To be honest, I really didn't want to give this game a thumbs up. I'm NOT a pvp person, and this game is about as pure PvP as any game gets. There are no safe places (except specific story instances that are fairly short). You can get ganked anytime, anywhere, regardless if you have anything to be ganked. People might kill you then not even rob you. It's chaotic like that. You might also run into a super helpful player that gets you ton of loot, then another who spends the session trying to troll you and you have no way of kicking them from your crew. And the Devs are HARD set on never changing things like that. So why a good review?Because it's still fun. And above all, it is fair. All players have equal strength and access to weapons and gear. There is no pay to win. Gold only gets you neat cosmetics. So losing your gains does suck, you don't lose progression and you can always just do the same thing to another player. I don't like pvp, but setting upon another player that just got a bunch of loot with a friend on my crew was fun, even though the one guy kicked our butts, we still stole a few treasures. You also always have the option to try and run.First piece of advice: playing alone is playing in hard mode. Even if you avoid all players, the enviroment itself expects you to have a crew. It's DOABLE, but hard.The first 10 hours of this game were pretty frustrating to me. But when I finally had a buddy and we learned the ropes, and I joined a few crews, I saw the shinies under the surface.If you're still reading, here's honestly my biggest complaint, and it's superficial. The graphics.The water in this game is immaculatly gorgeous, and almost realistic i want to say. But the land visuals are cartoony as it gets and players and NPCs are just the ugliest bunch of things on polygons. The juxtaposition of the gorgeous sea and cartoonish visuals is a bit hard for me. The islands are pretty in their own way, but when you mash up 2 different art styles, it's jarring. They just really don't fit. And again, the avatars and NPCs all look like they were beaten over the head as babies by other, even uglier babies.

To be honest, I really didn't want to give this game a thumbs up. I'm NOT a pvp person, and this game is about as pure PvP as any game gets. There are no safe places (except specific story instances that are fairly short). You can get ganked anytime, anywhere, regardless if you have anything to be ganked. People might kill you then not even rob you. It's chaotic like that. You might also run into a super helpful player that gets you ton of loot, then another who spends the session trying to troll you and you have no way of kicking them from your crew. And the Devs are HARD set on never changing things like that. So why a good review?Because it's still fun. And above all, it is fair. All players have equal strength and access to weapons and gear. There is no pay to win. Gold only gets you neat cosmetics. So losing your gains does suck, you don't lose progression and you can always just do the same thing to another player. I don't like pvp, but setting upon another player that just got a bunch of loot with a friend on my crew was fun, even though the one guy kicked our butts, we still stole a few treasures. You also always have the option to try and run.First piece of advice: playing alone is playing in hard mode. Even if you avoid all players, the enviroment itself expects you to have a crew. It's DOABLE, but hard.The first 10 hours of this game were pretty frustrating to me. But when I finally had a buddy and we learned the ropes, and I joined a few crews, I saw the shinies under the surface.If you're still reading, here's honestly my biggest complaint, and it's superficial. The graphics.The water in this game is immaculatly gorgeous, and almost realistic i want to say. But the land visuals are cartoony as it gets and players and NPCs are just the ugliest bunch of things on polygons. The juxtaposition of the gorgeous sea and cartoonish visuals is a bit hard for me. The islands are pretty in their own way, but when you mash up 2 different art styles, it's jarring. They just really don't fit. And again, the avatars and NPCs all look like they were beaten over the head as babies by other, even uglier babies.