Strategic game too simplified. Good Naval Combat although dumbed down. Over-automated and micromanagement at same time
The Good:
The naval battle visuals are tremendous. They obviously focused on this during development. The rolling of the ships on the waves, the look of the water, is done perfectly.
The controls of the game are very intuitive and smooth. It's quite easy to jump into the game and start playing without reading the manual or doing the tutorials.
The tool tips are well done and make the learning curve very short.
The Bad:
Naval Battles - are simplified. You don't really get a feel for the effects of wind and direction, or being able to use it to your advantage. There isn't even a speedometer to show you how fast your ship is sailing. The speed of the ships is probably accelerated compared to real life, but is still so slow that battles seem to draw on, especially when you are trying to chase down the last enemy ship to capture it. There is no time acceleration in the battle mode. Limited targeting control - You can select narrow, medium, or wide shot angle but they cannons seem to only fire perpindicular to ships axis. Historically the cannons had the ability to traverse and fire from different angles. This should be represented by an firing arc and the gunners automatically aiming at the ship when it is within the arc. Pirates of the Burning Sea does naval battles much better, especially in this aspect.
Lack of ship options. There is no ability to customize or upgrade ships in any way. There are very few ship types available and none of them have forward or rear mounted cannons. I haven't tried all the ships, but there doesn't seem to be an interface for firing rear or forward mounted cannons, and the ship classes I have tried had forward and rear cannons historically.
The strategic game seems over simplified. Build some fleets and then order them to a trade route and wait for the money to come in. To be truly efficient you need to watch the market prices and change which routes they are on to maximize profits. While the automated trading seems to make everything very simple, at the same time you are required to manually ship iron ware (dragging and dropping cargo) to you new ports to enable them to expand. Overall I think they just got the mix wrong, balancing simplification with micromanaging. It's basically a simplified version of railroad tycoon where you don't build tracks.
Conclusion:
This is not a bad game, it just seems to fall short. It has tremendous potential but leaves you wanting more. I found myself at the stage where I'd seen everything I wanted to in the game after only a few hours. I only played longer so I could feel better about the $40 I spent.