Caltrops - Gamerasutra - Re: new Pirates game. Initial impressions

Forum Overview :: Gamerasutra

by FABIO 01/09/2005, 6:02pm PST

Ray of Light wrote:

(FABIO take note: that you thought this happens all the time means you're still in apprentice mode. The game just isn't very hard; live a little).

Huh? When did I ever mention flashing? Aside from that, I've noticed no change in the dancing game in any of the modes. It just takes some getting used to. Once you get the hang of it, no gubernatorial virginity is safe. I've been playing on nothing but swashbuckler past hour 1.5.

Swordfighting is almost exactly the same as before, but without the "move backward" defense of the original. The enemy telegraphs his attack, like before, and anyone who's played a round of Mortal Kombat will beat him easily. Various artifacts (fancy blades, a fancy shirt) will make you fast enough that defense becomes unneccessary.

Okay, this means you're still playing below swashbuckler, which is the only real mode to play on once you get the hang of things. It's not possible to hit anyone on that mode without first defending from one of their attacks. The toughter opponents (the evil marquis) are often nearly immune to the slower slash attacks. Taunting becomes a must to swing the advantage bar in your favor to slow your opponent down enough to give you a chance. The original was simply choosing the cutlass and pounding on the overhead attack key, which will quickly lose you any duel now.

Making other ships visible while sailing, with a little description of what each one is, is the best new thing. The worst new thing is the "sneak into town" minigame, which is basically Pac-Man at 1/16 speed in off-axis overhead perspective; if you have any force at all you may as well just sack the town instead. Land combat is turn-based, not real-time; it's sort of like Archon and pretty fun.

Dear god the sneaking game sucks. Add to the list of complaints the fact that you can't see the entire area and thus have no clue of where you're supposed to be going. People say there are white arrows pointing out the route to the governer's mansion, but I've never seen them. Maybe they dissappear on swashbuckler.

All they had to do in order to make it playable was double or triple the speed of the whole thing. Allowing you to see the entire area would have been a nice touch to. After one or two tries you'll give up on it forever. Not because of any difficulty, but because of the slow paced tediousness of the whole thing. I guess it's somewhat better than the old system where your sneak success was random and could result in the sinking of your ship.

Land combat is decent. No clue where you got the Archon comparison. They're both turn based and the similarities end there. You get two types of units: melee and ranged. Computer gets these plus cavalry (manual says they get artillery too, but I have yet to see this). Each side can move their pieces 2 spaces a turn. Ranged softens units up, melee is more decisive and the losing unit is driven from the field completely. My one major complaint with land combat is that there's no way of seeing what the current morale of each unit is. Morale plays a huge role in melee combat, but all the factors that determine it are random and obscure. Getting shot reduces morale, taking casualties reduces morale and vice versa, but units seem to sometimes get to a point where their morale is so low they turn "angry" and get a morale bonus. I guarentee everyone will become frustrated the 5th time you charge into what seems to be a sure win only to discover that the town guards had +2 morale.

Minor land combt complaints include the flanking system being a bit broken, with lots of instances of the silly "back dancing" present in many strategy RPG's with back attack bonuses. Second complaint is the very weak enemy AI during this. Cavalry kick ass out in the open, but fight at one-third strength in the jungle. So of course the computer is always charging them at you in the jungle. You also cannot zoom in and scroll; the game automatically snaps it back to center the selected unit whenever you try.

For the most part, the strengths (naval combat) and weaknesses (lack of scale; slow and boring sea travel) of the original are intact. If you ignore the graphics, it still feels a lot like a Commodore 64 game, and it's hard to imagine it being made or sold in 2005 without a built-in historical fanbase.

For some reason I never bother with naval combat here like I did with the old version and just charge straight in instead. Sometimes it's a little tricky judging cannon shots; they seem to sometimes shoot perpendicular to you and other times at an angle to stern.

The only downside to playing on swashbuckler is the much gimped speed of your ship. Enemy ships will ignore the wind penalties that often drag your ship to a complete halt. You need the fastest bit of everything (sloop, cotton sails, navigation skill) for you to barely be faster than the slowest of enemy ships. For the sake of fun they should have had a seperate option to just remove wind entirely for the people who don't spend hours every day raiding and lowering the sails of their ship in a bottle.

Other than that it's a very fun game. It's essentially the same as the old with better graphics, improved fencing, new land combat, worthless stealth segment, a dancing game that's not too bad, lots and lots of special items you can buy (at ridiculous prices, a pair of dancing shoes costs the same as 200 tons of exotic spices) for various bonuses, and lots of glitches (restart your game if the red 'x' starts glitching out on maps because you're screwed then).

One aspect that's changed for the worse is land travel. Instead of moving slow as hell on the overhead map, now you move slow as hell from a 3rd person perspective with lots of trees blocking your view and no idea where you are. Following treasure maps is a slow and tedious affair of identifying various landmarks. Searching for the lost incan cities basically involves combing half of latin america on foot. The map will show you a landmark like "rum rock" and you'll be thrown off by finding a rum rock near cuba, only for it to turn out that the other rum rock (the one you want) is on a tiny landlocked lake in the middle of Honduras. I can't imagine how any playtester gave the thumbs up for fun to this part.