Cutthroats: Terror on the High Seas came out way back in 1999. I hoped it would be the best pirate game since Sid Meier's Pirates! Gold. After buying the game for $50 at EB I found it unplayable until I patched it up to the latest version. Even after all the patches the game only runs for 15 minutes before crashing. For 1999 standards the graphics were horrible. Ground combat looks similar to the original Command & Conquer but far uglier. Ship combat looked a little better but the ships move slower than worms. Cutthroats has a lot of depth for a game of this genre. You could sail around on the open sea and fly the flag of any nation you wanted regardless of your nationality. Signal flags could be used to trade with other passing ships or to get information. The game interface is terrible and just loading your ship in port consists of a million different menus. Even with the game manual good luck trying to get your men off the ship for a ground attack on a port. What I liked most about Cutthroats was the choices you can make after capturing a port. You can choose to kill the men, women, children, torture the governor, or simply kill everybody and raze all the buildings. I have never played a pirate game with so many twisted choices before. You can play as good or as evil as you want. After taking over a port you could install one of your fellow crew as the governor. What happens later in the game is not known. At most I could take two ports and get extremely wealthy before the crashes begin. Your game saves crash within minutes and you must start over again. I still revisit this game from time to time to see if I can see more of the game. Even on a modern PC the game still crashes constantly. An actual working knowledge of real sailing is required for this game. You must make repairs to your ship on remote beaches like real pirates once did long ago. It is too complex for its own good.
Other Helpful Reviews for Cutthroats: Terror on the High Seas
I started playing Cutthroats through the demo I received when I purchased Theif: Gold. I liked the demo's concept, but I never could save my progress so I had to keep restarting. I searched for the full version of the ga... Read Full Review
If you were fortunate enough to ever have played Pirates! when it came out in 1987 or at least before the 90's stormed in with all sorts of new adventure and roleplayying games, then i'm sure you would find some satisfac... Read Full Review
