Yes, fencing is easy. But the thing is, part of the game is that you want to get as high as score (or rating) as possible, and thus want to extend your life as possible. Getting hit while fencing takes a toll on your health (and eventually you will take at least 1-2 hits per fencing, because the enemy capatain will have guns, and will take an opening shot. Which is displaying as missing in the animation, but I believe qualifies as a "hit"). And thus if you fence a lot, you might have to hang things up at the age of 30 or 35, as opposed to 40-45.
In fact, most of the individual mini-games are pretty easy. But you have to look at the overall management of your career. At first you will want to duel a lot, in order to get intact ships and cash and induce men to come over to your side. But as you get famous, you'll probably want to start attacking ships because you don't want to duel (to save your health), and ship repair becomes cheaper (and you can recruit men in ports easily). And eventually in the later game, you'll probably just want to skip attacking ship altogether, in favor of sacking cities.
And also, once you start pissing off certain countries, they will starting sending waves of pirate hunters after you. Every time you go by one of their ports, you'll have to fend off 3-4 pirate hunters. That's one of the areas where difficulty increases. Not that anyone one is hard, but it wears you down.
