Caribbean Legend

A shame Steam doesn't have a neutral recommendation. TLDR at the bottom. I am having a lot of fun in this game, And I will certainly put more hours in, but that fun goes together with a lot of frustration, more than what I got learning Paradox games. So the core gameplay is a lot like Mount & Blade but on the sea, you have multiple gameplay loops that you can choose from and broaden when you get stronger and better in the game. Be it trading , running errands for the different interactable people in town or fighting naval battles, a good amount of options all with different levels of risks and rewards. Very fun but possibly tough naval battles, and a ground combat system you need to wrap your head around for a bit, play defensively early on. A good starting grind, and a very fulfilling mid- to lategame when money and skills start accumilating. However, and this is why I wouldn't recommend this game unless you really know what you're signing up for, the quest scripting and guidance the game gives you when being let free in the world is an absolute nightmare. I've got a lot of hours in the game, almost all of which are doing the sandbox part of the game, and I've played story mode in that time. To start off, and give you an idea where I'm coming from, I believe a game should do a good job letting the player know what their options are, but also how to go about doing those options at the start as to make sure they don't get stuck on the most important parts of the game. And this game does a horrible job at that part. While the basic tutorial is good, and the second optional tutorial questline seems to be good at first, once you finish that, the game drops you, completely. So while I was having fun playing the sandbox part of the game, I kept getting stuck on sidequests, and more importantly, storyquests. Unfortunately I got locked out of the story quests and could not play any further if I wanted to progress it, and it took me a really long time to figure it out. Hell, I'm not even sure if I really did get locked out, but After 50 or so hours it sure seemed like it. So when I started looking this game up, I figured out a lot of people use guides, and this is actually the recommended way to play, and I really don't like it. Again, the game itself should make itself playable, you should not have to look up guides online. If you want to know every detail about the mechanics, then sure, but the core gameplay should not be hidden behind such a wall of unclear/non-existend explanations and shoddy scripting. Quest chains break very easy, and it can stay unclear for hours when your new if you broke one and how you can proceed, and that is if you can even do that. Otherwise it requires an earlier save, but you need to know that beforehand. Knowledge a new player lacks. Some of the side quests are very straightforward, go from place a to place b and interact with the necessary person. Others seem to be straightforward, but lack some very crucial piece of information you'll need to complete some quests. For example, one quest asks you to find a certain ship and sink or take it, go sit at the described location on the map and wait for it, quest failed I missed it.... okay. Find this particular ship, take it or take a person on it, sit on the map and wait for it,hey a ship with a purple sail that must be it, engage it and yes, that's the one. So what happened is that for some quests the ship will be sailing on the map, and in others it wont, and you need to go into the local map for it to spawn, but I had to look this up online in order to check what is going wrong. There are more of these small, but crucial points you need to be aware of as the player but the game doesn't tell you this is a mechanic, so you are left to either figure it out on your own (and good luck identifying the problem this way), or to look it up. And this keeps happening, making for an exeptional frustrating experience that keeps braking the pace of the game. As I'm learning more, the friction becomes less, and the gameplay becomes more and more fun, but you need to go through a LOT of friction to get there. TLDR: A very fun game if you enjoy games like M&B and one of the best pirate games I've played. BUT, the vague nature of basically evey part of the game as soon as you end the tutorial quest line makes learning how to play this a pain in the ass, so only buy it if you are willing to go through hours of frustrating gameplay to chip away the friction this game creates or play with a guide. It is also somewhat unstable and crashes frequently, so be aware of that too.