The team at Akella has been busy expanding their franchise in these past few years. They've completely rewritten the game engine. Sea Dogs 2 Pirates of the Caribbean is now powered by their STORM 2 technology. The in-game interface has been completely redesigned (not for the better mind you, because it can be overwhelming and overly-complicated without the auto-help feature), and most importantly, the gameplay has been expanded with new features and more areas to explore. I wasn't sure at first if Akella had done enough in the sequel to truly lift it beyond the original, but after spending sleepless nights glued to my monitor screen, I was finally convinced that they had. Sea Dogs 2 Pirates of the Caribbean presents enough improvements over the original to warrant a successful sequel. That is not to say, however, that all of the downsides of the original have been corrected, nor that the developers couldn't have done more for the franchise. But more on that later...