The reviewer failed to mention one of the most important aspects of the game-manufacturing.

Each town has 5 different items it can manufacture out of a total of 20 or so in the game. If you want to manufacture an item you have your raise your popularity. This is done by trading things the town wants. At first, the only way to do this is by purchasing the few items available at nearby ports and selling them. This might seem tedious but in the beginning of the game, it doesn't take a lot of selling to become popular. Once your popularity hits a certain percentage, you can purchase a license which will allow you to build a warehouse and two houses. When they are constructed you buy another license to build manufacturing buildings. You can build as many as you want as long as you have enough materials and gold.

Of course it costs money to run your new factories, but then again, they generate a lot of gold too. Some manufacturing requires supplies to keep them running. For example tool manufacturer needs a steady supply of wood and metal. However many things, like fruit and wheat only require you build a farm. The money generated by selling these maintenance free products can be used to build the infrastructure required to manufacture more sophisticated items like clothing, cocoa, rope, textiles etc. Currently I have 15 frigates and liners with a storage capacity in excess of 5000 and 4.5 million in gold. The problem I face now is I have to buy even more ships to move goods that are overflowing my warehouses.

My only beef with the game is that it's Port Royale II, only with better graphics and a few minor changes.

A final note. Manufacturing is a critical part of the game whether you intend to be a pirate or merchant. I'm stunned it wasn't mentioned in the reviewers comments. This may have been because he only played the game for a short time or perhaps because Steam has the online purchase rights?