A lot of sim games up to this point had been focused in some way on a military campaign and as a result usually had a singular goal: defeat the enemy. Sure the way you controlled your troops would provide some variety, but the objective was always the same.

Pirates! feels like a sibling of Elite, where you set off into the world and do whatever you feel like. There are still things you can accomplish, if you choose to, but you can also set your own tasks and goals which create that "one more turn" dopamine hit that Meier's Civilizations games would go on to refine. This freedom to choose, coupled with a plethora of simple choices you can make about the game's parameters allows each pirate's life to feel unique, and provides a sense of replayability that just didn't exist with the 34th WWII campaign released by SSI.

Pirates! is an aimless, repetitive, mini-game-ridden mess that should not work. And yet, it is one of the most loved and enduring computer games of all-time, with dozens of ports and remakes released over the span of nearly two decades. Why? Because it is all so expertly held together by a way-deeper-than-it-has-to-be meta-game that manages to give meaning to the way its gameplay elements come together. The back-and-forth between the wide variety of the player's possible actions and playstyles on one hand and the crunchy reactiveness of its living open world and its well-researched historical background on the other allows the imagination to go wild, resulting in a very personal emergent swashbuckling story full of action, drama, adventure and romance. (Or you could just, you know, trade sugar and stuff, if that's your thing.)