After 46 hours and finishing the campaign, I can definitely say I had a good time with Corsair Cove.
What I like most is building up the island and figuring out the supply chains. You have one large island that you gradually expand across with more pirate camps, and it's too big for a single camp to cover everything. Those camps need to be supplied with things like beer and food, and later your pirates start demanding better food and other goods as well.
I especially like the vertical building. Figuring out how to fit everything onto the island, use the different heights and still keep your supply chains reasonably short is a fun challenge.
The progression is also good. Production chains get quite complicated later on, but the game gives you a good understanding of how it wants things to work. I rarely felt completely lost, and usually you can look at your island, figure out what's missing and work out how to fix it.
Some of the logistics become more annoying than challenging, though. You can have plenty of possible connections, but a resource can only be chained across three lines. That means you sometimes end up building more production buildings and warehouses simply because you can't bundle everything together the way you want.
Having four or five cobblers and then needing two warehouses just to collect all those resources doesn't really feel like an interesting logistical challenge. I would really like to be able to use all five connections for the same resource. In general, I'd rather have the challenge come from designing and supplying a complicated production chain instead of fighting connection limits.
Another interesting thing is that demand changes as you progress. Boots, for example, are needed for pirates on level 2 and 3 ships, but become obsolete once you reach level 4 ships. In theory you could tear down most of that production, leave one lonely cobbler and a small stockpile just in case, and use the space for something new.
I didn't really do that, to be honest. Most of my old production just stayed there. Near the end I only removed some of my old clothing production to replace the basic stuff with proper pirate jackets.
Medicine is similar. Eventually your pirates don't regularly need it anymore, but it's not completely useless. Events can still ask for it. If sickness is spreading, for example, you can spend medicine from your storage to get a better outcome. So keeping some stock of resources your pirates no longer consume can still be useful.
One thing that does get annoying is the fog of war on the world map. Even though you can remotely lift the fog again, I constantly have to find places I already discovered when I want to raid for a specific resource like wine or tobacco.
Once you've discovered these missions, I think their locations should remain visible through the fog of war. They don't even need to show the remaining time — just show me where they are.
Alternatively, a search function for the world map would be really helpful.
The pirate adventures also become a bit repetitive later on, especially once you have better ships. At that point I mostly visit them every hour or so to collect resources. Usually it's only two or three clicks and you're done, though, so while they could use more variety, they don't bother me too much.
The camera can be a little fiddly as well. With all the vertical building, rotating and moving the camera up and down sometimes feels like you're hitting an invisible wall when you're trying to get a view between buildings or terrain. I wish it would just let me move or zoom in further in those situations. Most of the time it works perfectly fine, but occasionally you're fighting the camera to see exactly what you want.
I really like the presentation. The art style is a bit comic-like, but not so much that the pirates become overly cute. They're still pirates. The music is great, and the voices during the scenarios are good too. Together it creates a nice atmosphere where you can actually immerse yourself in building a pirate island.
I've finished the campaign now, but there are still other islands/scenarios I want to try. Apparently one of them has no fertile land at all, which sounds scary. I guess that's going to depend on how easily I can raid for wood and planks, but I'm definitely going to give it a try.
Overall, Corsair Cove is a fun challenge, especially if you like complicated builders and figuring out increasingly messy production chains. There are some quality-of-life things I'd love to see improved, particularly the world map and the connection limits, but none of them stopped me from enjoying the game.
46 hours in, campaign finished, and I still want to try the other islands. That's probably the best recommendation I can give it.
