Heads up, this review is LONG. There will be a TL;DR at the bottom. A fair bit of stuff I wrote in this review way back in 2016 is outdated now as they've improved the game over the years.

Also, the developers released a remaster of this game titled Caribbean Legend. Buy that instead, it's got even more improvements!

This game is a gem, covered in a pile of ♥♥♥♥. If you've read negative reviews for the game I hate to say that most of them are very much accurate. This game is very unwieldy, hard to learn, harder to master, and really doesn't teach you anything. The closest this game has to a tutorial is essentially a few hours of being stuck on one island doing small quests to make enough money to buy a small ship. Unfortunately, this means you likely won't know if you want to keep the game or not until after the refund period has passed.

So before I go on, you need to be absolutely sure you want the game before you buy it, because you won't be able to refund it.

Now that that is out of the way, I want to address all the things I love about this game:
It is, for the most part, a sandbox game very similar to that of Mount & Blade. You can do what you want and do it over a big area (the entire West Indies). There is a "main" quest, but you could completely ignore it if you didn't want to do it, as you'll still witness almost all the game has to offer without it. However, there are certain events and areas you'll miss if you skip the main quest, so you should get to it eventually.

As for the actual gameplay, it is phenomenal. I love Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag for its amazing naval combat, and I can honestly say this game does it better. The naval fights are very action-packed and intense, bigger ships have more cannons that deal more damage and fire farther, you have different ammunition to choose from, and you can even get into large battles at the sea. Furthermore, if you choose to board instead of sinking a ship outright, you've got even more fighting in store. I can only praise the naval combat, I really can't think of anything wrong with it.

The regular combat is a bit different, especially since there is no tutorial to actually teach you how to swing your sword (unless I missed it or something). It is not nearly as straightforward as the naval combat, and if you don't know what you're doing, you'll easily die to the first enemy you encounter. However it is very fun and intense, and some fights can go on for quite a while depending on how strong your opponent is along with healing items. You won't just be cutting through enemies like you would be in Mount & Blade, each fight can easily end with a sword through your chest and a man marking your grave.

On to the more guided sections of the game, there are a plethora of quests you can take on to fill your coffers when you aren't strong enough to go raiding fleets for gold and silver cargo. Most quests consist of you seeking out a specific ship or some gang of bandits, but many quests are much deeper, especially once you get into the main questline. A lot of effort was clearly put into these quests to make fun and engaging gameplay, and there are really only a few quests I haven't liked. I'm sure I haven't even done all of them yet in 120 hours of gameplay.

As for getting strong enough to take on these flotillas bearing gold and silver, you start out as a weak, inexperienced man who is merely a virgin to Caribbean life. This game uses a dynamic levelling system, where your skills get better as you use them, rather than just increasing whenever you level up. You must improve your skills if you want to get anywhere, as when you start out you'll barely be able to take on the smallest of ships and weakest of dueling opponents.

There are lots of other things to do, but I feel I've covered all my bases for the sake of this review. Now on to the negatives:
To start off, the game is Russian, and this is an English translation of it, and sometimes that translation is really bad. The quests I haven't liked have been quests I flat out couldn't understand due to terrible translation, and I've even come across some segments of dialogue that are still in Russian.

Speaking of quests, you HAVE to pay attention to dialogue. A lot of times your character will simply omit important information in the quest journal, so if you weren't paying attention you could easily get stuck and end up failing the quest. This is especially true with the main questline, so make sure you are paying attention to the dialogue.

While I have been praising this game for the gameplay, I need to further emphasize how unwieldy the game is and how it completely fails to teach you the mechanics of the gameplay going in. You are very much alone in figuring out how to play, so I recommend you check out guides for the game. I myself have been frequenting the forums to find out a lot of things that the game should really be explaining. This is a dealbreaker for a lot of people, and that is something I can perfectly understand. If you aren't willing to take the time to learn how to play the game, then this game is definitely not worth the purchase.

Along with the unwieldy controls and lack of tutorial, this game is very unforgiving. If you die, you are dead, and you better have saved recently. I highly recommend to keep as many saves as possible, and NEVER overwrite a save file. If you get into a really tight spot and you don't have an earlier save you can revert to, you'll likely have to end up starting over. Which means you have to go through the awful, hours long "tutorial" again.

I understand that the negative aspects of the game seem to outweigh the positive ones, and that's where a lot of the negative reviews for this game come from, but I have to say the opposite is true. This has quickly become one of my favorite games, but when I started out I was extremely frustrated with it. All I can really say is give the game time. If you are planning on buying this game you can't expect to be able to get a refund, once you get it you're in for the long haul.

TL;DR: This game is like eating at an excessively fancy restaurant. The menu is confusing and you have to wait a long time for your food to show up, but once it does you've got a 5-star meal. The game is really fun if you can just figure it out and really get into it.

After many years and nearly 800 hours of play time I finally got around to doing a run where I actually finish everything: story, dlc, side missions, heap of freeplay. God, I love this game so much, please play it.