Okay, lots of people like this, but I had to force myself to play it. The storytelling is strained, and the replay value is surprisingly low. Game balance is tortured many times, and if you accidentally go into the wrong area, the jump in creature level is so dramatic as to be nearly unplayable. Many times, the puzzles are awkward and feel there just to torture players rather than making sense in the story. Speaking of the story, it is very easy to get lost and not know where to go to further the plot, because you aren't powerful enough for what looks like the next step, but you can't find anything else to grind up. Make a mistake in your levelling (easy to do) and you might as well start over, and this for even those comfortable with RPGs. In fact, the best thing you can do is near the end of each act, go back and kill every character you can find just for the experience, otherwise, you are likely to be underleveled for the gateway battle. The game needs smoother game balance, less frustrating (on normal difficulty) combat. Not encouraging players to slaughter everything in sight, leaving a scorched earth behind them would be nice as well. The pre-built characters (why can you only take so few with you again?) storylines are supposed to be the propelling force, but they failed to interest me, often feeling like nothing more than wallpaper.
The story is reasonable. There are plot holes (why isn't everything upside down if the tower is upside down?). Replayability feels moderate only. Interesting (not pro nor con to me): * Gold as a level up factor instead of experience * Alignment system where your choices make characters more or less effective * The crafting system, which encourages different types of gear Pros: * Tactical mode combat which makes the game not a reaction speed button masher, but one where you can plan your move. Cons: * There are some AI pathing bugs where the hero refuses to go where I want in exploration. * Similarly, in combat, I've seen cases where characters get stuck rapidly shifting around, trying to decide who to attack, while their foes casually walk up to destroy them. * No dialog history. Multiple times, I clicked next only to realize I missed something * I at times want a speed between "normal" and the tactical speed. * No matter how much gold you think you have, you need more, since your party is four players in combat, sometimes, you want to switch up to deal with a particular foe, only to realize you haven't the gold to keep them levelled up enough. I ended up picking two characters as my "never level up" characters just to save gold for the ones who needed it. * Speaking of gold, the challenges are the only sane way to get enough gold so that you aren't facing foes far more powerful than you (this on normal) * Speaking of gear, why can't we change weapons during combat to accommodate different foes?
The game provides for playing in three eras, 1968, 1984 and 2000. The subs used are very different, as are the weapons, and therefore, the tactics differ reasonably. The game focuses on a slightly more arcade effect than some other games. In that sense, like others have noted, it feels like a prettier Red Storm Rising game. Unfortunately, some of the missing items add to artificial difficulty. When operating in shallow water, it is difficult to see ahead and figure out that you need to decrease your depth or you'll run aground. More than once, I was picking off enemy vessels, evading their return fire, only to run aground. Saving, works, but not how I would expect. When you save, there is no feedback to indicate the save succeeds. Missing: * A scenario creator to allow you to create a practice scenario of your choice. Maybe you want to try your hand at engaging a much larger enemy fleet. * Friendly units. All units are either neutrals like merchants, or hostile. Where's the "defend the convoy" or "defend the battle group" missions? * Towed sonar array control. It feeels like towed sonar is just missing except in descriptions and damage control * Active Sonar usefulness/range understanding. Knowing how far out your active sonar is reaching would be useful. Overall, a reasonably enjoyable game.
Many others have talked about how to get this game to work in Win10. The scenarios seem a little repetitive at first, but the same scenario played out with three frigates per side is very different from two heavy cruisers per side. Some nuisances: * Battles in the campaign are always balanced, so upgrading your ship can actually make the scenario much harder, or even nearly impossible because of a quirk of your new vessel * The idea of the federation always using missles feels wrong to me. * Some factions have no light cruiser class vessel, which, when planning a scenario, can create some wild imbalances I had some of the most fun planning scenarios with a mixture of light cruisers and frigates, supported by one heavy cruiser. Watching frigates that you think are too weak to cause serious damage get behind a heavy cruiser with weak rear-firing arcs and stay there because they can manuver so well can really ruin a day. Some of the races are a little more bug prone than others. I felt the Hydrans were a bit overbalanced, especially compared to the Lyrans. Klingons, because of their missles, are a even more overpowered, especially in the late era. But overall, an enjoyable game -- if you can get it to work.
Let's face it. We have more ways to control the computer than the mouse. After a couple hours of scroll by leaning the mouse on the edge of the screen only to whip back to tell my party to move a bit forward, because you can't tell them to try to move to terrain you haven't explored yet and follow along to override the orders, I gave up. It's like the game designers were so enamored with mouse controls that they forgot the keyboard exists, except for a few keys that I don't really care about. The fact that you can't hunt through inventory safely paused was another serious nuisance, one of those artificial difficulty features. Numerous other extreme difficulty features and the complete lack of forgivingness of the game also makes it no fun to play. Games before and since had far more usable controls.
