Well yes I had some few players who could not come because of several personel problems, but if you can play it with 3 players even though you have one player who is not really active in the game, well that just tells how great the system is.
I will give it 3 out of 5 stars.
The only reason it dont get more then 3 stars is, that it could be nice with a little better combat system, since it does not explain how much damage your ships canons or your own weapons do, or any kinds of weaponlist, Plus a list over diffrent things that you can buy, sell or plunder which is a very important thing for a pirate who wants to become rich in one way or another.