Pirates! Gold Plus

I've played both Pirates! Gold and the new Pirates! with flashy graphics. I've spent many hours with both. While Gold is decent and parts of it are fun, the swordfighting is impossible to pull off and you end up mashing the keyboard. Also, one of the weaknesses of Pirates! is the inability to tell how dynamic the world really is -- there are things reacting to your actions that aren't obvious from the minimal feedback you get. The new Pirates! fixes all of that, so just get that game instead -- it's a real pleasure, and one of my favorite games of all time.

Yes, Pirates is a game set on the Spanish Main, and in practice it's about sword fighting and treasure hunting and ship-to-ship combat, but for me whenever I booted it up I thought of freedom. Even today, in the midst of thousands of "open world" games, those open worlds were just a series of linear paths you could choose to follow in any order. There is a very vague story and motivation to Pirates but it is the least interesting part of the experience. You'll choose a few basic options that control difficulty and the world map but after that the rest of the game is up to you. The Spanish Main is settled by various countries (the Spanish most notably), so you can make your money working as a privateer and helping with the war effort, trading between cities, finding maps to buried treasure, besieging towns and hunting other elusive treasures like the Silver Fleet. There's a wealth of things to do, and ways to make your money. This retains that Microprose touch of blending genres through minigames but Pirates feels much more focussed than titles like Covert Action. Play styles merge in a meaningful way and feel very well connected with the main portions of the game. Graphically I'll admit to preferring the look of the '87 version if for it's clarity alone, but it's not the graphics that will pull you into this one. It's that feeling that even as you pull out of port with a fresh crew that the world around you is brimming with opportunity to make your fortune, and for just once in your gaming life, it's you who will decide how to make it. There's no man at mission control squawking into an earpiece, no quest book with a list of mandates and map coordinates and no translucent arrows pointing you to the next mission objective. It's just the high seas, a map, a rickety old ship and the potential for adventure. Can't come recommended enough.

I have spent the last two days trying to figure out how to play this game, and I've come to the conclusion that this port is terrible. I thought it was because it was old, but nope, it's just a really bad version. Controls are slow and frustrating, which makes combat intolerable, which makes any hope of actually doing well at the game hopeless. I just got the version on an NES emulator and it is superior in every way, and I can play in on a controller :) As much as I want to support Sid Meiers, I warn you, don't get this version of the game.

This is the same game I remember playing back in the 90s. It is awesome. I've got dozens of hours on the GOG version, racked up before I installed Galaxy. I'm anxious to see if the cloud save really works. Now for the gotchas... the keyboard is almost non-responsive to steer ship during combat. USE YOUR MOUSE BUTTONS TO STEER... left click to steer left, right click to steer right. CANNONS MISSING? You need to make sure you answer the question correctly when asked to identify a pirate flag. Look in the manual or the flags.pdf in the install directory. This was used as old school copy protection back in the day. A lot of MicroProse games used a similar copy protection strategy. If you don't identify the flag correctly you should quit and reload the game.

I could not possibly count the hours spent on these titles ! Pulling all-nighters crossing the Spanish Main, plundering gold from both enemies and friends alike, finding lost relatives, and collecting grand treasuries. You are a pirate/privateer on service of one of the great nations of the time (England, Spain, Portugal or Netherlands) or just in service of your own. Nations wage war and as a privateer you are allowed to attack and plunder enemy ships. Or you can attack everybody, but pissing everybody off is generally not a good idea, since getting fresh crew will become a bit difficult. In the course of your daring exploits you will come across maps of grand treasures, lost relatives and all kind of stuff to make the game the grand entertainment it actually is. :) "Fly our flag, we teach them fear Capture them, the end is near Firing guns, they shall burn Surrender or fight, there is no return Under Jolly Roger !!!" ;)