If you liked Eve, You'll Love this Game
In my general review of the combat systems during the trial, I found the sword combat sometimes laggy but decent. They updated it in the past week before I joined so I didn't get to see their old system which was criticized. In contrast, ship combat is absolutely beautiful. I've never seen a game with such exquisite water effects that could run on just a decent system. The ship models are superb and include visible damage and views of your crew performing tasks on the ship. Among my favorite features included modifying the design of the ship by adding my own flag and sail designs to my ship for others to see.
The trial does restrict you but it allows you leeway enough to get a feel for the game after 1-2 days of play. The learning curve is steep like Eve with larger ships of the line often taking months to complete solo yet attainable for small societies/guilds that cooperate. Fortunately, these ships are often destroyed as quickly as they are produced leaving room for the solo player to compete. It's worth giving it a shot at least. It was free to try.