Atlantic Fleet

I'm about 70 hours into playing the Germans in the Atlantic Fleet campaign. I REALLY am enjoying myself. Not only will I play the Kriegsmarine again, but I am looking forward to trying the Royal Navy also. Others have commented and I agree that a SAVE GAME feature would be a nice update. I've had 4 combat actions that I was dumped out of and lost all the tonnage of ships that I sank. Perhaps an update might consider a +1, +2, or +3 for game speed. When I have a 1.5-knot advantage chasing down some freighters, it's quite boring to continue cycling through. In the Atlantic Fleet campaign, I am limited to 30 ships. This is very unrealistic. Why should I have to scuttle destroyers just to get more subs? If you have some old Type VII submarines, you can't scrap them without the computer getting credit for "sinking" the subs (and claiming tonnage). There should be a way to retire old ships to make room for newer sub-models and/or larger capital ships. Nonetheless, even with these limitations, this game will remain active for a very long time. What a deal! What an enjoyable surprise. I highly recommend you add this game to your library.

I've been playing Fighting Steel for years along with the FSP add on but it is very dated. I've been looking for something more modern so thought I would give this a try. I started some single battle scenerios and checked it out. The graphics are nice I will give the game that. The turn based format took a little getting used to too. But the mechanics of battle are just horrible. Each ship fires once per turn. Have the designers never heard of rate of fire? Or am I missing something? That is a huge part of surface combat. I assume each ships fire control capability is factored in when the firing solution is calculated? Also, there does not seem to be any way to fire both primary and secondary armaments in the same turn. Still waiting for a tactical game that doesn't play like an arcade game.

Looks good and plays well, but the interface is its own kind of 'special'. Something a bit more conventional would be a lot easier to use. The range of ships / subs / aircraft is good. Gunnery and bombing are good - despite the bombing acting almost as a mini-game - as long as you take the time to learn how to correct your shots. As explained the 'spalsh' is only an estimate, you can do better using the map. The three game-modes (single battle, campaign, and Battle of the Atlantic) play quite differently so it can take a while just to work out what's important in the latter two. Practicing with each ship class pays of in your familiarity with their strengths and weaknesses (Revenge-class battleships are comparatively cheap, for instance, but until you try one in practice you won't find out that it has relatively short-range guns). In campaign, repeating early missions with any new ship you buy is also good for its training, which makes them better at almost everything (see manual). Although this can be a bit grindy, I found it important for class-familiarity as above, and it made the difference between survival and having to constantly buy new ships. In the end, I used cheap destroyers and submarines very early, plus a Revenge once I could, until it was outclassed, ended-up with two Lions, an Illustrious (aircraft are OP if, again, you learn how to use them), and over 2 million 'spare renown'. Battle of the Atlantic is more a game of cat-and-mouse as you hunt the enemy. There is also the constant dynamic between spreading your fleet thin to cover as much area as possible or concentrating them to tackle heavier enemy ships. Overall: 1) play a couple of single-battles to get used to the mechanics, and custom battles to try different ship-classes. 2) play the campaign to practice gunnery, train ships, and develope your preferred fleet, 3) play Battle of the Atlantic and add long-term strategy.

+ Core gameplay ist fun - Can't quit a battle without destroying my own ships??? (Seriously, even back in 2016 people had real lives and not always time to complete a mission...) - Connected to last point: only one saveslot for each campaign and no way to save manually -really?! - Some missions are just annoying, for example: campaign mission with two subs as enemies. Damaged both but they simply left the battle - which doesn't count as success therefore I couldn't proceed with the next mission. Some might consider this "fun", I don't.

So as the title emplys, the game is a good game I enjoyed the dynamic campaign, and although there's a few things that would have made it a better game, the good out weights the bad,if your a WW2 fan or into ships,then you can't go wrong with this game, I'm not going to go into pro's and con's on this game since enough has been said in the reviews,but if you just want to know if you should get it, with the price it's a 100% worth getting. 8/10