Todd Clay

I came into this game as a way to play with my best friend. I knew nothing about it aside from the overwhelmingly terrible reviews. He loves it so I figured I'd give it a shot - Put simply, it's terrible and yet addictive like a cult classic movie. It's a money-grab to help offset production costs of a game they knew was garbage from the start. First up - The game was "in development" for 10 years. It should be almost flawless, but it's far from that. I think Ubisoft meant it was developed 10 years ago and then put on a shelf. Some locations can be interacted with from far away, others you need to crash into the dock before you get the action button. Same with the floating loot. You have to be looking specifically at it without interruption of even the waves, in order to grab it. The treasure maps are insanely repetitive, as-is the jobs and bounties. The infamy gained for defeating the plague captain LePeste which requires 3/4 of the entire lobby to complete is the same as one-shotting a level 1 faction boat. The rewards for traveling half way across the map to smuggle contraband is, at-best, a couple hundred pieces of eight... Not even remotely worth someone's time. The elite events require more than 9 players to complete - when there are usually only 16 in the entire "world" - and if you succeed, you receive mostly garbage loot (in the grand scheme of what it took to win) The Legendary Heists are a joke. You have to battle a fleet to get the map, then run across the entire map to claim it, almost always through a head wind and almost always through the middle of the map, which is always storming, so even sailing becomes a grind. The fastest boat available in the game ALWAYS fights a head wind. No matter what dock I fast travel to, I'm always facing into the wind - which isn't the same for the other boats I pilot, which is how I noticed the issue. If I catch a tail wind, I can watch as the wind slowly makes its way around to be in front... which does not happen with other other ships when I use them instead. NPCs hit over 90% of the time. Even bombardments. They almost never miss, so it's about mitigating the damage you're going to receive and trying to maximize your output by focusing on the weak points - because even their sails have armor in the upper levels. They are immune to everything except raw DPS. This game, at best, is worth $19.99 and not a dime more. There are just way too many flaws and outright holes, especially for a game that was so long in development.

I've wasted enough time trying to like this game so I'll keep this short. It's demolition derby where the only car that goes flying is yours 90% of the time. I understand it's an arcade style game, but it's like they purposely went backwards with everything for this game. Here's to setting the bar low and nailing it. Fortunately, this travesty is included on Xbox Play Pass so I don't mind deleting it ASAP.