...Pirates.
Pirates! Gold has had the top spot of pirate gaming for years. Unfortunately,
Corsairs doesn’t even come close to knocking
Pirates! Gold out of that position. You play as either the French or the British in a quest to be the best pirate in the seas. This is supposed to range through a vast array of quests and adventures, with boarding parties and town raids and everything. Unfortunately, this game doesn’t really implement any of the pieces very well. The ship battles are obnoxious, with my five-ship flotilla taking more than three minutes to take out a single small ship -- agh!
The boarding battles are just as bad, with lots of similar looking sprites clang-clanging against each other. It’s better than Cutthroats’ little cartoon animation, but not by much. The quests themselves are generally trivial, with a “kill these guys, then save this town” setup. And trading is supposed to figure into the game heavily -- instead, you simply abuse the trading engine to get filthy rich, going back and forth between towns on the map to get as much money as possible. Nothing seems to be right in Corsairs -- everything is just a little too easy or too hard or too obnoxious to bother. There are serious control issues with picking ships to move around the map. This game has a lot of potential, but the gameplay and control issues end up ruining the possibilities.
