Recent reviews by Carns

wow

really awesome atmosphere, cool meta puzzles, and LOTS of detail to dig into if you're interested beyond the surface. play without any story spoilers whatsoever for best experience.

If you like hacking, programming, and/or computer security, you'll love this.

Awesome game with a banging soundtrack, which is impressive considering it's like one or two songs.

P.S. Mini-fleet OP (kind of wish there was another even more ridiculously OP step above it, loved spamming it out)

One of the greatest pirate games ever made despite coming out over 15 years ago, I highly recommend this for anyone interested in the genre. However, I suggest you do the following in order:

1) Start the game, pick a faction, enter and leave your starting city, and then close the game. This does two things: a) it unlocks all customization options when you start a new game, so after doing this these steps you'll want to start a new game again; and b) it gives you access to the game's Config.ini file, which I highly recommend you navigate to to enable windowed mode. For me, it was located in C:\Users\Tyler\Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Pirates! (the location on your computer may vary). From here, open Config.ini with a text editor like Notepad and add "fullscreen = 0" (without the quotes) to the bottom. Something else you can do is look into enabling widescreen - I didn't realize this was a thing you could do until after I finished the game, but there's a Steam community post on how to do it here:

https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2228839602
I can't attest to how well this works because I didn't do it myself, but go ahead and give it a try if you want.

2) Download and install HD textures from here: https://www.nexusmods.com/sidmeierspirates/mods/3 Instructions on how to do so are included within.

3) (Optional) Download and install the Challenge Pack: http://www.adammil.net/blog/v121_The_Sid_Meier_s_Pirates_Challenge_Pack.html This does things like enable iron-man mode, fix relations with the Native American and Jesuit factions, and reconfigure crew happiness. It's a very modular setup, so I suggest you at least take a look at it.

4) Download and run the following program and run it on your Sid Meier's Pirates executable file: https://ntcore.com/?page_id=371 (for me, said executable was located at C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Sid Meier's Pirates! but again your mileage may vary). What this does is it expands the VRAM allocated to your game to 4GB instead of 2GB - we need this to properly let us use the high quality textures you installed earlier.

And with that, you're set to enjoy one of the greatest games ever made in a woefully underrepresented genre. Enjoy!

this game is quite simply poggers

pretty good

everyone is faster than you and does more damage still fun though

kool

the illimanti makes this game a 13/10 (3 = triangle = eye of order = illuminate))