Its been out in the US for afew days now, but us Euros have to wait until next week. :cry:

Love it? Hate it? Post your first impressions here!

Well, some stores in the US still don't have it today, even though the release date was a few days ago... ;)

So far so good. I like the fact I can see the ships at sea. I got the LE DVD and wanted a workable version of Pirates Gold but they didn't fit it to work on modern PCs. I wished I could use a controller instead of the keypad though.

It's fairly trivial to configure a controller so that each button or D-Pad direction is mapped to a keyboard key. Most gamepad driver software includes a way to do this.

I have it, but now I have no hair.

I pre-ordered, and it came by FedEx Wednesday afternoon. I work third shift, and I didn't want to tease myself, so I read the manual and went to work.

When I got home, I installed and tried to play...but the game hangs on me every time it begins.

I get through all of the intro movies, name my pirate, choose my nation, get thru the next few movies, and bam!...as soon as the game "starts" and my ship slides into whatever port the game has started me at, nothing happens. The music plays, but no keystrokes or mouse clicks seem to do anything. I can move the cursor around, but as soon as I click on my ship, the game freezes.

I screwed around with it all day today trying to coax it into agreeability, but to none effect.

I will now go light myself on fire.

It's fairly trivial to configure a controller so that each button or D-Pad direction is mapped to a keyboard key. Most gamepad driver software includes a way to do this.
so maybe I got one that doesn't or I haven't figure out how to do that.

DO NOT PLAY THIS ON A SLOW PC.

The attacks on towns are painfully, slowly, animated, and therefore take way too long. I avoid attacking towns for this reason. I wish there were CRTL+P options to turn off animation. Perhaps there are, but I've not found them yet. This is a really boring feature of this game that stinks. Too bad, since capturing cities & installing governors would be alot of fun.

The ship battles are good, but can sometimes take too long. Using a Royal Sloop (rare) or War Sloop (easier to find & capture) appear to be a great attack ship for a pirate. Fast, nimble, can row for extra speed into the wind. Brig of War is a nice choice too. Many more cannon than sloops but not as fast & nimble. Use the sloop against slow moving trade ships (galleons), and the Brig against other war ships, & ships with escorts.

FWIW - I'm running this on grandma's 1.6 pentium. The min for the game is 1.0 pentium, so maybe it will play better on my faster PC at home. I hope so.

I like the game, but they really to speed up the land battles where you attack a town.
Well, some stores in the US still don't have it today, even though the release date was a few days ago...
FWIW - Target & Wal-Mart had several copies where I live. :)

I just got the LE from eb Games. :)

I've really enjoyed it so far, and I'm now working on my third career. The sword fighting is quite fun in my mind, and the more I play it the better I get and the more subtle hints/tricks I pick up.

I must admit that I actually enjoy the ballroom dancing, it's quite difficult on the higher levels of difficulty but if you have a musical background you can really excel at it.

The town attacks work well in my mind, I'm very happy they're turn based as it gives me time to think about what I want to do. I haven't found them or the ship battles to take to long.

The biggest problem with the game is the setting, stupid winds almost always blow east to west so it can be really hard to get back to the eastern Islands once you've hit the Spanish Main. This really isn't that big a deal once you learn how to tack properly, but can be very frustrating in the beginning.

Overall, it's a typical Sid Game. Straight to the point, everything is there for a reason, and everything is functional. I'm very happy they stuck with menus for towns instead of going full-3d and having to walk around.

At present I'm really looking forward to working my way up to the highest level of difficulty.

-Hak

The biggest problem with the game is the setting, stupid winds almost always blow east to west so it can be really hard to get back to the eastern Islands once you've hit the Spanish Main. This really isn't that big a deal once you learn how to tack properly, but can be very frustrating in the beginning.

I guess it no accident the wind is this way since It was the same on the Old C-64 version.

It seem to help changing my flagship to a smaller ship like sloop when traveling againest the wind. So If I planning to go toward Vera Cruz I grab me a sloop before the trip.

Love it.. Kinda Disney cartoonish, but still great fun!

It is a well designed game and yet simple it still has the overall feeling of the old Pirates. I especially love the improvements to the governors daughters, even if I suck at dancing.

But well, I would marry the barmaiden... drinking with girls is better than dancing.

Besides that, I hope that some future patches improve Gameplay on i855GM graphics cards. My notebook has some issues, the durch guy at the starting screen for example is always brown textured, and fencing is easy for me because it is superslow.

Besides that, I am glad that Pirates works even without a T&L capable integrated notebook graphics card. :)

It is a well designed game and yet simple it still has the overall feeling of the old Pirates. I especially love the improvements to the governors daughters, even if I suck at dancing.


dancing becomes easier after you learn the patterns . at the end of every pattern you always end back in the middle with the same facing you started with. here some of the patterns 6,4,6,4 ...... 4,6,4,6 ...... 3,3,3,3..... 1,1,1,1 ...... 8,1,1,8,1,1. With the shoes and slippers you can miss the first one or two keys of the pattern which makes it a lot easier.

It is a well designed game and yet simple it still has the overall feeling of the old Pirates. I especially love the improvements to the governors daughters, even if I suck at dancing.

But well, I would marry the barmaiden... drinking with girls is better than dancing.

Besides that, I hope that some future patches improve Gameplay on i855GM graphics cards. My notebook has some issues, the durch guy at the starting screen for example is always brown textured, and fencing is easy for me because it is superslow.

Besides that, I am glad that Pirates works even without a T&L capable integrated notebook graphics card. :)

On another forum, Barry mentioned that they've been working closely with Intel, and that we should expect Intel to release a driver update for these graphics cards.
He didn't mention what will be fixed in that update (as only Intel knows) but I think that the infamous brown texture for some characters will also be fixed. ;) So I don't think that Firaxis can actually fix the brown texture stuff in a patch...

*cough* Intel's fault *cough*

It kicks ass. It's like the original we all loved, just improved. Not much nonsense put into the game, just updated the game, added bits here and there that make the game more enjoyable...also a storyline to follow if you're borred plundering ;) If you liked the original, it is a MUST HAVE.

There are workarounds, talk about real life adopted into pirates:

A big, fat, expensive golden ring with a big, fat gem... -> increases your "Wit and Charm", and can compensate for your lack of dancing skills.

I must agree, Smidlee, dancing can be learned. Sneaking is a bit harder, and it takes too long for my liking.

So I usually sack the town. Always the better option when you have enough men at hand! :)

The one thing that's a bit of a pity is that you can't keep all your ships when dividing the loot. I simply don't want to choose between my royal sloop and my frigate :)

The one thing that's a bit of a pity is that you can't keep all your ships when dividing the loot. I simply don't want to choose between my royal sloop and my frigate :)
Yeah, that's the thing for me as well...

But I guess you can't have everything you want as a pirate. ;)

Question from the nephew.

He cannot determine when you are given the option of installing a new govenor. Has sacked towns where he snuck around the battle, and others where he made the enemy run for their lives, and some others where he only fought the captain of the guards. So far cannot see a pattern as to when the option is given to install a govenor.

Has anyone figured this out, or is it up to the RNG?

FYI - on the Pentium 1.6 we cut the resolution down all the way [still looks okay], turned off some graphic options [enhancements] as suggested in the manual and the game got faster. Strangely, some fencing duals are very slow, others are faster.

I got it and love it. Last night I rescued 3 family and sacked the Marquis's fort. I rescued the girl from a pirate and she married me. :)

i am worried, it comes out today here. and iam getting it for christmas. But how good a computer does it need. my computer has 40gb hard drive and 256mb ran. Its stright from the shop. i have xp and quite a few games, civ3 runs fine execept on some huge secnarios. the most flashy games i have are C&C Generals and age of mythology. But work ok but sometimes lag. I hope my computer can handdle it.

also i was look at the Limited edition version, is it true the game is on DVD if it is that sucks, the guy at the store said the limited edition one was only on DVD,

You will need 64mb video card for sure since the game requires 256 mb with 64mb card. Also need atleast 1gh of speed. With a 64mb video card it will probably run if most graphic set on low especially shadows turn off. Don't worry about the LD it nothing special except it's on DVD. the old version doesn't run well on modern PC.

He cannot determine when you are given the option of installing a new govenor. Has sacked towns where he snuck around the battle, and others where he made the enemy run for their lives, and some others where he only fought the captain of the guards. So far cannot see a pattern as to when the option is given to install a govenor.

I asked that question, too, in a pirates! forum. We generally agreed that there is no definite rule to this. HOWEVER, it can be said that you basically need to be just much superior to the town's forces you are attacking. For example: If you fight 300 pirates vs 260 soldiers and you win, chances are ok to take over the town. If you fight with 300 pirates vs 500 soldiers and win, chances are very low upto non-existant to be asked to install a new governor. If you fight 300 pirates vs 100 soldiers, you are very safe to taking over the town when you win. I suggest if you win a battle and are not asked to install a new governor and you still have sufficient forces but damaged your opponent hard - just attack again and next time you will be able to install a new gov. But do it immediately and don't wait until they get their military payroll.

Happy pirating :evil:

The biggest problem with the game is the setting, stupid winds almost always blow east to west so it can be really hard to get back to the eastern Islands once you've hit the Spanish Main. This really isn't that big a deal once you learn how to tack properly, but can be very frustrating in the beginning.

So how do you tack properly??? Still stuck in the wind! -Jome

So how do you tack properly??? Still stuck in the wind! -Jome

Try to tack at a 45 degree angle into the wind. This is one big reason a royal sloop is my favorite over frigates & brigs.

If you see an AI ship heading to the same place you are, follow him since he is taking an efficient route.

The game is ok. But taking into account RTW, Halo 2, DOOM 3, Half Life2....it seems slightly simple or childish to me. Like a modern Disney Peter Pan.

Well, criticisms:

1) The evil Spanish guy has my own name ! So that wasn't very amusing, but well, that's just me.
2) You have to attack the Spaniards to become rich. It's impossible to become affluent by attacking the Dutch, French and English. Only raiding Spanish cities and taking over their (our) ships can you become rich. Slightly unbalanced, hmmm !!
3) Why is it that almost all the daughters of Spanish Governors are so ugly. I don't want my pirate with one of them.

On the other hand the daughters of English Governors (namely Port Royal) are stunning, even the blonde bar tenders are good looking, hrmmph !!!

now seriously, the game is ok but completely lacks strategy as in Civ. It reminds me of American Graffiti where you had Harrison Ford cruising along town in his car flirting with girls, plundering some gold and picking the odd fight. It's just like that, there is no purpose, it's completely open-ended (as the instrucctions bluntly point out).

Dancing is awfully difficult. I think it's, surprisingly, the hardest part of the game. Forget the sword fighting or the cannon balls, and start thinking of buying some fancy hat, ring, or dance boots to beef up your dancing abilities.

I also dislike how my pirate grows old so quickly. When he's around 35 his health is really bad, and in every sword fight he engages he ends up losing and thrown into jail. That happens only after 5-10 hours of playing ! Then your career as a pirate comes to an end and you have to start a new one.

Besides, can your pirate actually die ? I've tried it, but somehow he always escapes death or imprisonment...that lacks challenge to the game.

The greatest challenges in the game are:

1) Dancing
2) Playing as the Spaniards
3) Old age creeping up on your pirate unexpectedly...

Try playing as the Spaniards for a real challenge. Also I hate the percentages you get of the loot. As a novice you only get 5% of the plundering, that's way too little. As you go up the ladder of difficulty this percentage increases reaching 40% I think.

There are many hidden cities and small locations on the map...

The best ship for me was the 90 ton Frigate with 33 or 34 cannons. Unfortunately it had such fire power that it kept sinking the Spanish treasure ships I intended to capture. Nice ships to steal are the English war ships such as the brigs-O-War, heh, heh stealing from the English.... :lol: You need like 150-200 men to man it properly. Although the more crew you have the less money you'll get when it comes to divide the plunder....

When you besiege a town the way it's done is ...primitive to say the least. It takes on for ever (and my computer has a modern Athlon, so it's not the CPU). It's as If you were playing with your Commodore 64... :nono:

Be aware that you can capture a maximum of 8 ships at any time (your fleet), but you'll need to man all of them which means your flag ship will have less men making it less meanouverable and more likely for you to be captured. I advise to always have another ship tagging right behind you with the 8 updgrades for it (silk sails, grape cannon balls, bronze canons, iron clading, fine powder....) so in case you should fail in your assault and have your flag ship sunk, you'll always have a spare one to jump into quickly, its your personal insurance, look at it that way. Some of the other ten historical pirates in the game have very nice ships indeed, keep them...

Remember that when you retire you ought to have plenty of acres of land to live well. I had like 5,000 and I retired from piracy at Port Royal with the wonderful status of an....Inkeeper. Nevermind attempting to flirt with the beautiful daughter of the Governor of Port Royal....

All in all it's ok but there are far better games out on the market today, despite how much I love Sid Meier games in general and one in particular...;)

P.S. In the limited edition you just have to see the making of the game...gosh Sid Meier, we LOVE you, what a great guy. Even his wife is there. Hurrrrah !

Strangely, some fencing duals are very slow, others are faster.

I think that depends upon your crew number.

Say you attack the...English ( :D ) who are 100 strong with 200 pirates. The fencing duel will be very fast because of your overwhelming advantage. Check the red bar below during the sword fight. If the English greatly outnumber you or you're kind of equal the fencing takes longer. It also depends if you chose at the beginning of the game to excel in dueling, or rather dancing (my case...I know, I'm pathetic).

Also, the sword you choose to fight with will be the same used by all your pirates to fight the English. Now perhaps it matters If the English are using the broad sword and you (and all your crew) are using that quick sword...I'm not sure.

On the other hand the daughters of English Governors (namely Port Royal) are stunning, even the blonde bar tenders are good looking, hrmmph

Time to capture Port Royale then :O

I disagree with you on your ship choice. The royal sloop is the best ship by far. It outturns and outruns any ship, and with triple hammocks it can hold up to 187 crewmen. Since you can outrun and outturn, you can always put your ship in the best position: in front of your enemy. This way he has to tail you, if he turns to open fire you can simply turn away. And since you can outrun him, you can take distance to turn, shoot and turn back. Failsafe.

YARRRRRRRRRRRR!

Drakan, I think you complicate the game too much for yourself...Of course, most cities are Spanish because it's realistic, hence most ships sailing are Spanish, too. Even if you start in a Spanish town, that means nothing, you can still attack all Spanish ships, Spanish towns and make friends with the other nations.
I'm very good at dancing now ;) It's pretty easy, actually (unless you play the game on a laptop and have no numpad, in which case you can forget about it). The girls always show you the patterns and they're always the same. For example: 4, 6, 4, 6 or 1,1,1,1 or 3,3,3,3 or 6,1,6,1. Just pay a little attention how those patterns work and you can predict pretty easily next time what she'll do next.

I think, you think far too much "civish". You want clever strategies and a nationality to play for...forget about it! You're a pirate!! :P

Pirates! is exactly the game I was hoping it to be - a remake of the classic I loved when I was a little boy. In my opinion it's the best game since civ3.

The royal sloop is the best ship by far. It outturns and outruns any ship, and with triple hammocks it can hold up to 187 crewmen.
YARRRRRRRRRRRR!

I agree with this. Sell the frigates you capture and keep the royal sloop. :goodjob:

Right lads, I'll follow your advice. I'll go for the Royal Sloop and thanks Simplybag for the dancing pattern, very useful for such a dope as me. :)


We will have to see Shabbaman who wins her heart first at Port Royale :lol:

Why is it that almost all the daughters of Spanish Governors are so ugly. I don't want my pirate with one of them.

The spanish may have more poor looking women than the other nations, simply because they have more towns and more women, but the beautiful spanish women are the best looking women in the game.

I agree with the others who said that the Royal Sloop is the best ship. Overall, you can't beat it.

Dancing is hard at first, but you should get the hang of it after a while. The dance moves all follow a pattern. Listen to the music and you will get the rhythm of it. From what I have read on some of the other sites, most of the people who have trouble with dancing use the flashing keypad as the move indicator. I have always used the girl's hand movements to guide me, and I have very little trouble with it.

I make it a point to dance in just about every town I stop in. After my dancing improved, and I found out that you can get the special items as gifts from the girls, I only have to buy a few of the special items, thus letting me keep more of my gold and keeping my crew happy longer. Also, getting the valuable information and map pieces after dancing really helps. In my current game, I am about half way through, and I have already rescued 4 beautiful women from the evil Colonel (2 Spanish, 1 French, and 1 English, which I am sorry to tell you is the lovely daughter of Port Royal's Governor). You can only marry one, but you can still get the good stuff from many of them.

Yep, you can get lots of goodies from the girls. Once you have all of them, there's no point dancing with them anymore, you only get infos regarding some evil Colonel hiding there and there and how much money is on his head.

When you have the right rank you are asked to dance with the daughter. Next time, you come back, she asks you to get a ring. When you bring it to her, she wants a diamond necklace. When you bring it to her and return, it has been stolen by her fiance who you have to swordfight next time you return. When you win the fight, you make missus happy again. Next time you return, she'll have been kidnapped by some dude and you promise the governor to bring her home safely again. When you find her and bring her back (and have a ring), you'll ask for the daughter's hand and marry her.
It always works the same way (maybe I got some things in the wrong order). At some point you have to dance with her a 2nd time, but I forgot at which point. Anyway, I wish girls nowadays were as easy as they used to be ;)

The game is decent. It is more or less the same game as the orginal.

My main gripe is the challenge level. Anything below rogue is a joke(=Chieftain/Warlord), rogue is more like Regent/Monarch, Swashbuckler is Emperor. On swashbuckler I only have problems with 2 things, swordfighting and sneaking. In swordfighting you can give yourself a huge advantage coming in while sneaking can more or less be ignored.

Hi bingen, it is really an easy game. You also get a fencing advantage on slow machines, but sneaking, dancing and the painful slow animations of land battles are a problem.

Sneaking is too slow, while dancing is too fast on my Lap - I will try it on my Desktop, so far I only succeded once by sheer luck.

While sneaking, hold down shift to run.

There are patterns to the dancing as discussed above. Learning some of these should give you a passing grade most of the time. Add some fancy boots and it becomes quite simple. Possibly harder on laptops though.

It's quite a fun game ,but it's a pitty there is no multiplayer. :blush:

2) You have to attack the Spaniards to become rich. It's impossible to become affluent by attacking the Dutch, French and English. Only raiding Spanish cities and taking over their (our) ships can you become rich. Slightly unbalanced, hmmm !!

have you played 1680 timeline? In "Pirates' Sunset" all the nations are more even and powerful. So if you want to play as Spain againest England, Dutch and France this would be the best time period to play.

My 2 Cents:

The Game is really cute.

I love the details in the ships 3D Models (the flaps opening for the cannons when theyre being reloaded. The Ropes and ladders n all the lil things). And I love how those tiny sailors get blown overboard and drown or grab a floating piece of driftwood to save themselves. :D

Also it's pure nostalgia if ya played the original :goodjob:

And on a sidenote: i think the Character looks like Gybrush Threepwood from the "Monkey Island" Classics. Might be Homage or coincidence.

There's quite a fare share of diffrent things to do and some tactics (sacking a city) and great gameplay (seabattles) in it.
The only negative thing i can think of, that it wont have a replay value like civ. You definately will have done and seen all there is and without modding capabilities and MP there will be a definite end to Pirates.
But its gonna stay on me harddisk fer quite a while, ye scurvy scalliwags! :p

So to me it's definately worth the 50bucks.

Now I go grab me a PiñaColada put on my cool shades and hit the azure blue caribbean again.

have you played 1680 timeline? In "Pirates' Sunset" all the nations are more even and powerful. So if you want to play as Spain againest England, Dutch and France this would be the best time period to play.

Thanks for the info Smidlee. :goodjob:

I bought it at last week, its a really fun game. There are afew anoying things that bring it down a bit though:

-Promotions are too easy to get, and the goveners will promote you even if you have been working for the 'evil insert nation here' for years.

-Duels are too easy once you learn the animations

-Dancing is damn near impossible on any level above Adventurer.

Apart from those three things the game is great, and recreates the feel of the orininal game very well, by the powers! Actually, it would be good if the game were more piratey. I've not seen any peg legs or parrots yet, and no-one has even mentioned plank-walking. Yarrrr!

So is it worth it to buy this game if one has a laptop? This is the only computer I have and if so much depends on my dexterity with a numberpad, will it be more trouble than it's worth?

-Promotions are too easy to get, and the goveners will promote you even if you have been working for the 'evil insert nation here' for years.

-Duels are too easy once you learn the animations

-Dancing is damn near impossible on any level above Adventurer.


I agree on the first two, but can't really say anything about the level above adventurer since I started my first adventurer game today.

Two more things:

- Easy Duels make taking over ships quite easy and also make it possible to capture ships with twice+ your number of cewmen....

- Land combat is very easy because the computer NEVER DEFENDS and instead always marches right into your trap...


So is it worth it to buy this game if one has a laptop? This is the only computer I have and if so much depends on my dexterity with a numberpad, will it be more trouble than it's worth?

ye, you need the numpad alot, especially while dancing (8 keys are used during it).
But you don't need any other keys than the numpad and space, so if your notebook has a lock key for the numpad stuff (meaning you press it once and it stays in numpad mode) you should be fine.

I tried dancing with the Padlock function of the virtual Notebook-Numpad, it is still AWKWARD, not comparable to a "real" keypad, but you can get used to it.

Still, my gameplay is flawed with this solution. You will have some restrictions, but only in regards of dancing and sneaking.

I agree on the first two, but can't really say anything about the level above adventurer since I started my first adventurer game today.

Two more things:

*snip*

- Easy Duels make taking over ships quite easy and also make it possible to capture ships with twice+ your number of cewmen....

Yeah. I found that I would usually lose a straight up ship v ship battle on Rogue level, but I could win fairly easily if I made straight for the other ship and settled the fight man on man, like a real pirate! Yarrrrr!

I can just about do the same thing on Swashbuckler, but my ship takes a good beating and typically I lose about half my crew against trade galleons. I have not come up against any pirate hunters etc on swashbuckler yet though, and I expect that they will prove to be very formidable opponents. Yarrrrrrr! :D

I like the game but it gets old pretty fast. I dont think you will play more than two-three careers before you shelf the game. It is a tad too repetitive.

I agree with Joacqin, I found my sister and I still know all of the game - the only thing I have still not done is finding the Inca Treasure.

Yep, it was overhyped and overrated.

I'm going back to battlefield 1942 Forgotten Hope.

It's a shame though.