Gameplay

Piratey stuff

The core strengths of Sea Dogs remain evident in Pirates of the Caribbean. Ship combat is quite exciting and has enough realism to make for a satisfying experience, but doesn’t emphasize the nitty-gritty of sail combat so much as to bog the game down with meaningless detail. The excellent skill system from Sea Dogs has been updated with Diablo II-like abilities that make life a lot easier for the aspiring swashbucklers out there.

Good thing I've got good cannon skills

Brig

Pinnace

Unfortunately, as we mentioned earlier, the console focus of the title is all too evident. Pirates doesn’t just have a bad interface, or a console interface, it has a bad console interface. The mouse is nigh-on useless and the keyboard controls are nowhere near as friendly as a gamepad. Even if we did play this on Xbox, there are so many design issues with the interface that it’s almost impossible to know where to begin. The player’s inventory becomes too full, the character still can’t strafe side-to-side on land, aiming the pistol is hardly intuitive and the world map is a disaster.

Port Royale (more of a hands-on economic sim than pirate game) does everything but combat and graphics better than Pirates. Even though Port Royale gets bogged down with the tedious business aspects relatively early on, the dynamic economy, real setting and living world really shame Pirates of the Caribbean.

Bad bad bad

There is absolutely no reason for the pathetically small, characterless fantasy ‘archipelago’ that Akella constructed in place of the real Caribbean. Oh yes, it may be that designing 100 3D cities and islands would be too much, but nobody cares. The on-land aspects of the game are a chore to be dispensed with, rather than a pleasant interlude. There’s no thrill in fighting the same band of brigands (or at night, undead pirates) every time you skip by the same part of the island. Even if the on-land aspect was entertaining, people are buying a pirate game here, not a bad Neverwinter Nights module.

Pirates starts off being absurdly difficult. You are given a pittance of gold which barely pays for the repairs of your ship, and just enough cargo to trade for another small load of cargo, and then running trade routes. Pirates are a constant and over-done problem, being more common than any single nationality it seems.

Ah, my target!

Cannons away

Now go away

The storyline, such as it is, may be decent but it’s not compelling. To make matters worse, the player is automatically thrust into the story, rather than choosing when it starts. The French are the only enemy the player starts off with and while it would be great if you could raid their cities, you can’t. Their forts are indestructible, because they’re the French and the Big Enemy in the plot.

Instead of simply fixing what was broken with Sea Dogs, Akella took on a slew of new features and implemented them in a half-assed way, so now players get to play a colossus of a half-done project, rather than a tightly-focused, kick-ass pirate sim.