PIRATES!

[cadalano]

I picked up Sid Meier's Pirates! for my girlfriend last night. It looked kinda lame to me, and I was determined to ruin her fun by picking it apart while I played day of defeat on the other puter. "Dancing and trading... Pirates indeed!" But, while I was observing it and looking for dumbness I got sucked into it and ended up playing until like 2 in the morning

Even though this game is now pretty old its still a blast and relatively cheap. You start in a tiny ship with a small crew and a bit of pocket change and climb the ladder all the way up to being the most famous pirate in the Carribean. For example, I had a lot of fun hanging out in an area of the map that had a great deal of powerful Dutch and English ports. The Dutch were at war with just about everybody, so I was able to constantly raid their ships that were coming in and out of the ports there and gain lots of wealth and reputation with the English. Eventually the Dutch ports became so starved of resources that their troop garrisons declined and I was able to capture them for the English, after I plundered a crapload of cash a'course. After that, the brits made me a Duke which helped when I decided that I wanted to "commandere" one of their shiny war frigates that I refitted to go out and start hunting my rival pirates. So basically theres a lot of freedom to how you want to play the game and enough content to keep you busy for awhile. Its kind of a mixture between the character development of the sims, the freedom of grand theft auto, and the strategy of civilization.

Just passing on the recommendation.


edit: just saw there is a thread on this on page 3 :{

move me!

[Boogahz]

I had a lot of fun with this game in the beta. I never picked it up in the stores though. It is rare that I see a game actually transform in a good way as much as this one did. The dancing seemed far too easy at first, but as you went up in rank/difficulty I found myself tripping and getting cold stares more often than not.

I liked hunting down treasures as well. My fleet was friggin' huge by the time I left it. I had loads of merchant ships which were just there to haul in mah booty!

[Sylvus]

I thought the dancing was super gay. Other than that, the game was fun for a few days, but it got old pretty quick.

cadalano sniffs smelly sweatsocks

[Winnow]

It was a good effort and enjoyable if you like trading games. I thought it lacked somewhat...the "mumbling" of the characters when you talked to them got annoying. The ground battles seems a little slow.

[Dregor Thule]

I found it got old really fast. At first I was all excited about it, but then I realized how shallow all the different facets were. Still, was fun to try out for a bit.

[Xouqoa]

cadalano sniffs smelly sweatsocks

QFT