Tradewinds 2 Follow-up

After completing and posting my review of Astraware's Tradewinds 2, I found myself unable to stop playing the game. Finally, yesterday, I reached a breaking point that let me take some time off from trading in the Carribean and catch up on RSS feeds and other hobbies: I completed the story mode.
Each of the four main characters has their own story that gets developed during the completion of governors' tasks. After at least ten hours of gameplay (around 4 years of in-game time) I completed a long and complex task that culminated in the defeat of the Pirate Laroche, and the end of story mode. The game announced my triumph, and switched over to free trade mode (no more tasks).
My prize for completing the story of one of the four main characters was unlocking Laroche as a playable character, and the ability to create a custom character. I was especially interested to create my own custom pirate.
The custom character is somewhat more limiting than I had hoped. Instead of full control over the engine that creates the little character portraits, you set three criteria (gender, class, and ethnicity), and the game creates a portrait. You can press a button to make a new portrait as many times as you like, until you land on one you like. And there are easily thousands of possible combinations of faces, hairstyles, jewelry, etc. that go into creating the portraits. Your character's name is similarly generated by a randomizing button.
For now, I'm going to try and stay away from Tradewinds 2 for a little while. I hope the withdrawal isn't too uncomfortable...