When little kids say “I want to be an astronaut”, “I want to be a firefighter!” and so on, no doubt that at least one of them will say “I wanna be a pirate!”.
Uncharted waters is truly an original game. You start as a small trader/adventurer/privateer, discover distant lands and get rich. The game gives you relative freedom as you can start as an english privateer, a cartographer from Holland, a prince adventurer from Portugal, a noble lady from Spain seeking revenge, a Turkish trader or a member of bankrupt family that is desperately trying to get out of debt. Basically you have three ways to go, as you could have guessed already: pirate, trader or adventurer.
Allthough careers say what you should focus on, they don’t prevent you from doing other things too. It’s just that if you do something else than, for example, explore distant lands as adventurer, you won’t achieve fame. Fame is simply achieved by doing what your career is about.
When you pack your things and get on the boat accompanied by your trusty first mate it’s all up to you. You can either trade in the mediterranean or sail to distant lands like America, Africa, or far east, but it’s not as easy as it sounds. You must buy food for the crew, face storms or pirates. There is a church which you can go to in the game, but it’s doubtful that it is good for anything. However, I suppose donating money and praying will keep storms away from you.
As you might have guessed already, exploration is the main focus of game. Adventurers get paid to explore, but it’s essential for privateers as well. The more distant the lands are, the weaker escorts for ships are. (Imagine chinese fighting off spanish fregate...) The more you explore, the more exotic goods you can sell for hefty profit to europeans, and it also prevents the game from becoming too dry. A good idea made by developers is a chart you can acess any time to get to know where you are.
Your mates will be important. You need a good navigator to be able to sail to port before you will be sinked by a storm, you need good a book keeper so that you know what are the most profitable places for trading and, naturally, a good first mate.
Enough of mechanics, how good is the game? I’d say it’s very good and it doesn’t get repetetive. Probably the only bad thing is the prize adventurers have to pay for their discoveries. It's bad to run out of money at cape of good hope, just to sail all the way back to europe to get money from your supporter so you have enough to buy food... of course they can only sell and buy goods, but that may seem simply too boring for some (like me).