You want to be a pirate - after all, you're only human, and this game has you covered. You can defend yourself against the Navy, attack and plunder innocents, or sail around looking for trouble ....... You don't have to do horrible things on the high seas, but when it's as fun as this game is, it's quite engaging.

There is a story, but it's not particularly deep and could be summed up comfortably in a tweet (spoiler included). The point is that going from being a member of a nautical monarchy to an outlaw pirate with delightful speed and terrorizing strangers is more fun than living a life of luxury. Exploring (and blowing up) this world on your own ship is immensely satisfying.

There is nowhere to actually "set foot". Ports are merely a collection of menus for buying, selling, and collecting quests. Outside of these, the boat is essentially your avatar, controlled by three levels of camera zoom. The two farthest zooms give the impression that you are looking down and playing with your own personal pirate playset.

The controls are simple enough. Speed is determined by how many of the three sails are unfurled (as well as wind direction). Speaking of which, at first you will have to rely on your cannons. They shoot to the left and right of your ship, so it is important to know your position and range. Timing is also important, as it takes a few seconds to reload. You can also focus on ruining your ship's sails first to drastically reduce its speed. Thankfully, the game has little interest in realism.

A vast number of upgrades can be found, looted, or purchased. Aspects like hull, crew, and sails affect offensive and defensive stats, but after a bit you will also come across special abilities, most of which are magical. It seems unlikely that real pirates would use flamethrowers or magical energy beams or summon giant tentacles to attack their enemies from the sea, but they must have wanted to. In King of Seas, most of these abilities allow them to attack ships from a considerable distance.

Whereas even upgraded cannons have surprisingly limited range, most of these abilities, if there is an explanation, are deceptively magical, but tend to more than double the range and sometimes do not even require aiming. The cooldowns on these abilities are longer than the cooldowns on cannons, so they cannot be spammed, but they can be used an unlimited number of times. Thus, the battle becomes a matter of using the cannons to reduce the ship's strength, while carefully selecting and timing the more powerful attacks.

No matter how or why the conflict began - sometimes I attacked merchants and treasure ships for their loot, sometimes a naval ship spotted me and launched an attack, and once I killed a group of tourists because a woman named Karen asked me to - the general pattern is the same. In order to stay out of their opponent's attack range and angle of attack, they both navigate slowly and doughnut navigate and attack whenever there is an opening. This makes navigational skills important, and it is very satisfying if you can successfully avoid the cannon barrage. Fortunately, enemy ships rarely have special abilities, so if you have a decent ship and a good attack range (this may take several hours), you have a significant advantage. Not enough to make you invincible, but enough to enjoy the power trip. [The decision to severely limit the enemy's use of these special abilities was a wise one. However, I play in the recommended mode. In this mode, you can keep all your cargo with you even if you die.

You may have noticed that so far I have not mentioned much about what this game actually asks you to do. This is because, to be honest, I am not very good at this game. After what is essentially an extended tutorial, the story progresses by having you go back and forth with simple objectives until, generally speaking, you hope to bump into a ship that is much higher level than you are. To make matters worse, about three-quarters of the way through the whole thing, the idea of conquering a port is introduced. This is a terrible idea for several reasons.

First, attacking the turrets guarding the port is not much fun. None of the special abilities (at least, none of the special abilities, as far as I have played for 15 hours) can touch the port, even if it makes sense to do so. In other words, the only way to take control of the port is to circle the turret a number of times, slowly whittling away at the opponent's strength until either you or they explode.

Secondly, while these sequences can be forgotten after three clears (except for the final battle), the majority of ports discovered are not recorded on the map. I honestly don't know if this is a bug or a feature. This makes finding ports more dependent on chance than planning. Also, even when a character would notify me when a particular port was under attack, I always ignored it because I had no idea where that port was located.

Despite the obvious drawback of leading the player on, I enjoyed almost every minute of this game. Sure, after about 8 hours, I found myself wishing for a more structured experience, but that doesn't change the fact that this game is a really great sandbox. The need to create your own fun means that "King of Seas" will not appeal to those looking for a consistent direction. As for me, I like the fact that I can be as mean or as moral a pirate as I want. Especially since no one remembers my naughty behavior for very long.

There are not only ships to randomly attack (or be attacked by), but crates and rafts to pick up, wrecks to plunder, fish to (eventually) catch, and a trading system that can often be more profitable than piracy. Each port can produce a lot, or very little. For example, one port might sell rubies for a relatively high price, but can make a lot of money selling lumber. By becoming a monster of capitalism, you can get rich.

There are many side quests to discover, but they quickly fall into one of a small number of categories (mainly delivery, escort, search and destroy). This is unfortunate, but I ignored most of these quests and did not have time to become frustrated by the repetition. The King of Seas provides a sandbox of the sea that fulfills my pirate aspirations."