Dancing: This basically is having you doing the moves your lady signals you to do. Sounds simple, but is a bit harder than you’d expect: It’s not always easy to see exactly how the ladies signals, and the more beautiful they are, the harder it is. Now, in addition to plain “rehersal” it is possible to buy yourself dance shoes that makes dancing easier.
Sneaking: You do get the option of sneaking into enemy towns that rather want to attack you. Your goal here is to find your way to the tavern and pick up some information, and maybe find some of the men you will be hunting. Guards will be patrolling the streets, and you’d better not be captured. You can hide, and knock down guards from behind. Not particulary difficult.
Treasure hunt: This includes hunting for your lost family members. From time to time you will be able to buy parts of treasure maps in the taverns you visit – the more pieces you get, the easier it willb e to find the treasures. Other, infamous pirates may have maps – or pieces of them – to the locations where your family members are kept in captivity. And you may get maps to lost cities. How easy it is to find these various “treasures”? It varies.
Sword fights: These happens mostly at two occations; when boarding ships, and when you find the wanted men at the taverns. If you lose any sword fights, you may be offered a training session when you visit a governor afterwards. And you may have to fight jealous fiancees of the ladies you’re charming. If you board a ship, and the enemy has many more men than you, it’s going to be a tough fight – you’d better try to finish it quick.
Land attack: You can attack the towns over land, and if you do, you’re playing a turn based strategy game. You take advantage of the terrain to win over the enemy. What makes this game so tiring, is that it takes a long time to make the moves. It really should be possible to speed the animations up here, but alas…
Sailing: It’s part of the glue that ties these sub games together. As you’re sailing, you see the other ships near you, what type and nationality they are, so that you can decide if you want to pursue and attack them. Two things you need to keep an eye on is the food, and the crew’s mood. To keep the crew happy, they need plundering – lots of it. They won’t be happy sailing around for a year or more if there’s very little to show for it. This means you need to keep an eye for how you’re spending the money, too.
How do you keep the crew from being mutinous, or make them happier instead of mutiny if they are? Well – plunder helps. Attack ships or towns, find treasures. But with a large crew, it’s not easy to change the mood – they need a large plunder. A trick can be to lose many men in battles – but unless you can’t afford months without doing anything, it’s probably better to divide the plunder, and wait those few months before you sign up a new crew. Then you start anew with a happy crew.
Other than that, there’s the different missions you may take on, governors’ daughters to flirt with and get information from, promotions to achieve and the advantages that follows, all this stuff that ties it all together into a great experience. It’s what makes life as a pirate fun. 😉
