I've been back and forth on writing a review. I really love the pirate haven theme and the vertical city building.
My first play session stretched to four hours due to being enamored with how I could string together ziplines, rope bridges, and cliff paths to build a precariously balanced settlement amidst the cove.
Why I ultimately would not recommend this game. The mechanics that are driving the pirate haven simulator are rather dry. Both the story and adventures feel tacked on to what is a pretty inspired city builder. The "combat" or events are more or less static screens which never really explain what the point of rolling your dice are. They break down into categories of naval combat, melee/personnel combat, sneaking around, chasing a ship down, and other variations of this. None of them really feel any different. If you match the recommended stats for the encounter and then pick the emblems on your card to match the card the enemy is playing you more or less always win. Each card takes supplies which cost ship health or pirate lives to restore, I typically have to send my ship home to dock due to a lack of supplies than any negative experiences with combat. This takes 5-10 mins once you get outside the initial ring of isles around your cove.
The characters themselves are pretty uninspired. You have a stereotypical blackbeard character (Teach) that's always whining about not having a good enough ship. On top of that when I try to appease him by sending him out to combat (which is what he seems to always be hungering for) he'll occasionally remark something about it being more or less pointless. Something along the lines of "I don't know why we're evening doing this". That's pretty much how I feel about the excursions beyond the cove. Had I realized earlier in my playtime that the building would eventually fall flat due to it propping up gameplay I did not enjoy: I likely would have returned the game.
Optimizing the productions routes with the vertical building is very fun and the primary appeal for me. Ultimately I would prefer a massive production line simulation across multiple islands, organizing trade routes as you go, to the actual adventure gameplay present in the game.
