I played the game for the first time at the beginning of 2024, during the Ubisoft free week. I then bought it on Steam for £20, only because it was on 60% sale. The game is not worth £50.

The game is online-only. It’s like taking all the bad things from the MMO and adding them to a single player game. There is a lot of grind, crafting taking a real time (so that you have to log in to the game every 12h to restart your factories), and a lot of various popping timed events. But there are no big battles, nor a player-controlled market. In fact, you rarely even see other players. The lack of ability to pause the game really hurts.

Add to it server side issues, desyncs, disconnects, kicks due to “inactivity”, and long loading times. Fast travel between two outposts frequently gets you stuck on the loading screen for 1-3 minutes.

A lot of people compare it to Assassin’s Creed IV Black Flag, but I actually haven’t played this one. However, I put 250 hours into Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, and my first impression was that it’s pretty much the naval combat part only. Seriously - take out the on-land combat, add some ship customisations, and that’s it. Bracing, holding the right mouse button to shoot, everything feels identical.

In terms of UI/UX, the game is really poor. For example, the map is an absolute disaster. Cluttered with tens of flashing icons, no filtering, and different things shown at different zoom levels, you can never find what you are looking for... Some icons are not clickable, so you have no idea what they mean. Your currently tracked task is often not highlighted, or just gets lost in all this mess...

There are at least 15 different currencies in the game, and you can only see their symbols. No idea what they are, how to get them, and where to spend them. Except 2-3 most obvious and basic ones, none of them are explained in the in-game knowledge base. Even Ubisoft on their help page[www.ubisoft.com] doesn't even mention most of them. Pretty much every trader I talk to uses different currencies...

And the gem on top is how the inventory interface works - there can be two items selected at the same time. One selection is what you clicked, and the other selection is what you are currently pointing at. And now you use a keyboard shortcut to move the item from the ship cargo to the warehouse - which one gets moved? It took me a really long time to understand and get used to this interface.

And there is a lot of other issues, and bugs, including game breaking bugs:

• a lot of unskippable animations, also in the middle of combat
  
• combat music turns on out of combat
  
• console-like interface - you cannot type in a number of how many items you want to move/buy/sell
  
• sometimes the interface becomes unresponsive and you cannot open a map, inventory etc. - the only way to fix it is to exit the game
  
• no quick way of unloading loot (no marking items as trash or favourite)
  
• blueprints add and remove themselves from the tracking list
  
• very low maximum number of active contracts (on one occasion I couldn’t continue the main storyline, because I apparently reached the limit, even though the main quests are supposed to be beyond this limit).
  
• when you die and pay to respawn nearby, there is a chance you will respawn right onto an enemy ship that sunk you
  
• despite ships having a weight limit of how much cargo they can carry, there is also a limit on how many different items you can carry - 50 (it’s pretty low!)
  
• warehouse has a limit of 250 different items (it used to be 200, which was very easy to reach; but still - what’s the point?)
  
• very often your ship doesn't show on the map
  
• chat icon constantly blinking, as if there were unread messages, even if the chat is disabled
  
• ships spawns within visible range instead of actually sailing from afar
  
• frequently during plundering the settlement you get a message than plundering ended, and a progress bar disappears, even though the plundering is still ongoing
  
• ship's sails are fixed and don't rotate towards the wind
  
• cannot scroll the info panel of the item you are pointing at
  
• after moving items from ship cargo to warehouse, the list of cargo can no longer be scrolled
  
• the game almost never shuts down properly and has to be killed through the task manager
  
• there is no rowing, no moving backwards (even at minimal speed), but you can turn your ship in place just fine

I constantly found myself saying "Am I even having fun?" while playing, so I decided I wasn't actually having fun and stopped and refunded it. Usually, when I play a game I'm enjoying and see the stuff I can eventually unlock, I go "oooo I can't wait until I can unlock that." but with this game, I'd see future unlocks and go "Ughh so I have to keep slogging through this game to get to that?"

I shouldn't have to keep asking myself "Am I even having fun?" while playing a game. Which I feel like I do more and more with "triple-A" games (or quadruple-A games, in this case).

A surprisingly fun yet very flawed game. It's clear that the developers weren't really sure what they wanted to make for a while, so it has remnants of an attempt at a survival game (but they've been mostly sanded off, thanfully). The naval combat reminds me of Black Flag, but it has slightly more depth to it (as most modern open world games do, it has a bunch of "RPG-lite" features, though in this case I don't think they detract from the experience)

There's PvP and it seems like at some point it was considered a major part of the game, but I don't really like to PvP nowadays cause I'm old and grumpy, so I haven't really engaged with it. Thankfully there's also a lot of PvE stuff to do, between just going around attacking AI controlled vessels to plundering settlements, or doing quests and some light empire building.

Overall, it's closer to Sid Meier's Pirates! than any other comparisons that would come to mind. It has a lot of modern junk like a battlepass, seasonal events that are timegated and stuff like that, but the core of the game is definitely inspired by Pirates! (and it reminds me of the sad fact that we haven't actually had a new Pirates! game in 20 years)

Performance-wise, it runs surprisingly well, though it doesn't really look super amazing (it doesn't look terrible either, just middle of the pack, really).

For full price I'd say it's not really the best purchase you could make, but at 60% off, it's a pretty fun timewaster if you are into Age of Sail ships and don't mind fantastical elements and weird anachronisms.