Well, with the big success of movies like Pirates of the Caribbean, it’s no big surprise that pirate and pirate themed games are starting pop up a lot on retail shelves. Encore has brought two nautical 15^th – 17^th century pirate and sailing adventures to the PC, one of which (and the more action based of the two) being Pirate Hunter, a game of trading, money making, and piracy on the high seas.

Pirate Hunter pits you as a lowly beginner, looking to move up in the seafaring world by amassing wealth and a big fleet to move all the way up to governor status. In order to do this, it’s pretty much up to you as to what the best course of action is. You can buy and sell between one of the 60 different cities and four different countries represented (Spain, England, France, and the Netherlands), become a hero by helping governors by completing missions for them, terrorize and pillage seafaring vessels as a pirate, attack towns, or even become a feared pirate hunter to capture and kill notorious and legendary pirates and buccaneers all the way up to the mighty Blackbeard himself. As you progress, you will even get to unlock bonus options to play around with. 

As you can tell, there is a lot of good, solid fun here to be had since everything that you can do is up to you. The story-based part of the game actually has different missions to complete, with a group of smaller sub missions that you must do in order to build up and complete the main task. Along the way, you can do things like hunting and capturing ships that your friendly country is at war with, obviously hunting down pirates within a certain timeframe, examining shipwrecks, and gathering information on neighboring countries for your government just to name a few. These missions not only make the game fun and give you something set to complete, but you also have experience points that you will earn to level up in status along the way.

Regardless of what you choose to do with your nautical life, you’re obviously going to run into conflict from time to time along the way … whether it be from unfriendly sailors hailing from a country that you don’t get along with too well or pirates. Most of the game takes place in a bird’s eye view kind of perspective while you sail from town to town, but getting into a battle will zoom down closer to show the warring vessels in detail. As you fight in real time, you can pick your best course of action to take, which may be cannonballing your opponent until they sink, firing knipples to shred their sails and stop movement, or firebombing the deck to kill the crew so you can board with minimized crew losses yourself and loot or take the vessel over for your own welfare. These options definitely help you feel as though you have a chance of winning even if you go up against a larger vessel since the best option may not always be to just pummel the heck out of it.

In addition, sometimes you may need to stray away from the normal life of heroics or trading and take part in some distractions. In Pirate Hunter, you can visit local Inns to play a dice game similar to one toss of Yahtzee for cash, or help a local out by escorting him to another city or delivering a package for him within a certain timeframe. This helps to break the monotony of everyday life and the same old “do mission A, then B, then C” routine. You can also take a look at the various “wanted” posters around the different towns and capture pirates for rewards.

While it’s not the most action packed thriller or edge of seat game packed with guns and explosions, Pirate Hunter provides a lot of addicting and strategic fun with gameplay that’s open ended enough to offer a good amount of replay value and enjoyment. If you enjoyed PC titles like Pirates of the Caribbean, this offers a lot of the same good qualities offered in that title as well, minus the land explorations and melee combat.    

Gameplay: 8.0
The game and controls are easy to pick up and get into, and the mission based gameplay is enjoyable as you sail throughout a big world. If you want to do your own thing, feel free since you ultimately determine your own destiny whether it be good or bad. The naval battle scenes were fun, but you can sometimes fid yourself outnumbered since you only control one ship even if you have more than that. Still, the option to impede movement or shred crewmembers versus a straight shelling was nice, and helped in being more strategic if outnumbered or seemingly overpowered by a bigger ship.

Graphics: 7.9
The graphics are somewhat simple overall, but detailed and colorful enough to do what needs to be done while you cruise around the world during the 16^th and 17^th century. The battle graphics are the most impressive feature, since the ships will rock and sway along the waves and the ships will show real time damage like torn and battered sails and crewmembers walking around on the deck. You can also do some customization of your ship, including changing flag designs that fly above your vessel.

Sound: 8.2
The music was very impressive, and there were some well orchestrated and written tracks to set the tone for the time period. The rest of the sounds consisted mostly of ocean waves, occasional thunder in the background, or the ringing of a ship’s bell when you needed to pay attention to a message or something onscreen.

Difficulty: Medium
There are five different difficulties, mainly focused around the era and country that you choose to play with, but irregardless a large majority of how difficult the game is will revolve around the way that you choose to play.

Concept: 8.0
This was a well designed game, even if it is a very simple idea and concept. Once you sit down and start playing, it’s easy to quickly grow addicted and lose track of time, and you can soon realize that the “simple” game you started playing actually has quite a wealth of options and ways to win.

Overall: 8.3
While this may not be the most anticipated release out, it’s safe to say that it would be a shame for any seafaring gamer to pass up an opportunity to sit down and give Pirate Raider a whirl. If you enjoy action games with a dash of strategy that are open ended, have a good amount of replay value, and offer you the chance to play as you wish, then you should definitely check it out.