First: I decided to review Shackled Seas since I saw many requests for a review... and some were even made one year ago! Yay! It's strange that no one reviewed this nice adventure before.

Second: let's start the review!

Shackled Seas is a game that tells the adventure of a treasure hunter. Unlike most Rmk games you can choose name and sex. Since I did not mind the default name I kept it, so this was the adventure of Kit. After a short but nice tutorial, our little treasure hunter will be kidnapped by pirates. They aren't nice fellows, but they need his talents. And that's how the adventure begins, a story of pirates and treasure, magic and sea monsters, undeads and... ok that's enough!


Big words from a little pirate! Bring it on!

Good
As usual I will not spoil the story, but I assure you that is not too long, simple and quite good.
The best thing is that you will soon form a party with other interesting characters (the gambler is the best) that have widely different skills. But let's start with Kit: our alter ego has two abilities, one that let him detect the number of nearby treasures and another that shows the secret passages. This is useful since collecting treasures will improve your abilities. Many treasure chests are optional, so exploration is clearly encouraged and rewarded!

Combat: this game has random encounters for the most part, but you can often escape, and the probability is indicated clearly. If instead you want to fight, your characters have a lot of resources: besides the special abilities (that cost Mp) they also earn Tp when they are hit, and these Tp can be spent to perform multiple special attacks or use exceptional abilities. Our alter ego is a special case: most special attacks and abilities are earned collecting some artifacts, and the most powerful ones require spending Tp.

Graphically the game uses (I think) the First Seed charsets: pirates, adventurers and peasants, they all fit the setting well, like the monsters sprites (I do not know the source, but I am pretty sure I have already seen them somewhere): undead pirates, sirens and sea monsters are just some of the enemies that will be fought in this game. I liked these stylistic choices and I also liked a lot the "blurred" facesets, they are original and cute.
Mapping is ok for the most part, simple and serviceable, pity for some errors, but I will mention them later.


I have a bad feeling...

Flaws
This game has some little problems: I found small errors with some maps (you can walk over some tables band over the lighthouse!), and a merchant who does not sell anything or even talk. Not much, ok but the fact that these errors are small is a pity.
I also liked to see and play something more: more naval battles (I think there are just five), more shops (there is just one merchant that sells supplies for the boat), more detailed cities, more dungeons, etc. I also found weird that you get to name the shop... considering that you will lose it even too soon!
I also did not like much that the equipment icons are blurred, as they clash with the rest of the nice graphics.

Verdict
Shackled Seas is a nice compact adventure, a real little treasure. It's short and entertaining, and you can also choose the difficulty. I played on Normal and I found difficulty rather medium-low, but you can always choose a higher or lower difficulty setting. And this is another rare feature to be added to the nice exploration and combat mechanics.
Ok, it's 3,5/5 for me.