I really, REALLY, REALLY wanted to give this a thumbs up. The game is quite fun. I have played a few Akella pirate games (OG Sea Dogs, Pirates of the Caribbean) and loved them all. This one probably has the best visuals, most variety of ship types, and most variety of missions.

BUT.... and its a very big but: This game is just very broken, both mechanically and logically.

-First off, there are a LOT of "typos". In a game that relies completely on text to relay information to the player, I would expect the text to be at least mostly readable. It is not. It reads like a Russian 3rd grader wrote the dialog and then used Google translate to put it into English. Sentences were laborious to read. I often had to try to decipher dialog, and there were some very obvious (and sometimes humorous) mistranslations. Now when I say a lot, i don't mean more than average, or even way more than average. I mean easily every other sentence. It affects all text in the game. Dialog, journal entries, item and skill descriptions, everything. It makes the game really hard to play sometimes.

-Second, this game is challenging. I don't mean Dark Souls challenging, I mean the game is so bad at communicating things, and things happen in the background without informing the player, leading to very unexpected and sometimes game breaking results. Examples in next paragraph.

-Third, the gameplay highly HIGHLY encourages save scumming. Some examples: The tutorial is basically "earn a bunch of gold to buy your first boat". There are a fixed number of ways to earn gold while in the tutorial, and most of them are failable. If a guard asks me to give him booze while on duty, but you are roleplaying a good guy and decide to rat him out to the captain, you lose the chance to earn that gold. You find some earrings out in the jungle and if you sell them you get a pittance of gold, but if you bring them to the governor, he recognizes them as his wifes that got stolen and gives a huge reward. You get the idea. I "failed" the tutorial 3 times before finally caving and looking up an online guide. To top it off, there was no "oops, you failed" type of prompt or screen. I was just stuck, no boat, not enough gold, no more ways to earn any. The entire game is like this.

After finally passing the tutorial and playing for a few hours, i had a mission to arrive at some port within 10 days. Well, my ship was shot up, so I repaired it and saved the game. I didn't realize the repairs took 3 days, so now I'm down to 7. The destination was on the other side of the map, into the wind, getting harassed by pirates and the Spanish the whole way. I save scummed probably 30 times before realizing I was SOL. The penalty for failing this mission was France (your nation and the nation with the main story line) becomes hostile and you can no longer dock at their ports. This particular mission was not any type of "high risk-high reward" type of mission or anything like that. It was the second or third mission of the MAIN story line! Here's the catch-22: If I hadnt repaired my ship, I probably still wouldnt have made it since damaged sails and hull reduce speed. I was forced to restart the game, this time repaired before accepting the mission, had strong tailwind, and still only had about a day and a half to spare.

Overall, the game is fun and addicting, but more frustrating than anything. The text in game makes it near impossible sometimes to figure out whats going on. Mission objectives are vague. Nearly every mission is timed, even without telling you (As in "thanks for accepting this missing to deliver this thing, oh, by the way i need it there in 5 days or I will hate you and your reputation will be tarnished). Once I failed a mission that had no time limit. Not in the dialog, not in the journal, no mention whatsoever of any urgency and I randomly failed it. Save scummed and completed the mission before it expired. Seemingly innocuous missions can lead to your demise. (Some rabble rouser was picking fights in the tavern, barmaid asked me to deal with him. Met him on the beach for a duel and he brings a 4 barrel pistol, unloading on me before my sword was unsheathed. Save scummed until RNG made him miss 2 of his shots). You are CONSTANTLY being harassed by pirates and head hunters so all of these timed missions are constantly getting interrupted. And more likely than not, those missions are interruptions that you didnt realize had an expiration date.

Save yourself the sorrow of an amazing game being ruined by piss-poor execution and half-assed translation. It's fun, but I've started realizing I was dreading playing the game because of its issues.

I really, REALLY, REALLY wanted to give this a thumbs up. The game is quite fun. I have played a few Akella pirate games (OG Sea Dogs, Pirates of the Caribbean) and loved them all. This one probably has the best visuals, most variety of ship types, and most variety of missions. BUT.... and its a very big but: This game is just very broken, both mechanically and logically. -First off, there are a LOT of "typos". In a game that relies completely on text to relay information to the player, I would expect the text to be at least mostly readable. It is not. It reads like a Russian 3rd grader wrote the dialog and then used Google translate to put it into English. Sentences were laborious to read. I often had to try to decipher dialog, and there were some very obvious (and sometimes humorous) mistranslations. Now when I say a lot, i don't mean more than average, or even way more than average. I mean easily every other sentence. It affects all text in the game. Dialog, journal entries, item and skill descriptions, everything. It makes the game really hard to play sometimes. -Second, this game is challenging. I don't mean Dark Souls challenging, I mean the game is so bad at communicating things, and things happen in the background without informing the player, leading to very unexpected and sometimes game breaking results. Examples in next paragraph. -Third, the gameplay highly HIGHLY encourages save scumming. Some examples: The tutorial is basically "earn a bunch of gold to buy your first boat". There are a fixed number of ways to earn gold while in the tutorial, and most of them are failable. If a guard asks me to give him booze while on duty, but you are roleplaying a good guy and decide to rat him out to the captain, you lose the chance to earn that gold. You find some earrings out in the jungle and if you sell them you get a pittance of gold, but if you bring them to the governor, he recognizes them as his wifes that got stolen and gives a huge reward. You get the idea. I "failed" the tutorial 3 times before finally caving and looking up an online guide. To top it off, there was no "oops, you failed" type of prompt or screen. I was just stuck, no boat, not enough gold, no more ways to earn any. The entire game is like this. After finally passing the tutorial and playing for a few hours, i had a mission to arrive at some port within 10 days. Well, my ship was shot up, so I repaired it and saved the game. I didn't realize the repairs took 3 days, so now I'm down to 7. The destination was on the other side of the map, into the wind, getting harassed by pirates and the Spanish the whole way. I save scummed probably 30 times before realizing I was SOL. The penalty for failing this mission was France (your nation and the nation with the main story line) becomes hostile and you can no longer dock at their ports. This particular mission was not any type of "high risk-high reward" type of mission or anything like that. It was the second or third mission of the MAIN story line! Here's the catch-22: If I hadnt repaired my ship, I probably still wouldnt have made it since damaged sails and hull reduce speed. I was forced to restart the game, this time repaired before accepting the mission, had strong tailwind, and still only had about a day and a half to spare. Overall, the game is fun and addicting, but more frustrating than anything. The text in game makes it near impossible sometimes to figure out whats going on. Mission objectives are vague. Nearly every mission is timed, even without telling you (As in "thanks for accepting this missing to deliver this thing, oh, by the way i need it there in 5 days or I will hate you and your reputation will be tarnished). Once I failed a mission that had no time limit. Not in the dialog, not in the journal, no mention whatsoever of any urgency and I randomly failed it. Save scummed and completed the mission before it expired. Seemingly innocuous missions can lead to your demise. (Some rabble rouser was picking fights in the tavern, barmaid asked me to deal with him. Met him on the beach for a duel and he brings a 4 barrel pistol, unloading on me before my sword was unsheathed. Save scummed until RNG made him miss 2 of his shots). You are CONSTANTLY being harassed by pirates and head hunters so all of these timed missions are constantly getting interrupted. And more likely than not, those missions are interruptions that you didnt realize had an expiration date. Save yourself the sorrow of an amazing game being ruined by piss-poor execution and half-assed translation. It's fun, but I've started realizing I was dreading playing the game because of its issues.