Remember Pirates of the Carribean: The Game? Remember how you thought it was going to be an awsome trek into the swashbuckling age os sail? Remember when you started playing and a mediocre story coupled with boring land based fighting made you immidately sheath your cutlass? Well if you still want to "Live The Life" of a pirate then Sid Meier's Pirates is the game for you. The first thing you will notice is the sheer multitude of game options. Do you become a bloodthirsty pirate who preys on all? Do you deicde to help a specific side (England, France etc.)? Maybe you become a peaceful trader. Whatever your taste, Pirates delivers. The game has only a few, easily overlooked problems, one, for instance, is that there are only a few different scenes to duel at thus making the sword fights a bit repetitive. Another is the rather silly dancing game, but this may be to your liking. In closing, should you buy Pirates? Yes.

Having played many a late night with the original Pirates! on my old Tandy1000 PC waaay back when , I was totally thrilled to hear it was being remade & updated. The new version is very much a graphically updated version of the original, with a few, mostly minor changes. The most notable changes are the addition of the dancing mini-game, which I actually like more than I expected, being that I am not into DDR or similar games. The other change is the exclusion of the sea-to-land battles, which is a bit disappointing. I do like the changes made to the land battles, however. They are a lot more strategy-based than they were in the original. The overall experience is very reminiscent of the original. It felt like a new paint job on a classic car. Still fun to drive, and looks good too. I would highly recommend the game to any fans of the original, and anybody that likes a good mix of strategy, role-playing and action games. I foresee many more sleepless nights ahead.