Pirates! is a beautifully crafted port of an already well-established and revered series.
You begin the game in the traditional manner, a short CGI cut-scene setting up the main storyline depicting the loss of your family and introduction to the pirate lifestyle. From this point it’s down to you to name your character, choose a starting skill, difficulty level and national allegiance. The default character alignment is British, which will give the easiest ride to begin with due to no-one in particular wanting you dead from the outset. You’re completely free to antagonise any of the available faction’s in-game however, so that’ll change soon enough.
Or maybe it won’t. The beauty of Pirates! is that you really can play this game in any manner that you choose. Starting off in a small port, you pickup your barebones crew and set sail out to sea. From this point the world opens up to you in every direction. There are story missions to complete, ships to protect, goods to trade between locations, family members to find, treasure to search for, ships to board and plunder, notorious pirates to hunt, islands to explore, ports to dock with or attack, governor’s to talk to and fine-looking daughters to dance with. The game has a loose overall structure to follow should you wish to confront the villain that stole your family, but there really is no need to go down this path unless you have a strong desire to do so.
In this respect it’s a truly sandbox-oriented title, perfect for pick-up and play sessions for a few minutes, or prolonged sessions if you have the spare time, tailoring your character to be as nasty or as placid as you like. This style of gaming fits perfectly on a handheld device such as the PSP, and given the low amount of UMD access throughout, benefits battery life also.
The actual core mechanics of Pirates! could easily be described as a collection of mini-games. Choosing to board a vessel for example will drop you into a side-perspective sword or gun battle in order to vanquish the captain of the opposing ship, whilst attempting to take control of a port will present the player with a turn-based strategic map with various units facing off against an opposing army. Attempting to win the affections of a governor’s daughter challenges the player with a rudimentary rhythm action game, whilst ships can be sunk with a real-time combat element. There are many more iterations on these throughout the game, Fusion Frenzy indeed.
It’s precisely this variation that benefits a handheld title and brings Pirates! a tremendous longevity and charm. The minigames ramp up in difficulty as your notoriety increases and you begin to take on stronger opponents, and vanquishing foes later in the game becomes a challenge of timing and risk. The bottom line here though is that Pirates! never gets old. None of the tasks are particularly deep or difficult, but the sheer number of different activities means that you’ll rarely encounter a lull in activity, and there will always be a task within reach even with only a few minutes playtime to spare.
Despite some obvious graphical concessions to the handheld format, the game generally looks excellent. The Spanish Main is recreated complete with sparkling deep blue seas and lush sandy beaches, all of which look enticing on the PSP’s crisp display. Character models and animation are a little stiff, but that’s a small price to pay in a game as deep and entrancing as Pirates! turns out to be. There is certain joviality to the proceedings evident in both the story missions and the dialogue as a whole also, which lightens the atmosphere considerably and brings with it a strong sense of connection to the game world. Of course having fun is makes being a pirate so compelling, and with that in mind the atmosphere of the title is suitably accomplished.
The only downside to the game on any level is the presentation, which is a little drab and text-heavy in places, but never less than functional. Multiplayer support is limited to 4-player deathmatch-at-sea type affairs, but that’s clearly not the focus of the game and as such is little more than a bonus for those wishing to wile away a few minutes blasting friends down to Davy Jones’ locker.
Pirates! is a beautifully crafted port of an already well-established and revered series, and a good example as to how to approach downsizing content to fit onto a handheld device. If you’ve ever been addicted to the original titles or fancy sampling life on the ocean seas in the palm of your hand, this game is definitely for you. In a barren wasteland of poor PSP ports, Pirates! shines a refreshingly bright light.
Note: This text was originally written by myself and published over at strategyinformer.com