I played that six hour long "closed beta" they had a month or two ago. I put that it quotes because it was really easy to get into, you just had to watch someone stream it on Twitch for a few hours. I remember being really surprised that there was nothing to do on land other than visit shops. I had always assumed you'd be going to islands, exploring them with some third-person parkour, then sailing away for another island adventure. Gathering resources by parking your ship near land and playing a silly little timing minigame is just profoundly uninspired.
The combat was fine and makes sense in terms of the different types of weapons used for gameplay purposes. That said...I laughed my ass off when the first ship that you unlock specializes in ramming enemy ships. Say what you will about gameplay and Assassin's Creed games, but Ubisoft has taken great effort in the past to make their games historically compelling. Maritime combat during the late-17th/early-18th century did not feature warships ramming each other as a primary means of engagement!
And I'll say this: at the end of the day, making a game about pirates in that era in a real-life historical setting is, at best, fucking weird. Pirates were murderers, brutes, enslavers, and bullies. But, hey, this is Ubisoft. They made a game about Vikings in which the player is penalized for murdering monks.
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