You want to know why this game sucks? Well, thereby hangs a tail. I have never researched the development background but my intuition from playing the game is that there were very talented and desirable people involved on creating this title, however, nearly nearly every decision made at every step in production was ultimately unfortunate. The background story and intro very standard but perhaps a little better than average. If you've ever encountered pirate content of any kind you're familiar. Broad appeal was surely the goal and they were successful for what that's worth. The rolling waves and pitching deck of the ship were thrilling. The details of cannons and gunnery were interesting and had the sparkle of authenticity. There was a learning curve that was respectable.
However, once mastered, all those seemingly desirable highlights were so much useless weight on a very banal offering. In the long run all the impressive advances brought by the 3d presentation were meaningless decoration. Eventually you would realize that the much more effective method of play was to use the 2d mini map rather than first person, skipping ahead to relevant momenta rather than slog through the nightmare of sailing simulation, and autofire your cannons with the spacebar rather that aim in first person. Everything that was supposed to add value was dead weight using far more resources on your pc than was necessary or appropriate. At the core there was almost nothing about this game that wasn't done roughly equally well by literally every other pirate game ever. The only novelty that stuck out in my mind was really nothing to write home about. What if steamship, essentially.
An exponentially superior game of the era and genre that is a better investment of your time is called (I believe) Sid Meier's pirates. A couple years newer of I remember right and worthy of praise.