Does anyone find the boat battles very underwhelming? What about the island maps?
I've found both to be really bad. The boat battles rely solely on wether you spent a bunch of gold in town and really have nothing to do with character advancement. Having to divert funds away from hero development and into a ship you only ever use once in a while in an encounter is really backwards. The lieutenant battles devolve into the OV waiting our of cannon firing arc, till your ship drifts close enough and then rushing onto the boat. Why did I have cannons again? Beyond that, you only ever get to fire usually half of your cannons if you are lucky, as you can't turn the ship. Fighting an avatar in a boat battle makes me shudder.
As for island maps....talk about an OV friendly map. He gets to draw cards and get threat while he plays keep away on a massive map that take the heroes 3 turns -at least- to get to anything he can kill. It also turns into how far can you get while ending in a tree square. Talk about completely destroying everything descent was about since it was released. In this expansion you go from stupid small maps (Boats, if you get off them you are dead, the sharks will complete destroy you), stupid large maps (Island maps), and back to regular descent maps.