The current state of the story and production is what drags this back a little but other than that this game is the perfect shining example of how to make an open-world multiplayer anarchy game. The combat is skill-based and fairly easy to grasp all while having more than one way of fighting. The ship design and combat is also tremendous having plenty of things to do with plenty of places to go without it going stale or boring. The Tall Tales are by far my favourite part of this game, the story direction is fantastic and the idea of getting unique cosmetic rewards from doing secondary objectives is a very nice touch, the current state of the design team leads to making cosmetics that seem more fit for Battle Royales than a semi-realistic Pirate simulator game, but thankfully the past few months they have released some nice, era accurate clothing which should be a sign of good faith.