First time I played this, I realized very quickly that I was essentially an outside observer. However, I initially thought I was ONLY an outside observer and could do very little to impact the course of the game. (Basically the only thing you can do is say words, though your vocabulary is a bit bigger than I initially thought.) It wasn't until I played it a few more times that I realized I had more control than I initially thought, and that's when it started to get interesting. In the end, I discovered half a dozen different endings from my own playing around (and I had some help finding the last one (Spoiler - click to show)where you're sold to pirates and don't even get to see how the story ends.)
At the very least, it's worth playing for the "novelty" factor, but I recommend playing it multiple times, trying different words to see what the outcomes might be (or even to find different paths to the same outcome.)