Ok so synopsis after 10 hours:
MMO-Life pirate game where the pirate ship is your body.
Mission Structure that I have seen thus far is run of the mill: Fetch quests, Kill quests, a combination of the two - Bounties, Deliveries, Treasure map hunting (Very generic), and crafting/cooking.
Treasure hunting via a map isn't all it's cracked up to be - you go to one of the few islands you can get off the ship on, can cook there for food you use to get your stamina up when sailing faster, talk to NPC's and maybe get side quest contracts to get cash and increase your level, and then find a spot which glows when you get next to it and hit a button to loot the treasure.
Resource gathering and ship customizations is a little bit better. You have trade routes on the map (Which you need to explore to uncover) which will point you to resources you want to refine later at a refinery, or gather to use - and then build out better weapons (Cannons, Bombs, Torpedos (lol what), muskets, etc. Also you have ship furniture which gives special bonuses which you can create to install on your ship. Everything craftable requires blueprints which can be bought or looted via contracts. So there is some customization here.
Ships are Tank, DPS, Support. So some minor grouping strats but I haven't needed to do any of that yet. (Bounty's call for groups for the most part). When in trouble, you can call for help - you also use your scout scope to look at a ship and see what it is carrying. Once you get a ship down to a certain health level, you hit Y to "board" the ship but it is a cut scene and when you do that you get a few bonus items.
There are sea monster events, Cargo caravan events, and "Mysterious something" events that pop up from time to time. Resources are staged out across the map in various forms and you can find them by resource gathering (You get a saw, knife, cutter thing) whatever - Sial up to the resource node, a mjni game pops up while you are on the ship - there are like 4-5 of those and you also have to level up the tools to be able to gather higher valuable higher level items. You can also sink the ships along the trade route for those resources, or also raid a fort. Raiding a fort amounts to "Pillage" and then you blow up the guns and base area of the fort while ships come in to defense which you also have to sink (Getting resources the entire time) until the timer reaches level 5 when the pillaging is successful, you get a cut scene drinking booze with your pirate buddies, and get the loot from the fort/base/outpost.
Travel is kinda wonk. You need to continually eat your cooked rations to keep replenishing your stamina bar to maintain maximum speed. Wind is ridiculous and slows you down and gets annoying as fuck when travsering long distances. Good news is you can fast travel to places across the map for a cost of silver. However, to fast travel you have to be docked at another port/outpost. About 20% of the ports/areas are dockable from what I have seen so far, the rest you can interact with like a vendor, or pound the ever living shit out of them with your weapons.
Overall - there is a carrot. Story sucks I skip passed all of it - lots of cosmetics and options for your ship and player.
I would say if you are bored subscribe for a month - cross play/save works on Series X/PC with the UbiCOnnect app.
I doubt the longevity of the game, but it's something to do and a carrot to chase for a bit.
I wouldn't pay any money for this though yet until I see what/if there is any end game to speak of.
Cash shop is cosmetics only.
Graphics and sound are good. Music is fine.
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meh. I’ll probably try one or two more times but going to try something else for a few days.