Great presentation, but not enough substance or depth
Sure, I could try to capture yet another ship, court another lady or try to defeat another pirate/captain to get more money, but that was it. These were the options (pretty much). After a couple of hours you've basically seen it all...Apart from the limited options at your disposal, this is due to the fact that there is no 'empire-building/getting-bigger and better' sense to the game, something Sid Meier is usually very good at (Civ... need I say more). You just sail your ship from one harbour to the other (very similar) harbour, and from one battle to the other (very similar) battle. Money is what it is basically all about (apart from rescueing your family, I'll come to that) but you can't really do anything with this hard earned money, except wait for the computer to 'rank' you in the end. You can't create an ever growing pirate army/fleet, or conquer a empire, or do anything that really make you a factor of importance in the game-world: you'll always be (no matter how much money you accumulate) a pirate with his ship, not much more than a nuisance (or an aid) to the great nations present in the caribbean. All this wouldn't matter if the game was fun, but sadly, to me, it wasn't. Not really. It is addictive, yes... due to it's great presentation you are constantly fooled into thinking things will get better, things will get 'grand', if you just try to defeat the next pirate on the list, find the next treasure... but things never do. The game stays the same, basically all the time, repeating the same (exact!) scenes over and over and over again. It is as if the designers got lazy after developing a great concept with great graphics and animations: they forgot to give the game depth.
There is one exception to this rule: the underlying mission to rescue your family. This was, to me, what in the end kept me going. Unfortunately, this takes time, a lot of time... and when you are bored with the basic (I say once more: repetitive!) gameplay, this is not fun, it is almost like (really dull) work. Because you have to get your slow ship from one end of the map to the other, getting into the same battles over and over again and this becomes a very tedious experience very fast. To summarize: there is little depth to the gameplay: it all comes down to getting more money, without having the possibility to do anything with it...
and a repetition of basically the same scenes over and over. It is (someone in another review mentioned this) indeed a lot like the ancient defender of the crown, without the essential element of the option of building an empire (or conquering England, in the case of defender). In the end, it is a rather dull experience... and that's a real pity, because this game could have been so much better....