Page Deuce

Pirates has fewer cities than the original game, and they're not as rich as they used to be, but they're harder to conquer. The concept of a naval invasion has been abandoned - any time you want to attack a town, it will be by land. Though the AI is lacking (no better than Advance Wars, without the benefits of scripting), it usually has superior numbers and this forces the player to game the game - taking every advantage of terrain and bad AI habits. Combat is done in turn-based "I go, you go" mode. The enemy has a variety of units at his disposal, like native Archers, native Scouts, infantry, guardsmen and cavalry. Natives get to move through jungle tiles at no extra cost, cavalry have extra move points and are devastating on the open field. Meanwhile, the player has only three kinds of infantry to fight with - Buccaneers who have muskets to fire at range but are poor in close combat, Pirates who are decent in close combat, and one unit of Officers who are deadly in a melee. The game automatically scales the number and sizes of individual brigades to make battles manageable - a nice touch.

In naval combat, the AI can be similarly abused - it doesn't improve as the difficulty level goes up, its ships only get stronger relative to the players - but again, the challenge is in gaming the game. Even at the easiest difficulty level, we found ourselves setting challenges to make things more interesting - trying to go an entire career without being hit in a duel, for example. It's quite possible, especially at the easiest difficulty level, where the game will even tell you what key to hit in order to avoid being struck.

Duelling decides the fate of all combat once a ship is boarded, or if the defenders decide to fight from within a fort, rather than sallying forth. The player uses the 7, 4, and 1 keys on the keypad to make high, mid-height and low strikes at his opponent. 8, 5, and 2 defend against high, mid and low, while the #6 button taunts your foe. The fighting sequences may seem there only for cosmetic effect early on, but on higher difficulty levels they become very interesting and challenging.

Dancing, unfortunately, is not so much fun. Despite my success and duelling, dancing was an endless stream of frustrations except at the lowest difficulties. Since it's impossible to get married without having successful dances, at higher difficulty levels my character always ended up being an old bachelor. Irritatingly enough, even if you do go through the chore, your wife still continues insisting on dances, as do the daughters of other governors, despite the heavy ball and chain... I mean gold band on your finger.


Your dance partner will give directions about which key to press. Unfortunately there is so little time between the direction and the start of the movement that it's very difficult to pull off the proper dance move. To make matters even more frustrating, the indicator movements are very similar to each other. Does she want you to press 4 or 1? 6 or 3? Who knows - but it's frustrating.