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....
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...
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 !