First things first with this game; it isn’t based on the movie by the same name and released in the same year, it has many similarities to the Walt Disney movie: Pirates (obviously), English soldiers who move from being the goodies to the baddies, then back to goodies and even a ship called the “Black Pearl.” The game was developed by legendary RPG studio, Bethesda, in 2003 but despite its link to the popular movie, gained only average reviews.

The year is 1630, and the Caribbean is bustling with piracy. The main protagonist is Captain Nathaniel Hawk of a small merchant ship, the “Victory”. After leaving the port of Oxbay (which serves as the tutorial, teaching you how to fight, buy and sell booty, hire crewman, fix your ship or loan money) you are given control of a ship and a crew and then given complete freedom in usual Bethesda fashion. Some players might find this intimidating, personally: I loved it.


The 7 islands that you can now explore are each controlled by one of six different factions, with England controlling two. You can choose to do whatever you want, sail to Redmond to inform the English Governor there of the attack on Oxbay that forced you to leave, you could continue your career as a merchant sailor, going from island to island buying and selling goods or you could turn pirate, praying on rich trading ships and becoming a terror of the seas. The fast travel system -which would be essential for a game like this that involves moving large areas that would usually take days-, is solid and straight forward. You are given a crow’s eye view of a map, focussing on your ship. The graphics for the time are beautiful, one thing I disliked about Morrowind (which was released by Bethesda a year earlier) was the graphics, in the small amount of time between these two games, the change is astounding. The gameplay too is good, the main quest line is captivating but not original as once again, ideas from the Disney movie have been borrowed; the hunt for cursed Aztec treasure is the order of the day for this game.


The good points of the Pirates of the Caribbean are almost equalled by its weak points however. The huge areas and brilliant graphics are often dwarfed by bug problems that can destroy your entire campaign; multiple and regular saves are a must. Misspellings in the subtitles are also common and give the game a very unprofessional feel at times. Other, smaller, things; such as how a single, regular crewman will often slay highly paid officers during boarding battles get increasingly annoying. The vagueness of the quest log can also become frustrating at times; this is the draw back to sand-box RPGs, with other games a system of trial and error will –in most cases- eventually pay off. In Pirates you may often find yourself combing the Caribbean, looking for “someone with information about a secret pirate hideout”. Asking the tavern keeper of every island is usually a good way of finding this kind of information out, however, even this sometimes fails to work and you have to ask people at random or have the good fortune to simply stumble upon the person/place you were looking for in the first place.

The overall quality and enjoyability (yes, I think I just made this word up) of Pirates of the Caribbean is high, however, the constant paranoid saving that becomes almost second nature due to a fear of game-killing bugs spoils what was otherwise a great game that, with a few tweaks, had the ability to be a game to be remembered for years to come. Instead, the game was forgotten about soon after its release.

7/10

Lewis

Labels: PC, pirates of the caribbean, Retro review, Xbox

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