I'd normally jump on such a game, but the "procedural world" part has me extraordinarily hesitant about it. I'll check some reviews later.

I really dislike games where the difficulty level rises the better you play. If I find the game too easy, I will choose to play at the next level of difficulty myself, when it suits me.

Thank you, good news!

Well, it reminds me much about a game that once was on GOG and was removed from catalog because (iirc) the devs didnt want to maintain a drm free build on par with the main steam edition (maintaining such build was crucial to allow crossplatform multiplayer servers gaming...):
Windward

So, you get something that is mostly like Windward but with differences:
No multiplayer
Higher price tag
Clunky UI (the size and clunkyness makes me think that the game has consoles releases - switch especially - in mind)
Kinda different artistic direction (matter of taste, to each his own, so, that one depends on player's discretion)
A single player scenario/story to wrap around it
Some different gameplay elements (wind's direction, mapmaking is different, some elements borrowed to Sea of Thieves like Ghost Ships...)
Only played a few hours so i yet couldn't see if there is faction's ownership of ports/islands to be done, and building coastal defenses (you could do that in Windward)
Yet i couldnt see how to get rid of the countless ship equipment items i could gather, but i could put them in bank at least
Controller support
... and probably a few things i forgot to list down...

But globally you got the idea: It's a "different" iteration of Windward, with some main features removed but with a focus on single player's story

AFAIC: i preferred Windward, either alone or with friends, either cooperative (all for same faction, and conquering the rest of the generated world) or pvp (each player on a different faction); Windward was cheaper, smaller in install size, rather cute even if a bit simple visually... Sadly, Windward is not here anymore and we get this instead as a replacement.
I genuinely don't think that's a good trade-off on the long term...

IMHO King of Seas reminds more Sid Meiers Pirates! than Windward, for the better. For some reason I couldn't get myself to play Windward more than 30mins at once, and I love pirate games.

Of course here we don't have famous minigames from the Firaxis game, but I'm grateful for that.

About your arguments: frankly I don't get them. It's the developers' vision we have, why would you criticize them for that. Single player focus? Different artistic direction? Why are these things negatives? I understand that it might be not your cup of tea, but this is not a Windward 2 you know.

Personally I'm having a blast with this game, even though I have yet to plug in my controller.

And extra equipment can be sold in the shop while you're in the port.

I might have to take a more thorough look at this for the weekend...

I initially put it into the "maybe with a significant discount" pile at first but it sounds more up my alley than I initially thought...

would you really had read my message, you would have noticed that i just listed some of the differences i spotr(ed, without either painting them as negative or positive, not indicating the usual "pros" and "cons" label in the list, and putting them in no particular order. so, obviously some differences can be seen unbiasedly as negative (high price tag) but how could you think that "controller support", or "single player story mode" or additional/different gameplay elements (like addition of wind direction or such) were supposed to be put down as "negatives" in my message ?
and for the artistic direction i think i couldnt say it in a clearer way than i did: i said (as with anything about art) that is was a matter of taste and that would depend on the player's discretion", and by the way i didnt say if i liked it myself or not...
for the UI i took a stance though, because i tried it both with mouse+kb OR a controller and it had issues (different ones) with each control method... that's what makes me call it clunky...

but is it a trend nowadays to not read people's message BUT reply to them, basing reply on a couple of keywords put out of their contest with blatant hyppocrisy and bias and then put intentions, words and opinions on things that were said in neutral tone ?

gee