I bought this game last February, my friends who played PotbS got into it hot and heavy, we started a clan, and enjoyed the naval combat for many hours.
I have over 580 hours in this game, all prior to the major Port/land update. Since then I've had zero desire to play.
Here's why:
Firstly, some of the bugs were annoying, it was an Alpha build, so no biggie, I knew the updates were coming to fix those things, so I took time off to wait.
Since then I have seen all the updates and patches and fixes. I can say that I really like this Dev team. They know what they are doing as far as code and art, and all other facets of software development. What I don't like is where they are going with the game. They're adding perks and skills to the game, thus making it go the way of Pirates of the burning Sea. That is an excercise in failure. Skills, changes, and Nerfs destroyed that game, also the fail econ and the Pay to Win implementation. This game is gorgeous! However, they're taking it down an ugly road in it's development.
When we first started the game it was slow combat, as all Tall Ship combat was. Adding skills and Perks is going to take away the nature of the combat and make it a Button Skill game. Not OK.

Other reasons I left this game: Each player is forced into a Faction. - You can not simply roam the high seas as you wish.
No Pirate Heavens.
Port Battles - Turning out to be exactly like PotbS. The game devolves into having to fight for ports. Which REALLY sucks if you're Pirate, because all the nations just gang up on you until they need your help, then they backstab you anyway.
Ship Speeds: These were previously broken. Where an SOL would go over 8kts. Then players can add fittings, rigging etc. to increase this speed even more. This is game breaking, they fixed it at some point, but ships the size of the Constitution were too fast and could chase down smaller, faster ships. (Not sure if they will attempt to reign in the insane speeds of the larger ships at some point, but it's not OK that ships of great size would go over 13kts for the time period, regardless of fittings and such.
Pirates can't enter "Neutral" ports labeled as such, but Nationals can. - HUH? Seems quite dumb to me.
There's no Reputation system. - At the time I played Pirates could only enter Nation's ports if they had a Letter of Marque. Otherwise, you were simply denied the ability by the game mechanics. The problem with that was you had to go INTO the port to get the Letter... Have they fixed this? Or implemented those mechanics all the way?
They allow fittings on ships that improve performance in some way, some of them have drawbacks, which is fine. However, players can not fully customize their ships. Players, (especially painful for Pirates) can not change what their cannon load outs are. EVERY single Cannon in the game has a Class assigned to it, and every ship is allowed a specific range of allowed Gun Classes. There needs to be more customization. At the time I stopped playing it felt like people desperately wanted to fit a Square Peg into a Round Hole. We asked for the ability to more customize our ships. I don't think they're going to bother with that at this point.

Port Water depth: I understand that with Physics being a factor in game design, players need to be able to enter ports. Period.
I don't care what port it is. Obviously HUGE ships like SOLs couldn't enter shallow water ports, but other ships could. In the game, even now, most ships have a problem with collision with the bottom. IT'S ANNOYING AF!! You can get ganked because the bottom stopped you dead in the water inches from the port, or you can't enter the port at all. The problem with this mechanic is that it's like this for EVERY SHIP. Not just ships of great size. Even if you can outrun potential gankers, you should still be able to enter a port.

No In-Game map tools. OK, this was cool at first, but when grouping up with others, it's a PITA. "Hey, where are you?" Is the question of the day if you're not in the same port as others.
The game does NOT mark you on the map, not even a crude approximation based on your navigation. Nope. Nothing.
It's cool, but not practical. At some point they need to implement tools to do this, make it a "Crew Perk" or Officer talent or something. Otherwise, you'll spend 3 hours sailing from Cuba to the South Eastern part of the map. Don't get lost!
People would log out because they would get frustrated at sitting in front of their computer for 3 hours... DOING NOTHING.
(You couldn't set your ship to sail by itself because the server would log you out after 30 minutes bcause you're AFK. - which is dumb, because your ship is moving.) Not sure if they fixed this.

I would recommend this game over every other Naval combat game on the market, because right now, it's the best of what we've got on the market. (Still hoping that if they're going to add real physics to the game, they won't keep adding skills based on buttons to press on your keyboard, true ship customization, and Pirate Havens. Because that's what I'd do.)

THE only realistic, engrossing, enthralling ship combat game straddling the Napoleonic era. Worth the price for the combat alone, but plenty of other player-driven content to occupy your time - crafting, trading, exploring.

Not for the twitchy, impatient gamer. But even if you don't like the crafting side, you can do missions, earn plenty of Gold to buy a ship that suits your new rank...

And it's fun to be along for the ride with a small but attentive development team that cares about making a game that is faithful to the era, to history. Expect changes often to the game in patches, and have fun!

I've played this game a fair bunch, so let me give you some pros and cons :

PROS :
+ Realistic combat, battles can take ages, but are really exciting and fun to do.

+ Beautiful battle graphics.

+ Really fun to play with people you know. But also fun to play alone.

+ If you're not really good in fighting, you can always switch to trading and crafting as a way to make money.

+ You can teleport to the capital every 3 hours, so meeting up with friends is easier.

+ A lot of interaction with other players, there's always one telling you where to look out/hunt for pirates.

+ Battle from a port. You don't have to sail ages to get in a big battle with multiple ships,
you just can hop right in one using the tab in any port.

+ Fairly balanced.

+ You can create multiple characters, but your progerss is bound to your steam id, this makes it easy to change factions if you've got a friend willing to help.

+ Durability system for your ships, you won't lose it after it's sunk the first couple of times.

++ Epic large battles :D

CONS :
- It takes a fair amount of time to get from one place to the other, there's no teleport system. (kinda understandable, as it'd be unrealistic)

- Leveling up takes a long time if you're on your own.

- Open world graphics are a bit worse than the battle graphics.

- Hard to begin with. (Early stages of the game are a bit meh)

- Repetative missions.

- Crew is way to expensive.

- People who play on the pirate faction and board you :( (If you're with friends, always team up when on a trade mission).

- Uninteresting UI.

it is a great and super atmospheric game if you liked elite dangerous or EVE NOT only for the space ships but for the trading and crafing. this game has particular (for the moment) player driver economy system . A epic battle system
Not like in the majority of other games which have a stupid HP system and if the health reaches 0 you are gone. in this game your sides have armor. when recieving DMG the armor will drop and it will be easier to pierce a shot. when the armor is almost gone you can easyly pierce with shrapnell which does a LOT of crew dmg. and it easyer to pierce below the waterline. each penetration you score below the waterline will create a leak when you ship have leaks will will take water but thats no problem. your ship have a PUMP when you are taking water you´ll need to assign a part of your crew to the pumps. and the leaks will be fixed over time. but when your st. pavel ( a very big ship ) will get a whole broadsider of like 40 cannons under his waterline he´s gone in like 10 sek. but it hard to score hits below the waterline (because , if you didn´t know : its usually UNDER water) there is a easier way to sink a ship: you can just shoot down the armor of one of the sides to 0 . when the aror is gone he will take big amouts of water and will sink in a couple of min. loosing you Bow or stern armor is not so dramatic. you will need just like 20 men on the pumps all the time to compensate it.



in the open world there are lots of harbours. they belong to a couple of fractions. you chose one on start.but if you dont like your fraction, dont worry . you just need to attack a ship of the same frac to turn PIRATE which are basicly a own fraction. so players can capture enemy ports for there frac. each port produces it own resourses. you can buy them there for cheep and sell them somewere else (this is the AI economy) if a port produces ex. iron ore you also can build there an outpost and build a iron mine. there you can "buy" it for much cheaper but you also will need labour houres ( you get 42 in one RL h or like 1008 a RL day) .

there is a crafting system . you have a separate crafting lvl. so a LVL one (there is no lvl one but anyway) player can be crafting lvl 50
to craft a ship you need the resourses , the BP a given LVL and LH (labour hours) . there are some ship Blueprints that are given once reaching a specific crafting LVL. and some you can get by crafting other ship (for ex. i craft a frigate(you get the friagte BP once reached LVL25) and with a chance i will get a Belle poule BP, a ingermanland BP a trincomalle BP and so on. the chance is based on some factors.mainly on the quality of he ship you are building (there are : basic,comon,fine,mastercraft and exeptinal) there are some ships you need like a week for(if you are doing it alone)

p.s. im sorry english isn´t my 1st language . if i done some grammar errors or something else pls excuse me .

Not satisfied with the direction this game is headed...
Open World is not a simulation of the age of sail but aracade version of it.
Very disappointed. I don't expect the devs to change their course in development though.
Ha...made a PUN... =(

Amazing game. If you like Ships, Carribean and Adventures this game is for you.

*Note game is stil in development.
You will see basic UI that might discourageyou from playing, but if you are patient you will enjoy this beautiful game anyway. If you need help join Forums of just ask in Game Chat.

Gamelabs releasing updates every month and hotfixes every 2 weeks. Join Forum and provide ideas for the future game improvements.

Okay so I will give this game a positive simply because there are none other like it.
Graphics and combat system are excellent. MASSIVE open world with plenty of sailing to do.

I would however like to see some more content into the game, you have to have a pretty wild imagination to keep you entertained. By content I mean give us something to do, something to fight for and something to come back to again and again.

There is a hell of a lot of potential in this game, it remains to be seen whether the devs will make use of that potential or not.

Holding thumbs

This game is somewhat grindy when it comes to missions. They are relatively repetitive but not boring due to the awesome battle mechanics. This game looks absolutely beautiful and is very realistic when it comes to sailing and damage. This game does not yet have a nice looking UI and it takes quite a bit of time to get used to how it works.

Even though tis game has got quite a bit of flaws, the battle mechanics definately make up for them.

Don't be scared by the scary looking requirements to run the game. If you have a decent PC then you should be fine. The graphics are beyond this world, and like nothing I've ever seen. If anyone plays, or used to play Pirates of the Burning Sea from SOE, I think you'll definitely enjoy Naval Action. INCREDIBLE ship models so real it's like I'm looking at the real thing.

Since Naval Action is still in Alpha, I wouldn't be too critical on things. Many features still have yet to be added, and many bugs will come along the way. That goes for any game in alpha stage. If you're like me, then you're excited to see where this game goes, and the future of Naval Action.

One of the best games in a long time and yet is still in Alpha development.
It was good when I joined around April, but is getting better by the month.
At each stage, the developers are making improvements across the board.

The UI needs some work, but that is pencilled in for the later stages.

The way things are going, I'll be playing this game for a very long time.