Sid Meier’s Pirates is one of my favorite games ever. I’ve owned it on PC, the original Xbox, PSP and now for the iPad. Do I regret any of these purchases? I don’t think so, at least not yet. I certainly don’t regret spending the last few days playing the iPad version.
For all intents and purposes, Pirates looks just like every other variation of the modern version of the game. Visually speaking, nothing about its appearance will surprise you if you’ve played it before. It’s the same sail-around-the-Caribbean-looting-and-plundering pirate simulator we all know and love so much.
The tweaks are all in how the game is controlled with the touchscreen, and while some of these controls make perfect sense and work just fine, such as dragging your finger around the map to guide your fleet of ships, others are a little more complex and make the game more difficult.
In previous versions of the game, for example, I was always an expert swordsman, but it’s much harder to get the timing right with the finger slashes you’ll be making in the iPad version’s mano-a-mano battles. I even lost one swordfight, which I think hasn’t happened since the first time I played the game. Likewise, the dancing minigame has you touch buttons on the screen in time with the music, and I was much less adept at it than when playing with the more-traditional control schemes. The difficulty spikes were welcome, though, this being functionally the same game I’ve been playing for the better part of a decade.
Have you ever played Sid Meier’s Pirates? Have you not? No matter your answer to either question, this game is one you absolutely must have if you own an iPad. No exceptions.
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