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Illusia and Neverendia wrote:

Why?: While I never got to play the original one from 1987 (I was born in 2001), it was one of the first games I took much notice of when I was a little kid. My big brother extensively played it, and I enjoyed what it looked like - for 2004 graphics, it was quite stunning for a three/four-year old like me, let alone the fact that it was running on notebook laptops of the day, which, in today's standards, are pretty crappy and outdated. When I grew up, I decided to play it myself, even if the said graphics are so antiquated. Adding some modifications, having a firsthand experience on it myself - it was the best feeling that I had back then.

The fact that one could forcibly turn the entire Caribbean into the control of one nation (the game had four nations - England, France, the Netherlands, and Spain), and of course, the grind to get the Ship of the Line - the game's exclusive warship and the rarest of them all, was a factor that I will never forget and something I continue to savour. Playing under the hands of the Dutch was significantly fun, and of course, since your role is a pirate, you could always ditch being a privateer and attack that own nation's shipping all by yourself. Of course, in the later years, I tried other nations, but there was always one common ground:

I hated Spain in that game. Their shipping were such easy pickings; since their Galleons proved no match against the square-rigged vessels of the non-Spanish nations. That, and because the main villains of the game were Spanish (if I recall correctly - Marquis Montalban, Baron Raymondo, and Colonel Mendoza). I laughed at the experience of sinking Spanish pirate hunters - and then laughing devilishly off-screen.

The greatest challenge one could do in that game is to conquer a city via land combat. It gets better when your entire fleet of pirates and buccaneers go against a city's army of about 500 to 700 soldiers. I usually employed about a thousand pirates and buccaneers beforehand, and after sacking it, I either change the allegiance of the city (by installing a new governor), or just sack it and watch its wealth and prestige crumble.