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40 of 42 found the following review helpful:
 POTC = Prone Often To CrashJul 09, 2003
By DigitalMan
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.
35 of 38 found the following review helpful:
 Buggy but Great !!! (See Work-arounds, below)Feb 19, 2004
By Thomas J. Race
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
15 of 17 found the following review helpful:
ATTENTION RPG Players, patience & saving, wins the game!Sep 21, 2003
By forrie
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.
10 of 11 found the following review helpful:
Good Game but....Sep 22, 2003
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.
7 of 7 found the following review helpful:
 Still BuggyJul 10, 2003
By Stephen Haley
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.
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based on 55 reviews
