with 40 men and 100gold! The low amount of gold makes early upgrades very hard to do. I ended up having an angry crew after only a year or so and had to recruit another crew. But then I came across a pirate treasure map which changed the tide for spare cash.

Dave pointed out that the original game, he could find the buried treasure with only 1 piece of the map. I think I was nearly that adept as well. The new game, however, may not even show a city on an initial piece of the map. It will show landmarks, like 'abandoned cabin' or 'two dead trees' but these are not visible in the sailing map. If your map happens to show you a landmark off the coast, like 'Deadman's Reef', well, then you have a chance to find it without any additional pieces. The bottom of each map will also say something like "In the vicinity of San Juan". But if you get the wrong first part it may only read "In the vicinity " leaving you completely in the dark and having to purchase the next piece when you get the chance. But this is still all fun. The treasure is usually some other Pirates treasure, like Captain Kidd's treasure map. So these pirates don't like you very much when you steal their hard earned, er looted, treasure.

Something else that I think is well done, is the voice acting. There really isn't any. The voices are something between the grown-ups in the Peanuts cartoons and the voices in 'The Sims'. No real words being spoken, but sounds that give you the feeling of what's being said. Given the different nationalities, I would have hated to hear some really bad accents done - over and over again each time you visit a Governor. This choice was a good move, in my opinion.

One last point. The DVD addition says it has the original 1987 game. What is included is the VGA Microprose Pirates! Gold version - which is a NON-Sid Meier remake of the Commodore 64/Apple/PC version. I played the true original with a joystick for the sailing and fencing and hated the Gold edition as it did not support joystick. Well, neither does this current version, but its just laid out so well it made it easy to pick up.

Think I've now covered the game in full. This game is Sid at his best.

Brian Uhrig
b.uhrig@comcast.net