Customer Reviews

Pirates of the Caribbean

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

If this game was stable, it would easily be 5 stars. The fun of boarding ships and swordfighting is great. The graphics, especially sailing at night, are stunning.

But... the game has major bugs. First, you should spend your first 45 minutes or so simply walking around so the game can cache all of its textures. Otherwise, you will have frequent pauses/stutters.

Second, it's unfinished. There are many typos, and errors in character and place names. Some areas of the game appear to be permanently closed, though it seems obvious that *something* was supposed to go there. (There are several places where large piles of rocks block your way to what appears to be more areas.)

Third, it crashes. A lot. Especially as you get higher up in the game. Every time you board a ship, there is a chance of it freezing your Xbox. Every time you land at a port (especially if you have captured other ships) there is a chance of a lock-up. It seems like the larger your ship is, the more likely the game is to crash.

Fourth, it crashes even more... if you try to save your game, it might crash, especially if it has gotten "confused" about whether or not you have completed your current quest. Something also causes "Bad Save" to appear somewhat frequently above your existing games. We even got a "Cannot load U:\0000000" error at one point.

To try to fix it, we erased the entire game from our Xbox dashboard, loaded several other games (to clear the Xbox cache), then started Pirates of the Caribbean again. As recommended on their website, we completed the whole tutorial... every single step. We know it was re-caching because disk activity and stuttering were pretty constant. It didn't crash again until we were able to upgrade to a Galleon... at about character level twelve. Since then it has been pretty crashy still, but the thing is so addictive that you just deal with it and re-play what you just played. Over and over.

No doubt the programmers are disturbed, even hurt by all this. The thing is 95% complete, but that last 5% is so bad that it makes the game half of what it could be.

Yes, this game needed a few more months of debugging. Yes, it was probably rushed to market to coincide with the movie, and Bethesda should receive 50 lashes for putting revenue ahead of quality. (Consider buying a used copy rather than a new one!)

But the bottom line is - this game is a Masterpiece. It's a "Five Star" game with one star subtracted for bugs. (See my workarounds, below).

It's all there - the quests, the commerce, the sword/gun fights and of course the ship battles. All done to perfection. I will focus on the ship battles (below), because there simply isn't a game out there that competes with this aspect.

You can be whatever type of character you want to be - it's wonderfully open in that respect. You can be a pirate (of course), a pirate hunter, a merchant (yawn) or follow the main quest thread. I found the quests to be a "sideshow", but they do supplement the open game play.

Ship Battles: You have both a third person "god view" and an on-the-deck, look-over-the rail view. Both are needed. You use over-the-rail to get a sea-level view, with zoom available through your "spy glass" which yields additional information on the ships around you ,e.g., number of cannon, crew, sail damage, hull damage. You get better spy glasses as the game progresses, reveailing more and more information.

You use the "god view" when you're doing tight manuevering and trying to avoid coliding with other ships, e.g., when boarding.

And what are you looking at?... simply the best ship graphics ever programmed in a video game. Wind blowing the sails in the right direction (and wind determines speed if you get the default setting off of "arcade", set if to "realistic"), holes in the sales, cannon flashes in the distance, exquisite water splashes when the shots miss, and your own cannon smoke blowing by your face in the over-the-rail view. You can almost smell the gunpowder!

Refreshingly, the ships move at realitic speeds - in other words, they're very slow. No turbo-ing to avoid cannon balls, you have to play the wind and do what sailors did for centuries, learn to sail.

Like Morrowind, you have 10 Skills and about 25 Special Abilities that enhance your performance and those of your officers. The skills of you officers complement yours, e.g., you typically have high Melee and Leadership, a Cannoneer has high Accuracy and Rate of Fire, a Navigator has high Sailing, etc.

WORKAROUNDS:

1. Corrupted Saves - do NOT overwrite an existing saved game. Always delete it to create a new save location. Problem solved.

2. Missing Officers - this one is annoying. You can only have (8) eight officers in addition to yourself on your own ship. Any officers added beyond 8 will cause one of your existing officer to disappear. So manage that carefully. I lost a lot of good officers in my first game until I realized they were "deserting."

Also, if you hire a new officer, and try to put him on another one of your ships (you can have 3 ships in addition to your own), the program deletes one of the officers on the additional ship. In fact, it creates a duplicate of the new officer on both your ship and the additional ship. The only way to deal with this situation is to avoid putting more than one officer on the additional ships (the Captain). The captain is unaffected by this bug. I typically make the captain a Cannoneer.

3. Difficulty - like Morrowind, this is a very difficult game at first. Many of the complaints about the game are simply a result of not figuring out how to play well. For example, Luck plays an incredibly important role in surviving on the open seas, when sailing from one island to another. With a "Luck" skill of "1", you will be hunted down by pirates and blasted by storms every 15 seconds. With a "Luck" skill of 10, the Carribean turns into your private lake. I always invest heavily in the Luck skill right at the beginning of the game.

Another complaint is that the Officers get killed in sword fights. That occurs when you are outnumbered (use lots of grapeshot before boarding) or send great cannoneers into a sword fights who have a Melee skill of 1 (duh!). Hire enough officer to allow your officers to specialize. You can only have three of your 8 officers active at any time, make sure you activate the ones needed for the current situation. For example, use your Navigator and Cannoneer for the sea battle, then replace them with your Melee fighters to board vessels; insert your Quartermaster when your ship needs repair after the battle, or when purchasing goods at the store on land.

4. Land Movement - this is awkward. You use the left thumbwheel to move in all directions. You use the right thumbwheel to look up and down in the "Forward" view option, and in all directions (independent of movement) in the "Directional" view option. (My guess is they did this to facilitate sword fighting. Evidently the "A" button is better to swing your sword than the right trigger. When your right thumb is always punching the A button, you can't be using your right thumbwheel to change your view.)

You can look in all directions while on land, contrary to some other reviewer comments I saw posted here. You simply have to turn your character around to see that way.

There is also an annoying "feature" with doors and walls. When you stand next to them and turn around, the view changes 180 and you see the front of your character instead of the normal position behind him. This is hard to get used to.

5. Miscellaneous - there is an occasional lock-up, so save your game frequently. (I always save before I board my ship.) This may occur once every 20 hours of play.

The "dissappearing officers" can lead to bigger problems in quests. One of the main quest characters that was supposed to join my crew was lost in my first game. That ended the main quest thread.

Sometimes a merchant will ask you to deliver cargo to the wrong island. You're supposed to deliver it in less than 30 days, so you may have to save it and figure out which island is correct.

Enjoy!!!

TR

I just completed BETHESDA Softworks "Pirates of the Caribbean". and it is an awesome game. The 4 stars is because of the limited land exploration & very dufficult early character development (survival) Patience and attention to your environment will lead you to hours of fun. Plan your work/quest, Work/quest your plan!!!!

NOTE: If you follow the lengthy scenario (working for the English Governor of REDMOND) you will enjoy a complex story leading to a great sea battle with the "BLACK PEARL". Solving the mystery of undead pirates parallels the Disney film. So Matety, to become worthy you must follow this detailed/complex open ended RPG game carefully.

NOT MORROWIND, why would it be, the real saga is at sea!!! This is a shipboard adventure. Once you learn & develop your character to be the superior swashbuckling sea captain the adventure truly begins.

The "Pirates of the Caribbean PRO's are; The unbelievable ships, magnificent seascapes/realistic caribbean water, realistic naval battles (using your spy glass(buy the best for advantage)), cannon telemetry, boarding skills, open ended sea exploration (you must open/discover clues allows you to explore new areas). Each city & island are different and fun. Complex movie story line.

The CONS; No auto-mapping (like Morrowind), Frequent dying in sword fights (SAVE OFTEN), Limited/restricted camera angles, game crashes occasionally (NEW SAVES & SAVE OFTEN), Sea BATTLES/STORMS can be to frequent causing death/ship being sunk (KEEP YOUR LUCK HIGH). Limited exploration on land, cave, dungeons, beaches, islands, etc. If you want the movie tale you must explore everywhere, talk to everyone and go to REDMOND and work for the Governor & begin a very complex and lengthy journey to discover the "BLACK PEARL".

I had a fun, sometimes frustrating, long journey to the Pearl. But it was worth it. Now I can be the Pirate who reeks havoc in the Caribbean. Enjoy.

I almost didn't buy this game after reading the reviews. That would have been a mistake. Despite the bugs (I only encountered 1 freeze and two or three bugs in 20-30 hours of game play and I have finished the main quest) this is a very fun game and provides many hours of adventuring while developing the main character (as well as up to 3 officers and a fleet of 4 ships each with it's own captain) with hard-earned skill points. Although character development is not as deep as a true RPG you can decide to focus in leadership, sword/revolver, sailing, cannon accuracy, commerce, luck and more. You also gain Abilities (Storm Helmsman, Fencer, Long range cannons, and many, many more), which determine how you will play the game. You can become a goods trader, an escort for cargo ships a treasure hunter (could have been more caves to explore) or a ship stealing/sinking contraband item trading pirate (like me) who could care less about his reputation (currently my rep is "Bloody Terror"). But be warned a low reputation means many won't deal with you and attacking the French, Dutch, English, Portuguese or Spanish may make you an enemy of their crown and result in all of that country's ships attacking you on site, not too mention their town forts will shell you, preventing you from coming in to port to trade goods, hire officers, repair your ship and load up on ammunition and supplies. Your actions will determine how the game plays. I can repeat what most reviews have said...the graphics are great, especially on the open seas. Sailing is easy but the frequent storms are rough and too many unwanted encounters with enemy ships can make just getting from one island to another a challenge. The sea battles are fun and get easier as you earn money and buy (or commandeer) larger ships with bigger and more cannons. I also agree with the bad reviews... the plot is thin and yes, the player controls and camera angels are pretty darn bad. Sword fighting is frustratingly difficult until you learn to position yourself (like in hallways) to prevent your foes from surrounding you and your officers always die in sword fights (just leave them on your boat before boarding and take on the other ships crew solo, it's more fun that way anyway). This game is good but it could have easily been great had they had time to finish it. After playing Morrowind (same developers) it is easy to see what this came could have and should have been. All the makings for a 5 star game but falls way short... still it is a really fun game and woth the money.

After playing Morrowind, I had high hopes for another good RPG from Bethesda. However, the Xbox game has a lot of problems. Every area change (entering a building, leaving a building, setting sail, entering battle) has long load times of 10-20 seconds. On the good side, this is because of just how detailed the graphics are when you are walking around. Lots of people, interesting terrain. The next problem is in the movement, however. They included some quick-move menus, which help because the interface for walking is terrible. You can't step sideways, you can't look side to side, and when you get near a door or portal, you often are turned and camera control is changed to face the door. Nice effect if you are going through the door, terrible if you have to walk by the door. Having officers makes it all worse, as you can't walk through them and they tend to be right behind you; if you have go back down a staircase you just have to push at them and hope they move. If you get in a fight, the "hop back" button becomes useless as you can't move back with them right behind you. Also, with swords drawn, characters become much, much more difficult to walk by.
Bugs galore; I'm depressed to see such a defective game hit market. I've had officers dissappear, had full game lockups, and even seen a conversation window break; all of the options returned you to the same screen. No way out but to reboot.
My biggest complaint is probably the lack of maps. I'm extremely disappointed that I'm going to have to write down or remember how to get to all the islands. There isn't even anyone to ask for directions on where the next island is! You just sail off and hope to find them.
All that aside, there are some great ideas. I've forced myself through some of it; with heavy save&reload at times, and had some fun inbetween 20 second reloads. If you are still interested, rent it for a day or two before buying it and make sure you can live with the problems.

Ok...I liked Morrowind. I really did, until it started crashing...a lot. I mean if I didn't save every 10 minutes, it would crash. I got SOOO far and then it became UNPLAYABLE! (...). SO I should have known better when I picked up Pirates of the Caribbean. Admitedly, it started off being a fun game, but it started crashing right from the start. At first it was a minor hassle as I always save as often as possible. But then, with increasing frequency, it would either freeze or I would get a white screen and it would reboot the X-BOX.

WHY IS IT that the only X-BOX games I have that crash are from Bethesda? Disney should be ashamed for letting this piece (...) software company make their product. The graphics are not even good! Hitman 2 has awesome graphics and uses a better engine. Also, the directional controls are terrible! Morrowind had better controls.

I know I am coming across as just angry, but I just finished trying to win ONE sea battle and every time I get close to the finish, it freezes and/or crashes me. I am taking this piece of junk back to the store for store credit. And if they won't take it, I'll eat the $19.99 and flame Bethesda to anyone who listens.

Don't get me wrong, I really like the idea for this game. I like Pirates and it has SO much potential. But they just jury rigged this game. To many inconsistencies. Too many poor graphics. TOO MANY F*&#ING CRASHES!!! WHYYYY?! NO OTHER GAME I HAVE CRASHES AT ALL!!

If you are a serious gamer, don't bother with this slapped-together piece of junk. If you are a casual player with a lot of patience and don't mind doing the same thing over and over and over, then buy it. But as for me, I think someone should go to Bethesda, find their quality control person and their testers and kick them in the junk. I will give you a shiny nickel if you do!

Suffice to say, I will never, ever purchase another title from Bethesda and I recommend you save yourself the aggravation and avoid them like the plague. Microsoft should void their license to create games. And yes, I did file an official grievance with Microsoft over Bethesda.

Okay, first let me say that i returned tomb raider AOD for this game, and i am amazingly happy about. it I would give this game a 4.5 if i could so i guess i will give it 5. The graphics are perfect. from the sail boats to the ports to the dungeons, they all look amazing. The ability to fire cannons at another ship, and they board it is amazing. the controls. between ship and person is eazy, one isnt lacking over the other. Both are well thought out. The fact that i died so much is either do to the fact that [I'm bad] or the game is hard. i will choose the latter. You might think [I'm bad] but try to escape the storm without running away. When you have two pirate boats firing at you, now that is fun, especially when you sink one and the other is running from you. Now the complaints. a little fawly collision detection but nothing major. like walking through people you just cut apart. and not that much, but it is there. controls are a bit annoying. for some reason you cant look 360 without moving your character only up or down. but you can do it with the boat. The convo windows could of added a back option on some parts. And this last piece mayb not be a complaint, just my generall thought. pirates and gold and everything is generaly random, you can go to a spot and find a diamond, then die and go to the same spot and find gold. inside houses are like that two. pirates generally move ambush you in packs of 3 to 6 and they are all better than you. and your single shot pistol, reloads way to slow when there is six blades coming your way. you will die in this game, alot. a real alot. so be sure to save. Have patience, i first i was about to return but i just spent 6 hours playing a game without turning it off. i havent done that since playing the original RE for the first time on ps1. have patience, grasshopper, and when you find you love it, tell your signifact other to have patience, because you will never see them again. unless there is a blackout.

Im havaing a blast with this game and havent stoped playing since the day it came out. I have had no crashes on the XBOX version and only found 2 little bugs so far. The graphics of this game are AWESOME and the main quest has pulled me into the game. It took me less than 30 minutes to get used to the controls and I can easily move around. There are lots of ways to earn money in this game (1 way is to deposit money with a loan shark for a 3% interest per month). Every town is not laid out the same and some are really big. This game does take some time to build up your characters, so saving often is must! Exploring is also the other key to this game, because thats where I found better swords and guns.

Probably 5 stars for beginners, but only 2 for experienced RPGers. You fight with swords or with a ship(s). Only one technique is needed to be successful at either. Storyline is linear and the player is led by the hand through the sequence. Most of the "required" interactions are unavoidable. Few or no explorations of discovery are required. Not much to discover anyway. Talking with NPCs is pretty much a waste of time and quite dull. After spending a great deal of time and effort becoming skilled and adept at trading, it became apparent that trading was a complete waste of time. More money then will ever be needed is available through much simpler efforts encountered in the normal flow of the game. It can be fun to try out the various ships available but only one upgrade is needed to finish the game. You can take out a Corvette or Man-o-War with the ship that you start with. One ship actually works best for completing the game (with one possible exception). The graphics are good by today's standards. Player control and player movement are only average...difficult at time. It is a stretch to advertise this game as open-ended. One can deviate from the storyline but the usual scenario is that one discovers a lovely, secluded beach only to find that there is nothing to it except a lovely, secluded beach. Experienced RPGers will find one of the two best swords in the game before they even get to Redmond for their first quest. RPGers like to build their character as the game evolves. Only one skill in this game is important and can be maxed out quite quickly. After that, only one other skill seems meaningful and that is only in the "nice-to-have" category. There are few bugs but they can be devastating. Loading a previous "save" won't always solve your problem. One bug locked me up so bad the only way out was to unplug the computer. Even the power/reset button wouldn't work. One bug persisted throughout all 20(?) saves and the game had to be re-played from the beginning.

The game is simple and straight-forward. Graphics are good and sea-battles are fun until you figure them out. Not a bad start for those new to RPG/RTS type games. Experienced players will be frustrated because of the limited scope and absence of discovery and character developement. Battle tactics are not necessary except for one which is easily learned.

I recommend trying it out mainly because sea-battles are hard to find in the RPG arena or because one is new to RPGs. Don't expect too much and you won't be disappointed.

This could have been a great game. Unfortunately, the bugs keep it from being a great experience. The graphics are beautiful, the gameplay is addictive, which includes some sea battles with other ships, some tiffs on land (I find the fights on land a bit awkward), and some good old fashioned questing.

But I can't believe how much trouble I've had playing this game. The first time I put the disc in the XBox, the game stuttered through the tutorial part. I later learned that Bethesda Software recommends that players put the disc in and start a game, but then just let it sit there for 45 minutes, while the machine's memory cache is filled with the relevant data from the disc. Thankfully, that only happens the first time you put it in.

The graphics are beautiful. The water effects are amazing, the plants/trees blowing in the wind are awesome. The default view is third person, which took some getting used to. The creative decision to look at the character face on, then swerve the camera up and around the character as he moves forward, was a poor one. It's disorienting, and gives me a sense of nausea every time. Zero points for that design element.

Much worse, however, is the save game situation. As with any RPG, saving often is required, yet this game has so many problems with corrupted save game files it makes it an absolute chore - "save game file management" is one of the many strategies you'll have to learn to complete this game successfully.

So: Gameplay 5, graphics 4, sound/music 4, bugs 1.

Disappointing.