The problems with the remake of Pirates!

[edgarblack]

As with many of you, I feel the original Pirates rates as one the best games ever made. However, this "modernized" version if that's what you call this, is a horrible to say the least. For years now I have been saying Sid (The Great) Meier's needs to upgrade "Pirates" to take advantage of the todays technology, but what we got here does nothing to take advantage of new technology. Sid I truely hope that todays up and coming generation of gamers do not remember you for this remake.

1. No in game way of changing your key mappings. Ok I can live with that (lazy developers), I just edit the KeyMap.ini, luckily I am not some average computer user, in fact I write software, so this does not scare me. Guess waht, editing this file does not make any difference, the controls are not affected.
The default suck.

2. No support for game pads(yes, they exist for PC's) or joy sticks. I personally play most games with the key board, but the side scrolling nature of the dueling lends its self to a game pad. In the soon to be release console version of the game this will not be a issue.

3. Graphics play very small roll in game of this style, but still if you make a game today you need to put a little effort into them. How about at least a little variety in the appearances of characters in the game, Governor's daughter characters as far as I have seen use of 3 character skins, and the same is true for most other characters. In the old C64 version this was a necessity, but is just a sigin of a rushed development in todays gaming world (LETS GET IT OUT FOR CHRISTMAS).

4. Why take "Ship versus land combat" see manual page 7. In the original it was hard, but it was fun.

5. The sneak into town feature though a good idea, stealth games are fun, is so poorly implemented that it is painful to play the sequence.

6. The dancing is easy, annoying, boring, stupid addition to the game.

7. More character interaction now that technology does not put strict limits on disk space. How about a "Choose your own statement" style conversation with Governors and their daughters. You know a list of 4 or 5 things to say, I seem to remember a little bit of this in the original but that was about 17 years ago and I could be wrong.

8. Minor one. Make it an option to only show my flag ship on the sailing screen, showing the fleet causes a cluttered apperance.


7. This one is a minor complaint, due to the control complexity it would add. The one thing missing in the original was fleet battles. In an new version, this should of been an obvious addition. I should be able to manage my fleet at least to level of how many men and canon to assign to a ship. Ok this would of may controlling the battel difficult. Well ok then, let me use two ships I can control one with each hand.

 

[Keith]

I actually agree with all of that <img src="http://www.piratesahoy.com/forum/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="" border="0" alt="smile.gif" />

Im all on the wagon that the new Pirates! isnt all it could be. But then i really do think it was not targeted for those that played the original..

But then there are a hell of alot of people really enjoyinh it, so i think its a bit like Quake vs UT , our version is POTC vs Pirates!

 

[Cap'n Toast]

Sorry you didn't like it Edgar. While I agree with many of the complaints you have, I certainly don't think they make the game a disaster. But, I DO like the dancing. It's cute and fun... and it was hilarious to watch my dad try to do the first couple times. He got laughing so hard after the fist couple stumbles that there was no hope. Good stuff!

 

[Fab]

1. Being able to change keymapping would be nice, but certainly not a `game-breaker`. A minor problem in my book.

2. Again, a minor concern I think. I don't think most people use game pads or joysticks with games of this type. That's my opinion, and not based on anything other than my circle of friends and knowing that only one even owns a gamepad but doesn't ever use it.

3. It would be nice to have many different girls and enemy captains and so on. Okay, valid point, but again, really minor I think.

4. I do miss this feature. It was always a `ball-buster` in the old game, the wind always blew away from the land it seemed, and those forts used to blow my ships into so much timber, but it was disappointing to see it removed.

5. Though it does make it more of a challenge, and now I find myself sneaking into towns only in case of dire necessity.

6. Au contraire. I find the dancing to be, hands down, the best addition to the game. I'm sure lots of others would join me in that sentiment. If you don't like dancing, don't dance. It really is as simple as that. Everyone feels this need to get 126 points every game. The game is open ended, so if you don't want to dance, don't dance. We won't think any less of anyone who doesn't.

7. The old version had "Propose Marriage" or "Make Polite Conversation". Not much interaction at all. I think it would have been interesting to have a longer decision tree, with many options, each leading to other options, and perhaps from cues the girl or the father give, certain options would be right at certain times and wrong at others. That would immerse you a little more into the interaction, I think.

8. But then you wouldn't know why your fleet is going slow, or wouldn't know why your ship needed repairs (because it sailed over a reef). And then there's the enemy pirate hunters that will sink slow ships of yours. In the old game they just informed you that you lost a ship. At least here you get to watch it happen.

9. Well, that really wasn't how pirates fought. I know, Sid has always said more or less Fun > Reality, but I like reality as well, and pirates would usually only have one ship. Those that had more than one rarely had more than two, and when they did, only one really ever did any fighting, the other was for storage and crew capacity and the like.

All in all, I agree with your points, but don't think they amount to the big let down you describe. All your points taken together knock this game from a 10/10 to a 9.5/10 in my book.

 

[skipper]

hi edgar

i agree with most of your points

but its true dancing is not that bad its a source of this game

its not the best way they made there are to less stepcombinations
its to easy or did you ever made a fault after about 10 dances???

then gamepad using ..... its true its possible but isnt really important
for that game
you told you liked the original pirates ........
i also played the orginal but there also was only 6 moves you can do
and for this 6 steps you will not need a gampad really
the better way of fencing they should make it like tekken or something
then you can use gamepad
i will really enjoy if they make fencing like tekken with gampad with
100 combos you can do and how the crew fight in background......

im skipper in real life and with the map i agree with em you cant look
at the map while you sailing you have to go to your table and look the map
so i think its ok so sailing is not only sailing

they should do a better weather system the wind not only blows from east
there are deep zones and high zones and wind also come from thermics
so sailing would be much more interresting with complex weather system

proportion ......
the ship you see is toooooo big or did you ever see a ship bigger as a town
they should make the ships much smaller wich means you have to zoom
in to see your ship like now so you would not see that much around you

and sneak into town i totally agree with you if im hatet from spain i have to
sneak in every town thats soooo stupid sometimes it takes over 5 min
because there are that much guards i have to knock em down one after one

and i agree with answers to governer in orginal you had much mor choices
sometimes more then 4 or 5
now you only have 2 ore somtime none ..... governer of small towns
only tell you im new govener of blablabla then you have to cover him till
hes there but you cant say NO you stay here

then buy ships somtimes i want to change my ship or all of em why
i cant buy other ships
big towns have better ships with better upgrades and small towns only
have crap something like that .........

i know you told me once im pirate i take ships i dont buy but thats crap
the town have a shipbuilder so why cant really use it
im not everytim a damnn pirate sometimes i also trade or you really
beleve that pirates rashneked over 200 ships in lifeway ????
the best known pirate sunk only about 50 ships known in history
the most did blackmarket things stolen money from richmen
so why are these options not that important its a pirate game so make it
like pirates did ........................................ <img src="http://www.piratesahoy.com/forum/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/bookish.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":mm" border="0" alt="bookish.gif" />

 

[Orltran]

IMHO there is a reason this game is called Sid Meier's Pirates!, and not Pirates! 2. It's like there is a UFO rematch, or something like that which is really bad, and it's a remake of `X-com`. They just thought they should change this and that to make it more like modern games, and in the process they completely broke the game.
I think if conversations with governors were deeper you'd get bored after a while with having to click through them, while now you just look for the info you need, and click. The original only told you who they were in war with.
I agree on points like every governer and their daughters look the same, but it's definietly not a game braker.
I also miss the sea vs land combat, it really made me sad when I read in the manual that it was missing, as it was one of the most memorable moments of the original.
I don't agree on the stealth part. I think it's only good that they stayed faithful to the original even in that aspect. If it was included in the original, it would have been done just like that, it fits. If it was more complicated it wouldn't fit, it wouldn't have this `old-school` feeling that the whole game has.
So after all I think this game is good as it is, and every change that would go in a different dirrection than the simple `old-school` way would brake it.
Oh, and this is exactly what I wanted. It's the original pirates with graphics that don't hurt my eyes. I would play the original to this date, but those ega graphics and the slow response is not all that much fun today.