Amazing how addicting this game can be. You get so much out such simple concept.

User Rating: 8.4 | Sid Meier's Pirates! XBOX
I am completely blown away by this game's success. I don't understand it myself, because this game at first glance seems like a waste of time. There are roughly four or five mini games that make the entire game, it has almost no real story that you can navigate through with lasting results, the enemy AI is terrible and the challenge in every level of difficulty is almost too easy.

...And yet...I can't stop playing this game. The whole feeling of this game is so cheerfully adventureous that you feel like your in kind of old school "Treasure Island" type story book. It just has that kind of unexplainable pleasent glow to it.

You start of as this nameless young guy who is thrown into the game to do whatever he feels like. Supposedly there's a main quest where you have to complete a serise of almost unrelated tasks to when back your family's former glory, but, truthfully, I don't think anyone really cares about that since it pretty much has no impact on the game what-so-ever. You start with a decent ship and a crew of fourty to travel with, but soon you'll discover that size really doesn't matter even though you can raid and steal other ships that you come across for your own purposes. Personally I always get a kick of capturing the smallist most pathetic ship availible (The Indian War Cannoes) and taking on whole fleets of fully upgrade battle ships with it. Because this game is so easy, I almost always won anyway. You can also buy and sell just about everything to become stinking rich while traveling to difference ports of four factions: The English, The Dutch, The Spainish, and...well...The French. You can gain rank in the military of any or all of these faction while constantly switching sides or converting the entire to be dominated under one rule by rallying up more pirates at local bars, ticking a town off by fireing cannonballs into it or raiding there ships, and eventually landing at the town and playing a little war mini game for controll of the town. You can also date or marry the beautiful (or not) daughters of the goveners if you want, participate in sword fights or search for hidden treasures.

That's basically it for the whole game. In the end it's really simple, yet really fun. I'd recommend renting it if your unsure about buying it right away like I was, just incase it fails to work it's magic on you.