Every new system I encounter adds to my confusion, not my fantasy of playing as an airship commander-except the card and dialogue-based diplomacy system, which is straightforward and effective. But the confusion doesn't exactly abate in the main campaign.

Some of this is down to a poor tutorial, where you're taught things you can do without learning why. There's a whole system for launching stealth attacks, but I can barely even see how or why that matters. I get a tutorial that has me learn how to intercept transmissions, for instance, but once I start intercepting those transmissions on my own I have no idea what they do or mean. The core problem with HighFleet is that every mini-game has astrolabe-like obstacles. It was terrible-so it got removed from the version of Pirates! you've probably seen. No, that version of Pirates! had an astrolabe mini-game, where you'd use the historical device to figure out your longitude and latitude, and then look at a map in the manual.

These mini-games were fun! With one exception: In the original 1987 version, if you were lost in the Caribbean, you didn't just pull up an in-game map. Just as HighFleet is bursting with systems, Pirates! was packed with mini-games that, tied together, created a story of swashbuckling pirates swinging across galleon decks to duel evil Spaniards and woo governors' daughters.

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