Angst? What Angst?: Your family members push aside their experience being captured and enslaved to tell you about the lost Inca treasure.
Anti-Climax Boss: Despite being explicitly labeled as the most Notorious Pirates in the Caribbean, the nine historical pirates are laughably easy to beat, even if you face them outnumbered, with no upgrades, and of an advanced age. Considering how this includes the likes of Blackbeard and Henry Morgan, this is saying something.
Complacent Gaming Syndrome: Most players of the older games swear exclusively to the rapier. It might be the weakest of the three swords, but its speed and range make it the best weapon to stunlock the opponent to death, which will more than make up for the difference in power. Furthermore, with the effects of age slowing you down, the rapier eventually becomes the only weapon that's even viable to use as you grow older.
The Cavalry in the old games' land battles. Whereas they can be manageable in the 2004 version, as long as you have plenty of forests to cover you, they have no real weaknesses in the earlier titles, and can easily rip your units to shreds once they get in range.
Any duelist who wields a rapier in the older games. While they're perfectly manageable when you're young and on the easier difficulty settings, they simply move too fast for you to keep up as you grow older on the higher levels. It gets so bad that you'll soon find the difference between victory and defeat in your every endeavor is ultimately determined by what weapon your opponent brings to the duel.
The game practically encourages you to attack the Spanish. As noted on the main page, on the default settings the Spanish have the most plunder and the least ability to defend themselves from attack by pirates. Furthermore, all three plotline villains (Montalban, Raymundo, Mendoza) sail under Spanish flags, meaning that anyone going for 100% Completion is going to have to attack Spanish military ships multiple times.
The various Spaniards who know the whereabouts of your missing family in the older games. They're always described as "evil," even by Spanish governors, but whatever villainy they committed to earn that moniker is neither shown nor described.
Event-Obscuring Camera: Your opponent's moves in swordfighting are occasionally obscured by action happening in the foreground, particularly other dueling crewmembers, or a crewmember falling from above. Since swordfighting in the game depends entirely upon watching your opponent's move and reacting accordingly, this can be enough to rapidly turn a fight sour.
Goddamned Bats: Pirate Hunters. Any Spanish ship you take out will likely trigger one or more of these ships, usually consisting of a fast Sloop. Ignore it and it will hound your fleet, pummeling it with endless cannon fire and damaging every ship you have. Engage it, and you'll likely take at least a few hits with chainshot or grapeshot before you bring the bastard down. Its never enough to actually stop you, but the damage to crew numbers and your sails is usually enough to be severely annoying. And if you do opt to fight it, which is never a profitable venture as they are heavily armed and have few valuables in their holds, chances are the closest enemy town to you will immediately sic another hunter on your tail, and he might have an even bigger ship!
Hollywood Homely: There's not a lot of difference in looks between plain or beautiful daughters, save maybe the size of their breasts.
Obvious Beta: The 2004 version shipped with several intended features not available.
As originally intended, you would have needed to build up your relationship with the Indians and the Jesuits before they would help you, but instead, they just trust you completely all the time. There are items that are described as improving your relations with Indians or Jesuits, but what they actually do is reduce the time you have to wait after the Indians or Jesuits have given you a mission before they can give you a new one. This means the in-game descriptions of said items are quite misleading, and have led many players to believe that they do nothing at all.
Artillery is nowhere to be found in the game, despite being shown in the game's built-in wiki. Mind you, if it wasn't omitted, it would have made the land battles much more difficult, as they supposedly had a staggering eight square rangenote for context, twice as far as the player's own Buccaneers and incredible damage power. A later patch removed the wiki entry.
The manual mentions that the Indians will sometimes help you in land battles, but this never happens in-game. They only show up on the side of your AI-controlled colonial enemies or as Montalban's henchmen.
Scrappy Mechanic: The 2004 Dance mini game was the target of much criticism. While it made sense to insert a minigame to give substance to governor meetings, many old school fans felt it was a Dance Dance Revolution mini game shoehorned in.
Sequel Difficulty Drop: The 2004 game is much more forgiving than the earlier ones. The sheer variety of upgrades you can acquire for your ships, your pirate, and your men can mitigate the effects of aging and declining crew morale, the new sword-fighting minigame gives you a ton of tactical maneuvers that can make up for your atrophying abilities, crew desertions aren't nearly as bad, you have more opportunities to track down lost relatives than by getting your leads from promotions, the turn-based land battles make city raids safer and more profitable, and you have a greater (and more visible) hand in building up the wealth of the nations you support.
Surprise Difficulty: Playing at any of the four (originally three) lowest difficulty levels isn't terribly difficult. Sure, Rogue (the second highest in the 2004 version) is hard, but it's not impossible. But when you're no longer satisfied with a scant 30% of the plunder, you decide to bump it up to Swashbuckler for that 50% share and discover you have entered Hell itself. Storms will rip your ships apart when before they did little damage. The captains of Mail Runner ships (the smallest, least defended ship) will fight as if they were captaining a fleet of Brigs. Land combat, previously difficult, will become nigh impossible. The wind will change constantly, and always against you in naval battles. Swordfights will become a test of luck rather than skill, as apparently everyone you cross swords with trained specifically to defeat you, and Montalban becomes nigh-invincible, if notcompletely undefeatable. Suffice to say, Swashbuckler difficulty is excruciatingly hard, never lets up, and makes sure you earn whatever ending you get.
That One Level: Not a level per se, but the westernmost section of the map, in the region of Mexico, is the least popular area to be in. Getting out of it is always a long and trying process due to how the winds blow. Worse, there are only a handful of cities, and all of them are Spanish. Heaven help you if you end up here with a Spanish bounty on your head. That said, Vera Cruz and Campeche do have quite a bit of loot for the taking, which can make venturing into this region potentially very profitable, if risky.
That One Sidequest: Finding Montalban's hideout. It's always located in Mexico or Central America, areas that are a pain in rear getting to and from, and it's in a randomized location every time. That's bad enough, but many times the map to the hideout will come with few if any landmarks and generic directions that are unhelpful. Combine this and you can find yourself wandering Mexico for years trying to find the hideout.
