The core of the game remains what it's been for some time: pick a power to sail for, and do whatever you want. A true sandbox title, you're free to reave the shores or the sea, pursue hints as to your family's fate, chase down ancient treasures, master your smooth dance steps, collect booty, or honestly just sail around and appreciate the beauty of the setting. You start out with a mediocre vessel that's moderately well crewed, with your choice of skills. I always pick expert fencer, but that's because I'm a lousy fencer to start with. Virtually every system is translated to the PSP's controls with almost no problems. It helps that the controls didn't require that many buttons to begin with, certainly, but it looks like this will be one of the first PSP titles where you won't spend any time lamenting the lack of a second (or good) analog stick. What you've got as far as controls is plenty to do what you'd like very smoothly.
The major changes are to the dancing, sneaking, and treasure hunting systems. The dancing system is now a bit more friendly for people who aren't actually musicians, with a bar running across the bottom of the screen. A key slides across the bar, and you have a limited window of time in which to press the correct key. It's very Dance Dance Revolution in style, which fits the pick-up-and-enjoy style of the game better. Sneaking and treasure hunting are now grid-based systems, where you simply operate one square at a time. It simplifies both mini-games considerably, an improvement over the often-frustrating versions from the PC or Xbox games. The other games - fencing, sailing, and ship-to-ship battles - are largely identical to the PC version, which means they're simple, satisfying, and fun.
The game world itself is roughly three-quarters the size of the PC version, which means it's about half again as big as the Xbox version. Saving is quick, as are loads, and battery life didn't seem to suffer for all that's available. Multiplayer is limited to ad hoc, unfortunately, allowing for the ship-to-ship battles introduced with the Xbox version. Really, the only downgrade you're looking at - the price you pay for being able to take all the pirating you want anywhere you want - is that the visual quality of the overmap is nowhere near that of the game's other versions. It's not an ugly title, and it's still evocative to see your ship pull across a strip of islands to evade pursuit as you catch the wind just right, but it's not as beautiful as the PC version was a few years ago. Even taking that into account, I'm confident this will be a great title for PSP owners when it releases later this month.
