Why I buy this one ?
- The 1987 cross-genre classic returns with an all-new story, a new engine, updated gameplay, and 3-D graphics
- Play as a pirate captain cruising the 17th century Caribbean
- Confront enemies on board ships, in seedy taverns, and in other locations; use anything within your reach as a weapon
- Engage in fierce naval battles fighting single enemies or multiple ships
- For 1 player

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What our customer's say!

"A shell of what could have been a great game", Sid Meier's Pirates is a mixed bag. The game is fun to play for a few days, but it's incredibly short and with little replay value unless you enjoy doing the same thing over and over again. It promises exploration and excitement, but delivers long periods of waiting for the wind to pick up and propel your war galleon across the sea. It supposedly has four different time periods of piracy to play in, but the only difference is in the level of fun, not difficulty or content. You get to swordfight with scurvy pirate captains, sneak into towns, attack towns and install new governors, trade goods, attack ships, buy items, recruit crew members, search for treasure and your long lost family, and even ballroom dance. The main problem is that every aspect of the game is simplified to its basic elements and rendered repetitious.

In the long run, the game is best for gamers who don't like to spend a lot of time on games. Pirates is fairly easy to play for a few minutes and come back to whenever you want without having to remember a lot of details. Unfortunately for me, the repetitious nature of the game has become far too tedious.

"Fun but with a few faults", This game is AWESOME when you first start playing it. The graphics and colors are excellent. It is alot of fun swordfighting, blasting cannons at ships, and many others. I wish there could of been a multiplayer feature built in to play with or against a buddy. I wish there wa smore to romancing the daughters also. I wish the top 10 pirates were a little more harder to catch as well. Once you find them and kill them, the challenege of finding them is gone and they are dead forever. It would of been nice to allow them to escape a few times or allow you to maroon them or walk a plank or something.

Overall the game is a B+ and is a good buy.

"Awsme for a day!", If you get a chance to rent the PSP or XBox version do that, or wait till the game costs about the same as a rental because it's only fun for about day or 2 and then becomes very repetitious and boring.

When I first started playing the game I was amazed by the interactivity of the ocean, but soon became annoyed by the endless tiresom traveling from one city to another just to find the next part of a map. Everything looks the same and blends together after the first 3 hours of playing.

All in all, it's a great game to rent or pay less then $5 for, but don't buy it for $20.


"Pirates? Yes. Repetitve? Yes.", It could have been better. Sid Meier is a fantastic game-maker, and I hear the original was great. This is apparently a decent remake, however the repetition starts to grate upon you after your fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth time around. It's true that you can increase difficulty, which makes it a bit better, but still....Fights are very scripted and end ususally the same way. Dancing and socializing is more like playing "Simon Says." Perhaps this is why Pirates! went extinct on the high seas so many years ago? They all fell asleep at the wheel and were lost at sea....

"Time to pilllege and plunder!", I bought this game on a whim and am so glad I did! I've stayed up later than I should have every day this week playing it and it is still just as fun as the very first time. What's better than fencing and treasure hunting? Nothing! It's worth every penny spent.

I am disappointed that I couldn't be a female pirate though. But I've gotten over it.

Read this reviews before You buy...

"A slight disapointment", I went to the store and got this game, (obviously knowing it wouldn't be realistic, pirates lives weren't very fun) expecting a game where I could walk around with a sword and a gun killnig things. Then I could get in a ship and blast a couple defensless sloops of the face of the map. Not so. You have little control over your character, and the ship battles are always short, as firing your cannons constantly is suicide, the main tactic: Board and fight the captain. The sword fights are an extra complex game of Rock Paper Scissors, three attack moves, chop slash and thrust. Chop beats slash, thrust beats slash and thrust, and slash beats nothing. See the dilema? There is a worthless parry for each of those, but that's it. The only reason you win is bcause the AI reflexes are slow, and they attack 2 seconds after you. The only other thing of interest is romance, and the dancing (only way to romance) is repetitive and aggravating. Overall, I'd say go get POTC and mod it to death.

"Pirate ?", First off, my review is based on:
1) I'm physically disabled = so I could only play through "adventurer" difficulty
2) I used the onscreen numpad = I believe those who use the keyboard will have better results

Gameplay: 5 difficulty settings ... apprentice is basically your tutorial ... each dificulty settings has a noticeable affect ... some have said the game is too easy = you can not upgrade your ship/character if you choose not to, plus with all the ships to choose from, you can always use weaker ships ... many choices on how to play ... the onscreen numpad + mouse was the only way I could play the game due to my lack of manual dexterity = wish more game gave the user both options: keyboard and/or mouse ... you can close the onscreen keyboard if you don't need it

Ship Battles: fight it out or ram'em ... wind changes ... multiple ship options ... all affect one's tactics ... as the difficulty increases, the enemy becomes much smarter

Sword fighting: more fun here ... you pick 1 of 3 sword options ... again, as the difficulty increases, you must counter more + aging has a "noticeable" affect on your characters performance

Land Battles: not used to "square movement" ... I prefer fluid gameplay + the ability to use tactics such as ambushes and choke points ... here, both sides can see where each other is from ther very start ... I only did 1 land battle per game because it is neccesary to complete a quest ... I basically just made sure I had equal or greater numbers

Dancing: ahhh, the toughest part ? ... you would think this nice diversion would be a rest from combat ... difficulty increases per attractivenes of daughter ... plus, if you're really nailing a dance with fourishes, the characters get bigger and obscure the daughters hand motions ... since she is a vital source of info, you must dance ?

Upgrades: I believe you have 8 for your ship ... 8 specialists for ship as well ... 4 for swordfighting ... 2 for dancing (... not including your initial skill pick) ... again, if you find it too easy, just don't upgrade

Quests: you have 9 pirates to fight ... 9 pirate treasures to find ... 4 relatives to rescue ... 4 lost cities to find ... guess you could say 4 nations to impress ... all add points to your characters score ... as does gold total + acres given out by each nation for "your help"

Manual: thought I'd give it it's own section = very informative with historical content ... nicely done

My one complaint: you're never really a Pirate ! ... 1) you can't start as one(.. you pick from 4 nations) ... 2) you never look like one = picture the 9 you fight and those on the Piarte ships = do we ever resemble any; no ... 3) can we romance/wed barmaids; no ... 4) we don't even have a Pirate Haven from which to operate from
I would have like to: be a Pirate; attack all nations; romance/wed barmaids etc...
They could have added this feature ?
Maybe in Pirates! 2.
Would have been nice if every Pirate you defeated basically worked for you = each Pirate Haven would sell a upgrade( 9 havens / 8 upgrades = doable)... have enough gold for your goods/ships(...each pirate you defeat adds to that havens total)... they would act just like nations ports = mysterious stranger would sell the items you need + offer info ... barmaids/bartender have the info you need ... wed a barmaid and achieve the same affect as that of a governors daughter
Basically, just turn the game into 2 games.
Sure the point totals/categories would be different, but the extra gold + ship destroyed totals could reflect the difference ?

With the quests/aging/sailing, I found it difficult to achieve a high rating without being "in poor or failing" health :-)
Seemed the best I could do was retire at 48yrs old ... even played into my 60's, but swordfighting was rough as your character really slows down.
I like to hit every port/settlement + romance as many daughters as jewerly permits. It was the norm to have 5+ Mendoza's on the screen at the same time. Factor in chasing Baron Raymondo for map sections and you see how difficult it is to finish at an early age.
Plus, as the difficulty increases, your crew gets unhappy quicker.

Pirates! is the best pirate game I've played.
Maybe the next one will let us actually play a Pirate :-)

* not one single crash ... using XP/SP2
* did notice ....> if you constantly cut short/skip the cutscenes, the sword fighting screens will load slower(...luckily, you get 3 sword exchanges before you input a move) ... saw no difference in seas battles


"An old Classic is back!", The original Pirates on my old Commodore 64 was second only to Defender of the Crown. It logged many hours and as you can imagine, I was extremely eager to try the new version out upon hearing about it.

So when one of my friends bought the game, he let me borrow it over a weekend he was out of town and I spent the entire weekend amongst the high seas!

The game played much like the original which isn't a bad thing; however I did feel that it might have suffered a bit by that fact as well. While it retained the feel of its namesake, it just didn't have the replay value I remember.

It could have used some additional animations and a bit of flavor or feeling amongst the various towns. Each and every tavern, Governor's Daughter and Barmaid seems repetitive. The new features of sneaking into town and keyboard ballroom dancing didn't add enough enjoyment to the game and I would have rather development time been spent on sword fighting and ship modifications.

There just didn't seem to be enough differences in ships and I found that If I took a smaller faster ship, the ship battles were always victorious.

All in all it's a decent game worth playing as it does retain most of it's predecessor's feel, but it didn't have enough draw to make me want to purchase it even at reduced prices. My advice would be to give this one a rental try or pick it up in the bargain bin.

"An excellent and very playable remake of the classic game", As someone who spent an inordinate amount of time playing Sid Meier's Pirates in its first incarnation, way back on a Commodore Amiga around 1990, I was very excited to see this remake released recently with Sid in charge.

Many people have already reviewed the game play, so I will write mostly on how the game compares to that years-ago version. In this new Pirates:

- The graphics are really pretty! Notably the water/map scenes are beautiful, as are the ship-to-ship combat scenes. Sound effects are very nice too in these same areas. It's not fair to compare it to the old version, but it's completely a new game from this angle.

- Hand-to-Hand combat is still simplistic, though more complicated than before. Combat is almost always the same and your personal reflexes/tactics have little to do with actual success. You still have to do it to play the game.

- There is a lot more in the way of quests, allowing for more goal-oriented game-play, but the quests tend to be repetitions of the same. So instead of one lost family member to find, there are four. Instead of one pirate's lost treasure, there are 10. Etc.

- More variety in general: Additions include native villages (and war canoes), more named pirates (and matching pirate havens), more small towns, more to do.

- Ships are customizable and there are artifacts that improve your abilities, both of which I believe are new to this version.

- Overland combat is much smoother, but overland travel is very difficult to navigate (disorienting). For some reason, you can't attack/pillage an undefended town/village/outpost. That doesn't make any sense to me... There is no longer any trading fire with a hostile city's fort (though they can fire at you).

- There is a very annoying addition while in town, the "formal dance" in which you try press the right keys at the right times (though the same does help you if you mess up too many times in a row) to do a good job of dancing with a governor's daughter, thereby impressing her and making her more likely to marry you.

So in summary, the game has all the ease of play that the original did, but is much prettier with some nice new features and a lot of added activity, without taking away from the feel or look of the original. The only negatives added to the game are not core parts of the play and can be circumvented easily enough. You can start playing in five minutes never having touched the game before and play for just a few minutes, or you can research the nationalities and historical periods, really get into the game, and play for hours.

Highly recommended both for new players and fans of the old version.

"Swashbuckling Adventure", Sid Meier's Pirates is a fun game, especially if you are at all interested in naval history, or the history of piracy. Not completely factual in content; however, the game succeeds at putting you in the time period and making it come alive with the excellent graphics and easy to learn game play.

As you begin your piratical career, you'll choose a nationality, and a time period when you want to burn, take and pillage along the Caribbean waters and ports. The game quickly places you in the action, and you'll start with a fairly pathetic ship and a drunken, mutinous crew to fight her with. From these humble origins, you'll begin your quest for frame, riches and the liberation of your kidnapped sister.

The concept is simple, you get cash to upgrade and purchase your pirate fleet, and you steal ships and cargo and treasure to get cash- well, gold bullion at least. In the many port-cities you'll experience sword fighting, wooing of governor's daughters, and intelligence from the locals about the shipping near by. Some times you'll receive special missions, or find out where to look for your sister next. After some time and experience, you'll become a wanted man by one or many of the nations in the area, and sneaking into town or capturing a town will become your only options.

As the player you can focus on one area and becoming a local potentate, or you can focus on finding your sister, or finding buried treasure and defeating rival pirates. So the game play does offer a number of options. I enjoyed capturing a great ship, refitting and upgrading until i could destroy my enemies without boarding, and then capturing a few merchant ships to finance my repairs and pay my crew. Other people will create large fleets of pirate ships- it is really up to you. Each city and each interaction- especially the sword fighting, eventually become repetitive, and this is my biggest critique. You'll probably play the game for a few weeks, or maybe a month, and then stop for a while. Don't worry; the game will be waiting for you again when your piratical nature begins to reassert itself.

(*****) Great Graphics
(*****) Great Sound
(****) Good Interface
(**) OK Story
(****) Good re-play value
(****) Good Game Overall