The death minigame is the stupidest thing ever invented. Especially since you HAVE to suceed (since failure just makes you try the minigame over without penalty) all it does is serve to frustrate the player.
The game seems exceptionally difficult because 2 of 3 trips I take, I get a sailing boat or a tank of bucaneers who take half my cargo. I can never get enough money to upgrade because every other trip I lose half my gold.
My one complaint about this really (and I know it sounds silly) is that there's no equivalent to the 'glowing blue frames' from the original. Yes, it sounds like such a minor thing, but without it, there's no real indicator of what levels I can go back to and improve my score. And that's a desperately needed thing when the number of levels has effectively been increased 10-fold.
 "The Legend of the Golden Robot"){kind=icon}
 "Frontier"){kind=icon}
 "MoneySeize"){kind=icon}
 "GemCraft chapter 0"){kind=icon}