Review: Sid Meier's Pirates (PSP)

If 1987 doesn't seem that long ago you might well remember the original version of “Pirates!” complete with annoying sound effects and deep play. Twenty years later and essentially, this is the same game as that one that came out on the Commodore 64 (GameStyle is pedantic enough to miss the option of selling cannon and hailing for news). And this PSP version is identical to the PC and Xbox versions that came out a couple of years ago, aside from a little dip in graphical quality. In return for that though you get the benefit of being portable, which works well as the game lets you dip in and out of it at your leisure. It doesn't even have massive loading breaks and the controls cause no problems at all, making this possibly the best version yet.

That is all well and good if you have played a previous version, but if you haven't then you'll need a bit more explanation. From an open story focused on your family being kidnapped, eventually you’ll find yourself in charge of a boat and unsurprisingly much of your time will be spent at sea. Whatever you are doing, from polite trading to hunting down treasure galleons to sink the most important thing to take into account is the wind. As the prevailing winds in the Caribbean are from the south-east, travelling west along the north coast of (what is now) Cuba is an extremely slow process, and while developing a knowledge of upwind tacking helps nothing will help more than planning your next two or three routes in advance. It's not just the shortest route but the amount of time you'll be travelling with the wind.

How much time you use matters in this case too, as you have a limited life-span. Waste too much time dallying or get stabbed too many times in duels and you’ll not get too far before ill-health forces retirement on you. In the short-run long periods wasted at sea will depress your crew who are eager for a steady stream of plunder or pushing to divide up what you’ve already got. Dividing up the plunder leaves you with less money to trade with, but more significantly wastes several months ashore. The balance between keeping a strong crew and a happy crew is one of the most difficult aspects of the game.

If all that doesn't sound that bit too tedious then you're in for a treat. While nothing is too in-depth, it all works together and requires a bit more thought than most games. The clean, cheerful graphical style helps lighten the tone and cut-scenes at the end of duels are usually intentionally comical, it certainly doesn’t have a gritty realistic tone. There is a lot of game here though and it will feel impossible to achieve everything for several plays through. Do you try and find your family, get promoted by every nation to Duke, sink all the pirates, find all their treasure, discover lost cities, capture the most powerful boats or just slowly and steadily make a vast fortune? It's a lot to take in.

To break up the sailing a few little mini-games are involved. The most integral (and fun) are cannon battles, utilising the time between reloads and the winds to get into position. Ship upgrades let you alter what shot you are using, to rip apart sails or the opposing crew rather than its hull. Assuming you don’t get them to submit, fencing follows. With only 3 moves it feels limited, but by being tied to how well your crew are fighting and being based more on reactions it is still satisfying to play. The other mini-games, sadly, are easily the worst aspects of the game, each of which has terrible graphics and none of them work that well. Sneaking into a town is far from Metal Gear Solid and treasure hunting is simplistic and luck based, just move quickly and hope to avoid the attentions of the local puma population. The turn-based battle mode for capturing towns is extremely shallow and the controls are a bit too over-complicated too. Easily the best is the dancing game which is like a slow, simple version of DDR and that isn’t great.

The mini-games are the only real flaws and you don't have to spend much time with them. GameStyle quickly learned to ignore the odd bug that occasionally forces ships to hurtle across land at ungodly speeds and almost managed to ignore the serious lack of character models. Play takes a fair amount of dedication, but thanks to well balanced difficulty levels (and a higher share of the plunder being given to you to tempt you to try them) makes the game feel welcoming and deep, and it feels like the complete antithesis of many PSP games. It won't be to everyone’s tastes, but it is an adorable game that works even better now it is portable.

Rating: 8 / 10

Words by Andrew Revell