The seas of the Caribbean are a dangerous place, filled with the fleets of
warring European powers and pirate raiders. Should you encounter a hostile
fleet you'll have your choice of commanding your ships in battle or, just for
you mercantile types, you can let the computer resolve the battle automatically.
There's some strategy to ship battles in that you can select cannon ammunition to
target enemy sails, hulls, or crew, and in that you can choose to try to board
and capture enemy ships. However, what's really missing is the tactics of
working the wind and sails in order to get into a good firing position on the
enemy while preventing them from obtaining the same goal. Once combat
begins ships tend to race right at each other, make a hard 90°
turn, and then let loose a broadside. Battles involving larger fleets are more
exciting more from the sheer number of ships involved than from the need for a
good battle plan. This simplistic and inaccurate portrayal of 17th Century
naval warfare left me disappointed, especially since the box touted the game's
"realistic 3D sea battles". It's all well and good for a player who simply
wants to get the combat over quickly and get back to trading, but it takes a lot
of the fun out of being a pirate and sailing circles around fat Spanish merchant
ships laden with gold and treasure.
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| With ships going every which way you can see that wind is not a factor in these
sail ship battles.. |
The game will also let you attack towns from both land and sea.
Attacking from sea involves defeating any ships protecting the port, followed by
a battle in which you must use your ships to destroy cannon towers defending the
town. Destroy all of the towers and you capture the port. Land
battles are simplistic affairs fought from a little window which displays icons
to represent the number of troops involved and a bar showing each side's morale.
You can click buttons on the bottom of the window to set your side's level of
aggression, but otherwise the battle is a pretty passive affair that you watch
until one side runs out of morale or troops.
After you've played long enough to build up wealth and reputation, you will
be able to begin accepting missions from governors and other town residents.
These can be peaceful missions such as an emergency delivery of goods to another
port, or more militaristic ones such as the capture of a pirate or a rival port.
The missions are a fun way to add some spice into the game and you can pick and
choose which ones you want to accept.
The biggest disappointment with the game is that it does not provide a very
exciting experience for those who want to live the life of a pirate. The
game is an economic simulator with pirates added in, and not a pirate game in
and of itself. The game does include some nice pirate touches such as
treasure maps and the ability to build a pirate hideout (essentially a new home
port town), but overall it never quite lets you get away from the fact that the
game is truly an economic simulation.
In The End, This Game Hath Been Rated:
74%. A detailed trading sim for merchants, but too much budgeting and
not enough buccaneering to recommend to pirate fans.
System Requirements: Pentium II 450; 64 MB RAM; 16 MB
Video RAM; 4x CD-ROM; 500 MB Hard Drive
Space; Mouse.
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