Aesthetically pleasing to the eyes, nice UI, color scheme, and an interesting blend of Crusader Kings and Total War. However, this is where the praise stops. The balancing needs to be reworked including how trading, diplomacy, the royal family, and war function which is basically the whole game. Look at previous reviews regarding these issues, they are on the money. The devs need to go CKIII and TW and learn some things from these games. My verdict: there is a good game here but it will need more work. I cannot recommend the game unless it is on sale.
How it is possible to build a worse game than the original? The trading is simplified and the combat is limited. Making money is easy as automating a ship to buy and sell at different ports and hitting fast forward until you can buy another ship and do the same thing with a different set of towns. Combat is terrible. You cannot move the camera, move multiple ships, limited to small battles of 3v3 ships, and the excitement is gone. Empire Total War has better ship battles than this game. Towns are all cookie cutter layouts. Lack of historical content. Would it have been hard to add a small in-game encyclopedia about each ship and town? Ranking up is easy as waiting for your automated trading routes to make more money and doing easy, repetitive missions. The map is poorly sized making it feel as if you're playing on a small chessboard instead of the whole Carribbean Sea. Games should get better over time not just have their graphics updated. I can only recommend it on sale if you're looking to play a new game for a lazy Sunday and that is it.
