It’s me and my boys against a shipload of Spaniards. En garde!
Shiver me timbers, just in time for the tail end of the pirate trend comes the Mac port of 2004’s Windows remake of Sid Meier’s Pirates! (The original, groundbreaking 1987 game lived on the Commodore 64 and Apple II, hitting the Macintosh in 1988.) But this is no cheap cash-in: It’s a rollicking high-seas adventure through gorgeous environments, mixing several kinds of gameplay in an open-ended single-player romp.
You’re a young privateer on a revenge mission against the marquis who kidnapped your family. The Caribbean teems with settlements of four major powers (English, French, Spanish, and Dutch) and some minor ones (native tribes, peaceful missionaries, and pirate towns). Ships scuttle between the islands carrying treasure, goods, soldiers, and immigrants, and you can attack and capture any of them with fun, keyboard-controlled ship-to-ship combat, and a lively fencing duel against its captain when you board.
Stopping at ports, you can sell your captured ships and booty, buy upgrades and supplies, recruit more pirates, visit the governor for a promotion and woo his daughter in the ballroom-dancing minigame, obtain gossipy clues and torn treasure maps, search for outlaws and your kidnapped family members, and more. You can even overtake entire towns with the strategic turn-based land combat system.
Everything you do affects your reputation score, shown onscreen, and it’s easy to check your progress in any area in the easy-to-navigate menus. The various powers begin and end wars with each other—which you’re free to exploit, encourage, prevent, or simply ignore—even without your input, although events are helpfully kept in a log you can refer to anytime. Still, sometimes we felt like we were sailing in circles—it helps to pick a couple priorities and stick to them.
With all the choices you can make, you’re often stuck guessing at their outcomes—it’s hard to know what the best choice is, even after you’ve made it. We would’ve liked a little advice about when to divide the plunder, for example, and whether to stay loyal to one country or play all four against each other.
Still, we loved the detailed, colorful graphics (easily turned down for older systems), the easy controls, and the astonishing depth. The difficulty ramps up at a good pace, and while some actions (mostly fencing and dancing) can get repetitive, the game’s open-endedness gives it tons of replay value.
Sid Meier’s Pirates be rich in gaming bounty for ye to plunder, from strategy to role-playing to combat to adventure. Don’t miss out
Graphics are scalable for slower systems. Totally open-ended gameplay. Lots of fun. ESRB rating Everyone. Universal binary.
Some parts can be repetitive. Younger players might get frustrated with lack of help.
