05/09/2004
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Pirates of the Caribbean has a terrible interface, some serious bugs, and only a tenuous connection to the film it's named after. It's two and a half games in one: part role-playing game and part Age of Sail combat simulator, with a skimpy trading game thrown in for no good reason. With so much stacked against it, it's surprising that the good parts almost make trudging through the problems a worthwhile endeavor.
The worst problem is the interface. Not only is it unintuitive and cumbersome, but it's also inconsistent. Occasionally, the key to execute a command is the space bar. Other times, it's the Enter key. The arrow keys are used to scroll through menus, while the Page Down key is used to scroll through dialogue boxes (which feature a font so massive that you might think you accidentally purchased the large-print edition of the game). Neither the manual nor the included addendum makes any reference to many of the keyboard functions, so your only chance of finding important features is through trial and error or clumsy fingers.
Another problem is the camera. On land, the camera swings around like a drunken monkey on a chandelier. You can switch to a first-person view, rather than the default third-person, but it's worse. Nathaniel Hawk, the game's hero, has a swagger even when he's standing still. POTC is the first buccaneering game that might induce seasickness.
But if you can find your sea legs and acclimate to the game's utterly bizarre controls, you'll find that both the RPG and sea-combat elements are decent enough to hold your interest. The role-playing aspect is definitely the lesser of the two, with a strange, meandering story that completely falls apart near the end. Some of your assignments are illogical, such as being required to destroy a fort and capture a whole town to free a prisoner, though you are free to stroll around town and even walk into the prison itself unmolested. And while there are a few nonessential missions to be found, many of them are broken.
The main story missions eventually lead to the game's only tangible connection to the movie, though you'll hear rumors of a ship called the Black Pearl early on. The connection feels tacked on and most likely was, considering the game began its development as a sequel to Akella's Sea Dogs. And the story elements that tie the game to the film make little sense in either setting.
A long walk on a short plank
POTC is open-ended, letting you progress through the story at your own pace. But its world is big and empty, with random encounters that are too difficult at the beginning and boring by the end. You can go many places, but if you aren't sticking to the plot, you won't find much to do other than attack ships and trade goods.
Ship-to-ship combat can be great, especially when you have powerful vessels in your fleet. There are two combat settings, arcade and realistic, but those wanting a hardcore Age of Sail–style sim won't find it here. You earn character abilities that allow you to execute quick turns in battleships or board from greater distances, and while these may seem silly for those who want to act out their Patrick O'Brian fantasies, they add diversity to what would otherwise just be slowly turning and firing.
Since Sea Dogs, boarding has been improved a great deal. Sea Dogs' abstract fighting model is replaced with one that allows you to board an opponent's ship with a few members of your crew and fight through a series of decks until the ship is yours. Though sword fighting is extremely simple, working your way through a ship and watching your crew fight alongside you can be rewarding.
Once you start capturing ships, you'll have no need for the simple commerce model, which allows you to buy goods in one town and sell them in another. Each town imports and exports certain goods, and the economy is static—capturing a town or sinking merchant ships has no effect on supply or demand.
Pirates of the Caribbean has a few great moments, but it seems like an incomplete collection of half-finished ideas. If RPG sections were fleshed out or the commerce model improved, the open-endedness would be more effective and the world more exciting to explore. As it is, it's just three simple sections that, in sequence, provide slightly enjoyable distractions from one another.