HISTORY 

The original Sid Meier’s Pirates came out in the late 80’s and is commonly rated as one of the great early games. Pirates! was thus a much anticipated and long overdue sequel. 

THE BASICS 

To cut a long story short, you find yourself at the age of about 18 in command of a small ship, somewhere in the Caribbean sometime in the 18^th century. Your choices as you set up the game include the usual difficulty setting, period (the earlier the tougher it is to get started), nationality, special skill and name. You will want to take it pretty easy first time out, as some of the features are quite tricky to master. 

WHERE TO GO 

Dotted around the Caribbean are the settlements, towns and colonies of the four Great Powers; Great Britain, Spain, France and the Netherlands. You will find yourself visiting these frequently; to recruit crew, stock up on supplies, trade goods, upgrade and repair your ships or to call upon the Governor. This last is perhaps the most important in terms of driving the story, of which more later. 

In between the land bits are the sea bits. Around which you are free to sail at will. The prevailing winds are easterly of course, so you will find north-south fairly quick and east-west not too bad, but sailing east, beating up into the wind, can take months.

WHAT TO DO 

In town, first of all, there is a variety of places to visit. The two most important are probably the tavern and the Governor’s mansion. In either of these you will learn of the various enemies you will have to track down, either to recover the kidnapped members of your family, or simply to increase your fame, (which incidentally increases the number of men likely to want to sign on with you). You will also discover information on hidden treasure and lost cities and have the opportunity to romance the Governors’ daughters, both as an end in itself and as a source of valuable information and equipment.

 At sea, of course, it’s the life of the Buccaneer. You can just sail between ports exploiting the price spread of the different trade goods, but it won’t be fun for very long. You could also just do the bidding of the various leaders you meet and act as escort for Governors, immigrants and envoys. Or, you do both of these and attack everything that moves, in the hope of adding to your piles of plunder, specialist seamen, ships and guns. After all, there’s not much point playing Pirates! if you don’t do some pirating.

 HOW TO DO IT

In town, it’s just a question of selecting from menus or clicking on characters in the tavern, then following the cues.

 At sea, sailing is straightforward, though you will have to learn how to use the wind to make best speed on your transits, not to mention picking the ship with the right rig for the prevailing wind. Combat is a little trickier, though at the easier difficult settings, not too much so. Having decided to go into battle, you will have to manoeuvre your ship to get in the best shots, while avoiding or minimising the impact of those of the enemy. Eventually you have a choice of different types of shot, and you will need to pick the right one in the right situation, depending upon the result you want. Clearly there isn’t much point dismasting a ship you want to capture, and sinking a treasure galleon before you have your hands on the loot is clearly not optimal. You will also have to adopt different tactics according to the relative strengths and weaknesses of the attacker and defender. Swapping broadsides with a ship of the line isn’t going to get your sloop very far, but trying to out-manoeuvre a nippy brig with a whopping great Royal Galleon isn’t going to be easy either. 

There are also occasions when you will need to disembark and traipse across the land, using landmarks on charts to navigate to treasure, cities or hideouts. And then there are the land battles, when you and your merry men are pitted against the defenders of a town in a turn-based battle.

 THE TRICKY BITS

 There are several mini-games in Pirates, and a couple of these, at least, give some people a lot of trouble. Firstly there is the romancing of the girlies and the need to be nimble on your feet in the ballroom. Without going into too much detail, you will at some stage be invited by a Governor’s daughter to accompany her to the Ball. Your task now is to move your feet in response to her hand movements, making as few mistakes as possible and thus impressing the young lady with your prowess. If you do well enough, you will be rewarded in some way and be able to progress your romance in another way next time you are in port. Blow it and you will have to try again on your next visit. At first, this part of the game is very hard to master. You can select Dancing as your special skill, or you can acquire special items, which give you more time to react, or allow you a couple of mistakes before getting the beady eye from your partner. 

Second major mini-game is the fencing. This kicks in on several occasions. Firstly and most importantly, once a sea battle has reached the boarding stage, you will find yourself up against the opposing captain and you and he will have to duke it out until one or other falls overboard. If you are successful, his ship is yours to plunder and take or sink as you see fit. If you fail, you either lose your ship and end up in one of the others in your fleet, find yourself in jail or, worst of all, stranded on a desert island. You will therefore need to get good at this quickly. In addition to sea battles, you will need to use your fencing skills with the “annoying Captain” in some taverns, various criminals and deviants and the “jealous suitor” you must overcome to claim the affections of one of the daughters. The principle is very simple. You have three attack moves and three ripostes. Match your riposte to your enemy’s attack and get your licks in any way you can. Reaction and recovery times, on your's and your enemy’s parts are affected by many factors, not least of which is age. 

GETTING ON 

You don’t have all day to achieve all you must achieve. From the moment you start, the passing of the days and years is marked and eventually ill health will force your retirement. You can extend your career with a couple of special items offered by the “mysterious traveller” in the tavern, but you won’t get much past fifty and, to get maximum points, you will have to recover all four members of your family, capture your arch enemy, vanquish all nine major pirates and find their respective treasures, locate four lost cities and successfully romance and marry one of the daughters. 

WHY IS THIS FUN? 

It’s actually quite difficult to say. Many have commented on the fact that it’s a very repetitive game. Head in to port, sell off your goods and buy lots of cheap stuff. Repair and upgrade your ships, pop over to the tavern for some intelligence and new crew, quick chat with the mysterious traveller and then off to the Mansion for a dance or a duel. Sail, find some fat prize, attack, sword fight, capture and go looking for some more. Keep doing this until you have to off-load some treasure or make urgent repairs, whereupon you do the town thing again before sailing. Repeat until end. 

The trick is in the “one more go” thing, familiar to anyone who has played a Sid Meier game. Finding yourself on the trail of the evil Mendoza, you will keep going until you have found and vanquished him, by which time you will have just enough of a treasure map to search for some goodies ashore. This will bring you back close to a port you need to visit, either for their excellent trade prices or because you have a date with the daughter, so you will keep going until you get there. Only by that time you’ll be hot on the heels of another foe or have been tasked by a Governor with some vital mission. And so it goes on. There are always several things to do at once and they are frequently contradictory. Your priorities can change at any time and you are seldom entirely in charge of your fate. 

CONCLUSION

This is one of those games that can eat your life. I played almost nothing else and nearly non-stop for about a month. As soon as I’d finished one game, I’d start another, experimenting with the different eras and trying different tactics and strategies. Achieving all your tasks is no easy matter and sometimes simply impossible, in part thanks to a couple of obscure and minor bugs, but the satisfaction of retiring as a Governor, with a beautiful wife, buckets of cash and a grand parcel of land is reward enough for succeeding in one of the cleverest and most completely realised games of recent years.