Sid Meier's Pirates!

Bought it for the nostalgia, and am fully enjoying it as much as I did 20 years ago.

I grew up playing the original version of this game on the Commodore 64. It drove me to a childhood obsession with pirates and tall ships, and I learned more about both and Caribbean geography than I ever appreciated or realised back then. When they made this remake in 2004 I got it on CD-ROM and played it again and loved it. Then a couple decades went by and it came up in conversation, and I was delighted to realise I owned it on Steam, no doubt acquiring it in a Humble Bundle and forgetting about it at the time! I've just revisited it now, doing a fresh playthrough over the last several evenings, and I'm absolutely astonished at how well this game holds up despite its age. Setting aside my massive amount of nostalgia for it, it's just such an enduring classic with a simple but incredibly rich core gameplay structure to it. I'm amazed how they could fit all that they did onto a single 5" floppy in the original, and in today's world where we're all overrun with remakes and remasters of absolutely everything, the remake of this deserves a lot of credit too. They obviously gave it a major graphical overhaul from the original and added a few additional systems and minigames, but were wise enough to leave the core of the gameplay pretty much untouched, and the game shines for it. It supplies you with potential objectives to pursue if you wish, but is open-ended enough to let you be whatever sort of pirate you want to be. And while sometimes I find 'open world/sandbox' games too aimless and lacking in structure, in this case the gameplay itself is just such good fun that I haven't found myself tiring of it. I'm always just happy to keep sailing, chase down and capture another rich treasure galleon or whatever else I'm in the mood for. To me it strikes a great balance, giving you enough structure that you feel like you have fun and compelling options for what to do, while leaving the gameplay open enough that it's impossible not to let your imagination run wild, daydreaming to fill in the narrative of your character's exploits. The original was a masterwork, this remake was expertly done enough that it endures and shines 22 years on, and the heart of the gameplay is strong enough that I feel there's plenty of room for another remake if somebody wanted to dust it off and modernise it again with more options and customisation. This is one of my favourite games ever. If you're looking for swashbuckling action and building your own legend as a notorious pirate, don't let the age of this game put you off - I can't recommend it highly enough.

It was very fun for a 22 year old game. I once found a ship called the dawn treader and nearly choked on my food. I love the fact you can chose to fight for different nations and I think it is very fun if you love the high sea