King of Seas

The state of the game in 2026 is wonderful. It plays amazing on the deck, and it gives a nostalgia feeling for anyone who is a fan of Sid Meier’s Pirates.
Is it the best game I’ve played? No
Is it a game that I come back to when I want to play some smooth naval combat? Absolutely

After years of emulating my older favorites and trying many a' Pirate game this one for me scratches a certain itch I haven't found elsewhere, causal, nice story line, etc. I'm giving this a high 8 to 9 out of 10 only due to having to recall the controls after taking weeks off, etc.
Would recommend and there's a trial, so check it out, cheers

Pirates, ships, pirate-ships - what's not to like?
King of Seas is a decent sailing game that follows a Diablo-esque approach. You have 3 talent trees of upgrades that you can choose from, and many skills (some exclusive to each ship) and items of varying rarity that can be bought from Settlements, or taken from defeated ships.
The skills go from cannon cooldowns, to a boost of speed while being immune to all damage, to even spawning a kraken tentacle to annihilate the other ship, though the ship items on the other hand come in the form of new sails, figureheads, hulls, crew, etc, which each have rarities and stats of their own, such as giving fire damage to cannons or increased life to your hull.
World map is an empty 7x7 grid, meaning 49 tiles per map generation, but two of those tiles are freebies: "your base" and your base. The other 47 tiles consist of unmapped Settlements and other areas, which will need to be explored by finding Cartographers.
Main quest on the other hand is kind of in the background as you play the game, since most of the time spent is trying to get stronger and conquering a procedural map. There are side-quests too, but they are radiant-based - other than the monster ones that you will come across in Tortuga.
Problems faced:
First-and-foremost, the game is a grind, especially on perma-death, so beware if you are an achievement hunter, though I have a tip for you further below that will solve that problem.
Game (story) slows dramatically - like was stated prior: instead of playing through an actual campaign, you are spending most of your time just buffing your ship, while simultaneously mapping out (searching) the world by a 1 tile basis and hunting Settlements, with the Settlements being a brick-wall for a lot of it. I had to create a grid (7 x 7 = 49 squares of Settlements / other areas) on paper to list out all the levels of the Settlements, so I could conquer them in an ascending manner - that, and the Cartographers were a time-eater of slow sailing.
The Cartographer - The Time-Sink. 1 per tile out of 49 tiles is really repetitive, because currently, that's 49 Cartographers you have to visit, then 49 islands/places next to them.
The camera zooms in pretty close to the ship, but in my opinion, it doesn't zoom out far enough, and the camera itself seems too isometric.
Talents are level-capped to 60, and also locks you into putting so many points into a segment that you don't really want, meaning you have to put like 5 or-so points into the 2nd segment of the tier to move to the 3rd segment.
Enemies scale with the player, so no matter how much you level up, the enemy is just as hard to kill as they were before, with the exception of being a level or two lower or even higher, which makes it feel like there is no progress ever being made.
For the Devs:
Talent system shouldn't lock you to a segment-by-segment basis: I should be able to put points wherever I want them, instead of being locked to the previous segment.
Camera zoom needs another option for zooming out, and the angle seems to steep.
Some of the ship items have neat aesthetics, but like any looter-shooter, your gear is stuck to what it looks like, so a transmogrify system would have been nice: the ability to choose colors and items but keeping the stats - the Shaman could be the dude to fix that problem.
Bank items (and market items) increment by 1, so if you are trying to move 100 chicken legs, then you have to wait for that value to get to 100 - a move-all button would have been nice.
Ship inventory becomes a mess once you begin collecting duplicates or items in general, so a trash filter would be nice to keep all unwanted loot away from wanted loot, and then that would allow you to sell all trash at once instead of picking through it.
The Cartographer should be a single tile like the Shaman, with a boon of buying random maps at incremental prices, allowing the player to map the world by experiencing it.
The Bank should automatically be set to cargo since most of the game is spent loading cargo into the Bank over ship parts.
On the HUD where the indicator for sails, hull, and crew are, the hull emblem is at the bottom, whereas the sails and crew emblems are centered.
The compass arm doesn't seem centered - nitpick.
No Playstation glyphs (Xbox only), and glyphs don't line up on UI, which makes it look as if the buttons activate the ability above it.
Sometimes the Settlement markets are bugged and seem to auto-select when searching through categories, which causes a lot of pressing 'B', though it seems to happen rarely.
Settlement levels should show on map.
Leveling should continue passed 60 and scaling should be an option: it would allow players to use more talents, though experience would need to be adjusted as it takes a lot of it to level up once you are near the end of the game.
No stat page showing how many ships killed, settlements conquered, fish caught, etc, which would help towards achievement hunting - or curiosity.
Treasure Map percentage should be a 100% drop-rate for treasure ships, commander ships, and ghost ships due to how annoying that achievement is.
Player-owned Settlements should scale with player since all ships do.
Now the fun part - the Tips:
On King of Seas difficulty (perma-death), DO NOT CLICK MAIN MENU WHEN YOU DIE. Go to desktop and kill the game - you'll save your save, ironically.
Tavern quests can be 'rerolled' by quitting to main menu and reloading, so find a Settlement with a handful that you can cycle through.
'King of Treasures' achievement: grab quests pertaining to taking down Royal Navy Commanders/Captains, for they can be exploited for treasure maps, though it is chance-based. If they don't drop it, then kill the game and load back in to kill them again - you can 'reroll' the loot drop. Once killed, either turn the quest in or drop it, allowing room for another Commander/Captain quest.
You can throw all your goods inside the Bank (rum, medicine, etc) to create space, though don't bother with collecting ship parts, for you out-level it quickly.
Fish have no weight, therefore fill your pockets, er... bilge.
Use DPAD + Joystick for incrementing on buying or selling bulk - it counts quicker.
Using an ability then unequipping/re-equipping resets timer, which works great with 'Haul down the Jolly Roger!' to get out of combat, or even 'Ethereal Navigation' to sail across the map, though the exploit only works outside of combat.
Buy/sell from Settlement markets, then conquer the Settlement; the market sometimes refreshes, allowing you to buy/sell again.
If you've aggroed a Settlement and can't beat the fortress, reloading will take away the aggro.
Ethereal Navigation makes defeating fortresses easy: shoot the fortress ('Pee on the Cannons') until you are almost dead, then pop Ethereal Navigation to give you immunity while continuing to hit it with full broadsides.

I mean its a fun enough pirate RPG, I think that Pirates: Caribbean Hunt did it much better. Its essentially a cartoony version of that game with a short little story that makes it engaging, the core gameplay loop is fetch quest heaven. I do think the "magic" you can equip your ships with is a point that could be better advertised as it was one of the more fun aspects of this game, all together its worth it if on sale for sub 5$

Played this a lot back on the PlayStation. It is a pretty fun game and I adore it. The story is pretty simple and straight forward, but I thought it was really cool. Taken over bases latter in the game is also pretty fun.

Spent less than 3$, worth more than 3$.