Age of Pirates: Caribbean Tales - PC

I never played any other games in this series, but man this was hard to figure out. Be ready to look up some guides. I think if you give it time, it can be fun. I just wasn't willing to try.

I wish they could solve the problem with glitches... it is a great game when it wants to work, then there are the days when it seems to be fickle, and quit running right before you run the pirate through!!!!Then you have to start all over again.... But, if you can get through that, it is a fun game, and many hours sitting around waiting for planes, trains and women will be whiled away with enjoyment.

The game installed fine, but when you go to play it, there is a digital rights management program called Star Force which must be set up first. I wish I had researched it online first, because it totally destroyed my operating system twice.After the first install, and attempt to run the program, Star Force popped up and said I had to install it to play the game. Next I had to reboot my PC. Okay, no problem so far. Next thing I know my computer crashes, goes into a DOS-like screen where Windows tells me it has to do a system repair. At first I thought this might have been a hiccup, but later I tried installing the game again and the exact same thing happened.Next I tried it on my laptop, and while it didn't require a system repair, the program just wouldn't load (I'm running XP 32bit on both computers by the way).As with many of these DRM programs, there seems to be a complete lack of ethics. I was not given the option to remove Star Force (it was never listed on either machine in Control Panel>Programs and Features). So I had to do a system restore on my laptop as well.Search the web before buying any program that has DRM such as this. Let the buyer beware.

This game is from the makers of Sea Dogs, and Sea Dogs II which was retitled Pirates of the Caribbean. This game is very similar to Sea Dogs II (POTC) with some graphical improvements. This game has some serious stability issues, I crashed to the desktop 5 times the first day of playing it, several times losing alot of progress. It was version 1.4 when I installed it so I figured they would have most of the stability issues worked out, apparently I was wrong. The game also uses StarForce copy protection, which has inspired several boycotts among gamers. In Sea Dogs II there was a hotkey to speed up the passage of time while maneuvering your ship or waiting for your cannons to reload, there is no such hotkey in this game, very annoying because sea battles can get long and drawn out especially when you are trying to run.

(Review provided by my son, as the game was purchased for him.)I have been playing Age of Pirates: Caribbean Tales for all week now. I haven't really done any of the "main quest" stuff until just today, mostly spent "free time" trading, battling, exploring, etc..I rate the FUN LEVEL incredibly high, due to it being quite entertaining. I normally don't play much in the way of strategy style games, but you definately need to understand strategy to advance very far. Not saying a teenager wouldn't figure it out, just that it's abit more involved than a FPS style game.OVERALL SCORE is only lower than 5 stars because the main storyline is alittle too limited in content in my opinion. Sure, it takes some game-time to complete, and you won't be able to "beat the game" in a single day (atleast not easily), but I wish for the level of graphics and the fact that the map spans such a wide region, that it had more content than what it did. Still, the freedom to do what you want if you want to, definately makes up for that lacking.I have read many of the reviews posted by others, complaining of needing a patch to play, or bashing "Starforce" in general. I have been playing this game for SEVERAL DAYS, have not patched it in any way, and I don't have the most currently up-to-date setup on my PC. I've also experienced none of the supposedly commonplace problems associated with "Starforce" copy-protection software. My installation has not resulted so far in any crashes I can blame on the game software. The only crash I have experienced was a tempermental issue with my anti-virus. It causes crashes to desktop sometimes in many of my games when it runs it's update, so this is unrelated to the game.I am finding alot of what seem to be "errors" in the other reviews made on this title. It works fine for me. I may eventually install the patch just to see if there's any change, or a "mod" when I get bored with the scenery, but I don't imagine I'll be bored with this game anytime soon.All in all, great game, great fun, don't believe MOST of the negative reviews you'll find on here. I've noticed alot of contrasting negative reviews that differ completely from my own experiences once I played the games myself. Can't say why that is, but please give games a try. Taste and gameplay choice varies, afterall.

I had a software problem with this game.

First of all, you should know that I'm not an avaid gamer, but I do enjoy playing games and have various types of games from strategy to action to classic. So, I think this is a great game! There is so much more that your character is capable of doing than in any other pirate game I have played or heard about. Plus there are a lot of options to pick from when starting out your game. The ships are fun to be around in with their varying abilities (I don't know if they're all that acurate, but I think it's nice that they at least tried to make each ship different). I particularly like that there are so many options that you can take your character into throughout the game. I don't think you could play the same game twice at all. This is by far one of my top games!