Recent reviews by Durango - aka Ghiby

This could be a great game, but it's not, the potential is there, but it's not used by design due to poor decisions in development

Sadly, the developer/s greed and hubris are spoiling the game play experience, the balancing of rewards vs effort in game is poor, creating frustration, at least for me that I don't like grinding

Yet, I would recommend it, if you can pass those roadblocks, and here is why:

Pros:
- nice ships and the ability to board and keep, save a ship for your own use (not the premium ones tho')
- nice naval battles
- nice design of the ports and hideouts

Cons:
- poor trading system, inability to buy at a lower price, so you can travel and eventually sell at another port for a higer price, this is I'd say the main issue of the game
- too expensive in game gold-cash the maintenance of the crew and ships and buildings you manage to acquire over time, more to eventually force you to open your wallet and buy with real money in-game currency
- the lack of involvement of the development team, that I have a feeling it's just a one-man-show, no updates, no maintenance, and more importantly disregard for feedback from the community
- the classical mentality "don't tell us what to do, or how to do it, as we know better, after all we create this game, so we know better"

that being said, it's still worth a try, considering it's free...

I've played it on my tablet for over 100 hrs, while traveling, I'm no expert by any means, but I've been around the block...

here on PC via Steam, I didn't played much, because I can't get passed the unbalance and the inability to efficiently trade goods between cities/ports, as mentioned, there is almost impossible to make in-game cash by trading goods, and that's a huge loss for the game...

here is an example:
- you buy (spend game money buying) goods in one port ideally at a lower price in the region
- travel to your set destination with the aim to sell your goods at a higher price for that region
- by the time you reach your destination (one-to-three days in-game time), the prices at the destination changed, often significantly lowered
- when you sell, you barely recover your initial investment if that, or worse, if not even lose some money...
- do this two-three times, and the in-game week is passing, and you'll have to pay your crew and ships and building maintenance, which will pile up once you grow with more ships and buildings...

sadly I'm not playing this game anymore, due to the grinding mentality leading to my frustration, but it's a good game tho' it's not great...

For me, there are two major deal breakers as far as features that are not listed in the description

1. In-game currency
- it's in Euros ONLY, and there is no way to change the currency to US$, as I'd like since I live in the US, hence I think in US$, not in Euros

2. It's not endless
- the game is round based, it looks after 30 days game time, the game will end, thus losing all the work we put in, all the assets, everything
- if we want to continue to enjoy the game, a new game is needed, fresh, from the start, and we have to build up all over again all the assets

now, this is something very frustrating to me, hence not fun, as such it's not what I've expected from this game, and the developers need to know that us, buyers, are unhappy with their product, so they can make a better on in the future

I feel a bit sorry for the negative review I'm posting, because I can tell that a lot of hard work was put in for development, but, yet, at the same time, if they care and read, our feedback, the developers need to understand it's a buyer's market, and they need to provide products that will be appealing - not frustrating - to us

sadly I had some suspicions it may not be what I was expecting even before I got it, so I'm truly sorry to see I was right to suspect it's not a good one...

I've uninstalled already...

Great farming simulator game overall... I'd give it 4.5 stars out of 5

Pros:
- great concept, using and operating all kind of machinery and tools, specialized for mechanized farming and forestry
- land modification with fields being plowed, sowed, fertilized, and not last harvested, even creating new fields or deleting existing ones
- great balancing overall, of the money income vs. expenses, with some small exceptions here and there, but addictive enough to spend time playing the game to make money
- plenty of free mods available from mods creators in the community, some great, some good, some that need some improvement, but a wide selection to choose from
- plenty of YouTube tutorials from more experienced players sharing their experience makes it easier to grasp the more complex aspects of the game, as it's not really a simple boring game
- quite stable, for me at least, I had no crashed, no freezing, no performance issues whatsoever, works nice and smooth as intended, even on a laptop that's not top of the line
- a build in radio player allowing us to play our own mp3s or internet radio as we choose

Cons:
- maps are small to my taste, in short time there is nothing more to explore
- in-game time is not realistic enough to my taste, I'd expect real time speed with options to speed up if and when we want - like in FSX
- no seasons build in the vanilla base game, but somewhat solved by a great mod - however, the mod is not original from the game-developers, as such is still not realistic enough, one full year is passing in maxim 23-26 game-days (if I remember correctly) and to me at least, it's still not realistic enough
- no avatar per see in-game of the character, or the workers helping the character - there is a small attempt, but it's far from having an avatar/character to explore and play
- not enough interactions with the buildings, most are plain decor, useless, can't open doors, windows, can't place-move-remove furniture or items, really 90% of the buildings are plain decor with no actual function, except silos and some storage specific buildings

bottom line:
- it is a great game with great potential to grow even more
- it's fun, addictive, and educational, considering we learn a lot about farming, by just playing the game
- a great community of mods creators and mentors sharing their experience to make the game better

4 out of 5
Good, close to great, but not quite outstanding

Pros
- great game concept, altho' not entirely new, a board-game developed for the digital world of video games
- plenty of decisions and tasks for the player to do, leading to countless hours of fun and entertainment
- a broad large community of experienced and skilled players willing to share with the world their guides, tips, advice, trainers, via YouTube, forums, and other social media platforms
- open cheats allowed and released by the developers making the game even more enjoyable
- plenty of mods, made by other players and pros, free of charge, some great, some good, some that need some extra work, but a broad range of options to chose from nonetheless making it an extra reason to keep coming back and try something new over and over again
- plenty of great DLCs, altho' not free, some of them quite pricey, however, plenty to chose from if you'll open your wallet or gain approval for your parents credit card

Cons
- very high game speed, even at the lowest game setting, in-game one day passes in 2-3 seconds, not minutes, not per 5 or 10 minutes, but seconds, thus making the game overwhelming in handling a lot of decision making and dealing with a lot of events
- inability to adjust the time to an even lower speed, like maybe one day per 10 minutes, due to the hardcode of ticks and pulses per type of game
- annoying events that will pop-up in your face, way too often, 3-4 events per minute, distracting you from your own flow of actions you are doing or want to do
- inability to disable and/or enable the events as you may want during the game play, as such you'll have to deal with pop-up's anyway

in all, a good game, close to great, offering a lot of fun and entertainment for the player, however it's not that kind of outstanding masterpiece game

to the fans.. don't hate me for a fair review, I'm a fan too, I love CK2, but at the same time, let's be fair when doing a review, so others can make an informed decision