Alright Gents, this one took a little tuning but I'm successfully running this on an I5 Surface Pro with Windows 11. I had to put it in compatibility mode for Windows 8, checked the boxes for "Disable Full Screen Optimizations," "Run This Program as an administrator," and "Use Legacy Display ICC color management." This plays almost identical to the original game except I've found the dancing sequences to be easier and the lost city maps actually have clues that lead you to the lost cities. I would rate this as slightly easier than the original but a faithful reproduction.
Don't often buy stuff on GOG, but this was too good to miss. First things first: it works perfectly on Windows 10 64-bit and with no tinkering defaulted to fill my widescreen monitor. It won't go up to my native screen resolution (1920x1080) without messing around with the config files, but it still looks and plays absolutely fine on the highest available settings. Graphics are somewhat cartoon-style - think Disney animation/characterisation - but work well in the context.
Is it still a good game - yes! Trading, pirating, romancing and swashbuckling are all present and correct and work together as a cohesive whole. Yes, you can change the flags and emblems on the sails; but sadly you can't make your ship look like the Black Pearl! Simple controls mean your ship handles well and combat is satisfying. Wind and ammo management are intuitive and the variety of ships you can have in your fleet mean you can choose the right one for each combat situation.
Your crew get dissatisfied a bit too easily early on and for no apparent reason - but it's slightly irritating rather than a game breaker. All the side games - dancing/romancing Governor's daughters; invading Towns, using treasure maps to find hidden loot, defeating notorious pirates, escorting ships and hunting down the huge Spanish Treasure Galleons are present and correct and all work well and are just fun to play. There's loads to do in this game, as well as following the main plot.
Overall, a definite must-buy - particularly at this price - for enjoyable, not too serious, pirating fun!
... well, not quite, that would be the original version of this game which I played as a kid on my grandmother's old Compaq. Until now, I never had the chance to play the remake but the original was the very first game that gave me the ability to just go out and do whatever I want. If not for it, I wouldn't be the gamer I am today. Fortunately, the remake is just as good as the original!
Sid Meier needs no introduction because every game that man creates gives players a toolbox, rather than a game board, and says, "Do what you want, this is your game." The game genre may differ but the freedom never disappears. Pirates! is no different. This game allows you to live a life in the Caribbean. That's literally all it does. It gives you a huge open world. It gives you tools. It then throws you out into that world and from there, it's up to you how you interact with that world and how you use those tools.
Of course, one would expect that you could play as a pirate in a game literally called "Pirates!" but that's not even the half of it. You can also be a privateer, a merchant, a nobleman, you can pretty much craft any sort of destiny for yourself. You could do the traditional raids and plundering to pay for a lavish and free life but you can also get involved in court intrigue, romance the ladies and live like a king. As cliche as the saying has become, the possibilities in this game truly are endless.
I do need to list a quick warning, though: while the game DOES run fine on modern systems, it can be a bit finnicky at times. If you're a person who has very low tolerance/patience toward tweaking games, there's a possibility you may have a bad experience but that's certainly not a guarantee.
Altogether, if you've never played this or the original, definitely grab this sometime. Whether you're a fan of open world sandboxes or if you've never played a game like that before, this is a fantastic game with loads of depth that makes every playthrough something different!
I was having trouble getting Pirates to run on Windows 11. I tried setting Properties on the app - Disable Fullscreen Optimizations, and Run as Administrator. Game launches but immediately crashes.
I was reading other posts on the internet describing how they were able to get this to work by going to NVidia control panel and creating a custom 4:3 screen resolution. I didn't see a way to do that in the control panel and it says this resize option is hidden when the display doesn't support it.
Instead, I went to:
Windows Settings>System>Display>Display Resolution
Set to 800x600
Turn HDR off
Launch the game. This actually got the game working!
However 800x600 is a little too retro-90s low resolution. Oddly enough, I was able to change the Display Settings to 2048 x 1536 and the game looks amazing! Sailing is smooth and fun.
Some of the cut-scenes and cinematics show as blocky and cut off sometimes. The game itself works fine so far. (I sailed all the way to Antigua LOL)
However, when you're done, you have to manually set Windows display resolution back to whatever native resolution for your display, and turn HDR back on.
I hope this helps you get the game running on Windows 11!
First of all, let me say my game play experience comes from owning the release on the original Xbox so I cannot comment on the PC version which as I understand had a few extra elements removed from the Xbox version (if memory serves I remember reading something about an additional mini game centred around finding the lost cities in the PC version, where in the Xbox version I think you just needed to land near them to find them).
This game is very much a case of whether you can overcome a certain lack of depth within most aspects of the game play experience in exchange for a greater breadth of game play styles within Pirates that you may not find in some other games. It also has a great deal of charm and succeeds in creating for me what felt like a living, breathing world to travel within and make alliances and enemies by the score. Most importantly I felt like allowed me to tell (or at least try to tell) the story I wanted to tell in that particular play through.
Want to be a main driven by nothing but greed of treasure? Go for it. You want to be a famous pirate hunter? Sure thing. Want to pursue your dream of reuniting with your family? Make it so. You could even try making a fortune purely as a trader if that takes your fancy. The game never tells you that pursuing any or all of these is wrong and you can be who you want to be. The worst that will happen is you will be told you retired to be an unknown scalliwag in the back of beyond.
My only negative in the game is that while there is theoretically a time limit on the game (as you age or become injured the minigames become more difficult and punishing and you essentially end up being forced into retirement), you are often able to complete most of if not all of the major goals of the game and rather than feeling like a different character/story each time, it ends up feeling like the same character/story multiple times over, but when the game is this fun I felt that was a relatively minor complaint.
Recommended
