Anyone wanna explain how the sword-fighting works in this version? In the first fight I just kept thrusting into my opponent high and low and in between. He seemed to block some, not all, at random. Like he was waving his sword up in his face and still my low poke ended up with the 'clang' sound. Also a stab through the middle played the metal 'clang' but still a red spot appeared in his torso as if the hit landed?
Don't like the graphics much either, but that's probably because I grew up on the Amiga Pirates! and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlodQv4jWOY.
The character portraits are kinda ugly&messy. The pic of your "sailing master" after the starting duel, I'm not sure whether that's supposed to be a man or a woman. He/she/it wears some sort of dress but the face is kinda masculine. I like the icons in land battles though, the original Pirates!' graphics were pretty messy in that part IIRC.
I have issues with controls as well. Shift in fights don't seem to work properly. Maybe one attack becomes a slash, then the guy keeps thrusting even if I hold it down. Don't tell me I have to press shift again separately for every strike. IMAGINE IF YOU HAD TO DO THAT WHILE TYPING AND YOU HAD NO CAPS LOCK.
At sea turning is sluggish and strange. Keep turning and the ship does a weird 4 x 90 degree dance instead of a constant turning rate. In battle the sloop became 10 times more nimble/agile. Though maybe that's just some bonus that kicked in since I picked apprentice - but then why isn't that bonus in effect out at sea? In battles the arrow keys cease to function though. Key pressed does nothing, vigorous smashing might turn the ship one notch. Mouse buttons for turning left and right?
Gamepad doesn't seem to work in the game with joystick=auto in dosbox(unlike, say, OMF). Manual says: "You can play Pirates! Gold using a keyboard or a mouse in conjunction with a keyboard (we recommend the latter)." No joystick up in this bitch at all? C'mon.
All in all, a horrible version.
Looked up the Genesis version and I think that'd be more to my liking. Sort of cartoonified the original graphics, pretty decent.** Bigger/more detailed dueling sprites. The opponent changes up a little, can have a bandana, be a bald dude etc.
However, what's up with the walk-in-town interface in that one? Useless, sluggish, awful, just serves to slow down gameplay!
The swordfighting is pretty good, but again I don't like change(from Pirates!). Blocking doesn't seem to require directions, you just press the block button and your guy blocks most attacks(not all). Though it's sort of a good thing directional blocking isn't required, the attacks are about 5x faster than in Pirates! so that'd require pretty superhuman reflexes(sort of like the PC version).
Attacking also seems weird, once in a while you bust out a streetfighter-ish combo at double the normal attack speed and you push your opponent around half the battlefield. Don't know what controls it, I just kept the quick attack button pressed and alternated up and down, sometimes that got me the combo but othertimes the opponent interrupted the attack and landed a monster combo of his own.
The practice fencing option in the main menu is useful. Made up a better tactic than just keeping the attack button pressed and it seems pretty foolproof on swashbuckler. (Rapier: High slash -> low thrust x2, retreat a couple of steps, repeat) I'll have to play a real game and see if it works when the pirate starts aging and against different opponents.
Found out there's also an Amiga version of Pirates! Gold, CD32 even! Wow, that's gotta be great since the Amiga version was the best of the originals right? Wrong! Graphics are ported from the genesis, not improved. Worse actually,
http://www.mobygames.com/game/genesi...ShotId,519960/ vs
http://www.mobygames.com/game/amiga-...ShotId,337228/. The CD audio isn't any good. PC has better music and speech clips. What a disappointment.
The latest remake(2004) had some good ideas but key elements of gameplay were dropped. Dumbed-down sword fighting with oh-so-very-repetitive cutscene-clips, no sea attacks on towns, dancing sucks, worthless treasure fleet, no silver train at all, no 1560 era for some reason. Indians/monks were a nice idea but not fully worked out, same thing with the named pirates.
Guess there just isn't a perfect version of Pirates! out there.
Pirates!
-Best sword fights
-No map (measuring the sun is about as fun as dancing in SMP!(2004))
-Amiga version looks and sounds great, but the sailing screen doesn't scroll like on the C64.
Pirates! Gold
-MAP! Oh god finally.
-Genesis and PC versions both have pros and cons I guess.
Sid Meier's Pirates!
-Best sailing (more than 8 directions for your ship to face)
-Best sounds (love the gibberish voice acting, crew singing sea shanties after plundering...)
-Other ships visible when sailing
-Settlements/pirate bays etc. a nice touch, makes the map less barren
-Supposedly more ships, but I in the originals they could've done the same thing and taken the ship sprites and re-sized them all for small, normal, big version of each
Lazy graphics guys.
-A couple of more things to do
-Simpler sword fights with repetitive as fuck animations
Sucks. Maybe one day we'll get the ultimate Pirates! remake.
** After disabling the ugly plugin/shader thingy that came set up with the bundled emulator in the first hit on google. I don't think that a blurry mess = 'betr grafx' than a sharp pixelated image. Might suit some extremely cartoony games like pokemon or whatnot but anything with detailed pixel work becomes horrible to look at with any of the usual filter/shader thingies (hq2x,SuperSai etc.)