This game was my best friend at the time of this review ; its very high level of immersion will easily detach you from reality for hours. Sometimes i jump in for the adventure, sometimes for some fights, sometimes for customising my stuff - but most of the time, just even for the atmosphere... to sail, to watch the waves, to feel the breeze, and feel freedom on these vast seas. Meeting friendly crews that will play sea shanties and drink with you and share its fish, is also always a pleasure.
Though if you want to join the game, please be a good pirate, and have manners... Violence doesn't exclude politeness, and if you intend to stab me and steal my treasures, it will be mostly forgiven if you have done it in a pleasant, cordial way.
(And Set Your Loud Microphones to Push-To-Talk to Preserve Immersion You Noisy Animals, or get muted)
For ones wondering, attacking people is absolutely not mandatory, you can become a merchant emissary and be kind and love the world. And hope people will be kind to you, though. (Edited note: you can now play in single player mode ! For the price of 30% of earnings only)

Can note that every time you start a new game, even if you have kept all of your unlocked customisations (equipment appearances and titles) and storyline checkpoints, your ship and inventory are renewed. I thought it was bad at first, but it's actually not: you always start freely with a fresh ship, you don't have to pointlessly hoard consumables without ever using them so go wild, people are all born equal, and such.
You can even drop your unused food, planks and cannon balls in a storage crate at outposts for the next players to pass after you quit a game, that makes happy pirates.

About actually annoying points, this game requires linking an xbox account to steam, and once you've chosen a character appearance (via infinitely renewable RNG rather than full choice), you can change its body type and skin colour only by deleting your entire pirate profile (can't have more than one) or paying a potion with Ancient Coins (real money or rewarded with season renown levels.) Even with this RNG character system, most people still pick the same type of thin guys anyway, unfortunately. I wish i could switch, but, welp.
Even with that, frankly the whole game is very very worth it.

This game was my best friend at the time of this review ; its very high level of immersion will easily detach you from reality for hours. Sometimes i jump in for the adventure, sometimes for some fights, sometimes for customising my stuff - but most of the time, just even for the atmosphere... to sail, to watch the waves, to feel the breeze, and feel freedom on these vast seas. Meeting friendly crews that will play sea shanties and drink with you and share its fish, is also always a pleasure. Though if you want to join the game, [b]please be a good pirate, and have manners...[/b] Violence doesn't exclude politeness, and if you intend to stab me and steal my treasures, it will be mostly forgiven if you have done it in a pleasant, cordial way. [i](And Set Your Loud Microphones to Push-To-Talk to Preserve Immersion You Noisy Animals, or get muted)[/i] For ones wondering, attacking people is absolutely not mandatory, you can become a merchant emissary and be kind and love the world. And hope people will be kind to you, though. (Edited note: you can now play in single player mode ! For the price of 30% of earnings only) Can note that every time you start a new game, even if you have kept all of your unlocked customisations (equipment appearances and titles) and storyline checkpoints, your ship and inventory are renewed. I thought it was bad at first, but it's actually not: you always start freely with a fresh ship, you don't have to pointlessly hoard consumables without ever using them so go wild, people are all born equal, and such. You can even drop your unused food, planks and cannon balls in a storage crate at outposts for the next players to pass after you quit a game, that makes happy pirates. About actually annoying points, this game requires linking an xbox account to steam, and once you've chosen a character appearance (via infinitely renewable RNG rather than full choice), you can change its body type and skin colour only by deleting your entire pirate profile (can't have more than one) or paying a potion with Ancient Coins (real money or rewarded with season renown levels.) Even with this RNG character system, most people still pick the same type of thin guys anyway, unfortunately. I wish i could switch, but, welp. Even with that, frankly the whole game is very very worth it.