Boring after a few hours
It looks nice and sounds good but the gameplay is very shallow, and unrewarding.
The mini games, fencing and dancing are kinda fun for an hour or two than they become somthing that just has to be done to move on.
Ship battles kinda look cool and are fun for a bit, but theres no point to it. Why blow an enemy ship to hell (reducing its value) when you can just ram into it, sword fight the captain and take it in pristine condition. Which leads to even more fencing - boring, and easy...did I mention boring? There are other things to do in the game but they're not even worth mentioning.
All the places you visit are boring and repetative.
Talking to the NPCs are boring. The quests are boring. The accumulation of wealth, ships, titles, land...all boring, shallow, pointless.
The storyline quest is ok once, it never changes, and isnt very engaging, hence boring.
One thing I really hated was not being able to pan out far enough to see where the hell you're sailing to.
Bottom line:
The game was cool for about 3 hrs, then ok for 3 more. It now rests in the lower right desk drawer where all the highly rated crappy games that I've foolishly purchased go.
Why it scored as well as it did is too frustrating to ponder.
Enough said...now back to Mount&Blade, the funnest game Ive played for years (scored a 6.0, go figure)