Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts

This is a great concept. The game gives offers campaign play as well as custom u-pick sea battles, and I love the shipbuilding intricacies. I wish there were ready-made templates for historical warships. I don't want to have to create BB Yamato from scratch to have a really historical battle. And, besides the occasional PC freezes I've experienced while shipbuilding and in beginning battles, I'm really not fond of getting the stuffing beat out of me in campaigns. True, I've played as only the three weakest nations (A-H, China, Spain) so far, and I'm probably a dullard, but I'm lucky to last 10 years before other nations gang up and obliterate my navy. And this is on Beginner mode! I also don't like being unable to make strategic attacks on ports, regions, countries. You just have to wait for the AI to decide that your nation's army is going to attack such-and-such -- which at least for the minor nations i've played -- is never. How do you win? Or even make a plan?
Oh the game is still fun for someone who's into warships and naval battles as I am, but what's the point of fighting a losing battle -- OR playing if you know you will win because you're playing one of the powerhouse navies??? Ideally I'd like the ability to recreate a grand WWII campaign, but that won't ever happen because the game isn't being supported anymore I hear, and we're seeing it's final update. Sad.

this is a promising game with a nice premise, but was let down by a bad developer

this game is very buggy and left in an almost incomplete state, so if youre thinking about getting this game get one of the mods that fix it and make it functional

The game is pretty good and can give you some pretty cool screenshots, but after just a little bit of playing you start to realize that every boat you make looks the exact same. Making anything smaller than a Heavy Cruiser is basically impossible due to the fact all the hulls for the smaller ships take up 90% of your displacement budget without any addons. Campaign doesn't make much sense either, an entire war isn't fought on the sea unlike how this game makes it seem.

Its pretty bad for the price since its no longer getting support and does not feels finished

I kept waiting for this game to be finished so I could actually leave it a solid review but I guess it's "Finished" now.

Never finished the game & posted a list update. I find that disappointing.

Avoid it at all costs buying the game for anything but FREE.
The Developer and Publisher as of today 31/12/2024 has abandoned the game after releasing a "Major Update" leaving countless Game breaking bugs and issues unfixed. The Game is closer to a Beta then a finished product.

Welp...... It sucks that this game is dead now, because i had just got the itch to play it again, and now i can't because it crashes every 5 minutes.

And since the game is now abandoned ware, that isn't gonna get fixed anytime soon, or at all.

SO word of advice, Don't by this guys.

Game devs were all fired.
The game is not done. It still has place holder UI and missing features. It has become abandonware.
The designer was really great and I did enjoy what I played to a point. But I cannot recommend it. It is unfinished and will remain that way.

Game is fun, but many aspects are still fundamentally broken. Looks like they are not even going to attempt to fix many of these issues. Don't invest in a broken abandoned game.

This game is annoyingly close to being good, but seems that the devs will never have the change to make that promise true.

Might be worth it at cheap price, even if just fiddling around with the missions. Campaign is too broken to be worth it at all.

I'm not entirely sure why this game gets such a low review rating. From my experience, the game has been more or less stable with minimal bugs, and a quite fun campaign experience.

If you're anything like me, you likely started off, and maybe still are playing the game purely for the custom battles. However I encourage you to try the campaign, as that's where I've found the most of my enjoyment of the game. The campaign really allows you to manage ships, and makes you think more strategically on what you need rather then just taking big ships into custom battles to watch the fights. In the Campaign, it matters what you do, and what ships you make. It's important for you to be involved in the fight, and to actively, or semi actively be commanding ships on where to go.

Since 1.7 seems to be one of if not THE last update, you could likely rest easy knowing you can go ham in the shared designs ship builder, so that you can set your campaign up to use said designs in a career mode. This is one area where I haven't delved into because I didn't want to go through the effort just for an update to take them out. Now I probably will start making a bunch of designs for each time period, so my campaigns can be filled with ships that can, and probably would provide a serious challenge in terms of what the enemy brings to the table. Gone are the days of going into a battle with an AI battlecruiser that goes 42 knots with 18 inch guns (Yes this has happened to me, and it was painful, not hard to sink, but hard to hit, once I got a few good hits in, it sank, but hitting it in the first place was so difficult), now I probably will see my designs that could be formidable against my own fleet.

I think a lot of people could get enjoyment out of this game, and personally I think it's worth the price tag. It may seem like a lot, but you have to realize that there are almost unlimited things you can do with the designs in this game. No 2 ships are the same, and even if they look visually the same, you can have different internals and systems that make it unique.

In general if you enjoy a sandbox warship builder, with campaign elements, I think this game would be great for you. I've made so many designs in this game, both with ups, and downs. If you had to ask me what I don't like about the game, it probably would come down to performance. But even then, the performance only gets lackluster once you get engagement sizes of over 15 or more ships. I've had massive fleets going toe to toe, and I still crack about 30 FPS or so.

the game is heavily buggy, missing several important mechanics that were promised early in development (but then quietly removed), the devs released a basic "DLC" which adds basic PVP, no PVE or campaign for £12. And then proceeded to release an update thats most impressive feature is adding hulls no one wanted, changing the models for guns (V1.7), and then said that update would be the last major update and they are happy with the state of the game.

Avoid at any costs, it is scammy and likely to turn into abandon-ware

Pros:
Unique Concept: The game offers a one-of-a-kind naval builder experience that fulfills a creative vision many players find appealing.

Enticing Gameplay Vision: The core idea behind the game is original and intriguing, drawing players who enjoy strategy and naval simulation.

Creative Potential: The game allows for imaginative shipbuilding, giving players a sense of freedom and creativity.

Cons:
Abandonment by Developers: The game has been discontinued, with no future updates planned due to the studio shutting down and the intellectual properties being left unsupported.

Buggy and Incomplete: Persistent minor bugs and an unfinished campaign hinder the overall experience.

Diminishing Quality: Updates over time have degraded gameplay quality, negatively affecting battles and performance.

Cheating AI: The in-game AI frequently demonstrates unrealistic advantages, such as higher accuracy and critical damage rates, undermining player efforts.

Performance Issues: Poor optimization and a clunky user interface detract from the experience.

Modding Restrictions: Recent updates hindered the modding community, and the game lacks Steam Workshop support, limiting customization potential.

Additional Note:
Despite only playing for 166 hours, these issues were significant enough to impact the overall enjoyment and usability of the game.

Abandonware. An absolutely amazing concept of a game, but the studio gave one guy the reigns to this game, and he ran with it, only to add content and never improve playability or performance. Now that he's gone, the studio doesn't want to touch it with a 10-foot pole. The last update is coming, and the current state that the game is in is an utter disappointment.

This game is fun when it is working as intended.
Eventually on all of my playthroughs, I gave up on the campaign due to bugs making simply existing as a country being endless wars between rotating countries while minor nations take land mass with their endless ground armies (which you have little/no influence on).
Do you want to try and do something fun like: Maximize small gun research so you can drown enemies in small calibers? No. Your research on everything else is lowered as you prioritize the small caliber, and the focus is not enough of an advancement to provide real benefit.

When the campaign AI decides a country you do not operate near wants to go to war with you, you are either going to war or paying a large sum to keep from doing so. You may delay the war by some of your actions but you will go to war, even if you are already at war with multiple countries.
AI countries will receive a massive cash influx after wars between each other seemingly so they do not fall to the wolves so to speak. After the players' war ends however, you will need to gut your expenses in order to make sure you do not go bankrupt, even if you won. The country you just won a war with that paid you 500 million as a peace treaty (which is more than their navy budget had) received 5 billion instant funding to get themselves back to having a navy.
Do you have ships near the border of a country and the country gets conquered? Your ships are now in random ports around the world, sometimes taking 7 months to return to their previous theater. The game assigned two ships of the same design/type the same name? When refitting, the first name will be refit multiple times (maybe because the game thinks they are the same ship?) and will teleport that first ship to a random port to be refit. You will need to refit both ships even if one is already of the newest design.

Had great potential, was killed by corporate greed of Stillfront. Dev team got gutted and apparently v1.7 update is/was the final one. Kinda guessed it from the blatant cash grab of a dlc that is the PVP battles for 15€
For the devs fired, I hope you have better luck in the future.

The game has been abandoned, after the lead developer has repeatedly refused to handle feedback. While I've enjoyed the game, it is incomplete, and may never be completed. Maybe modders can figure out the new code, and fix the game better than its devs, but as of now it is abandoned. Decent fun, if you can get it on sale, but expecting it to ever improve is a waste of time

Alot of little things add up to ruin it's potential. Mods help but I don't think its worth the price. Classic game-labs cool idea I want to love but execution that makes no sense.

my likes are that it allows me to build my favorite historical or non historic designs and my dislikes are the lack of stability for any battle over a certain amount of ships.

Loved
- The ship designer
- The amount of nations and also minor nations
- Tactical battles
- The concept of this game
Disliked
- Refit system
- multiple "non-updates"
- Devs attitude to mechanic suggestions and player feedback
- AI is really bad
- Some gun layouts impossible due to tech changes and inability to change look of gun
- Long load times
- The fact it left EA in this state.

Ever since buying this game i fell in love with what could have been and what was there in this game, but over time while the Devs updated the game regularly the updates were small ish and kept fixing problems that they already said they fixed. There are really good ideas that this game could do and when the players point out certain issues with the game the Devs basically tell them that its impossible and to stop asking. The game left EA way too early and this is not a finished game, I would not recommend this game even though it felt like it was made for me. A lot of the systems they have in the game feels unfinished and/or half baked. In my opinion I cant recommend this game because unless the Devs prove me wrong, this game will never be finished.

I would have to rate this game overall 5/10 despite having a lot going for it this game is way too easy for the the player as well as some very questionable and arbitrary mechanics. despite having very nice graphics it falls short in comparison to Rule the Waves, I've played Rule the Waves 2 (not on steam) and despite having more simplified campaign mechanics such as theater boxes and even with the AI not being able to to diplomacy Rule the Waves 2 a game that LOOKS LIKE AN EXCEL FILE was more challenging.

To note I play on normal difficulty as difficulty in this game isn't simulated by making the bad AI better with basic changes to things like building and budget prioritization, but by straight out giving it buffs, which I hate.

Here are the main issues:
1. Economic growth is mainly based on how much you spend on transport capacity, therefore it is very easy to start for example in 1900 and snowball into number 1 economic power in a matter of only ONE or TWO DECADES without doing a lot of conquest simply because the AI never prioritizing spending on transport capacity even though it is the most important meta for the game.

2. Unlike Rule the Waves a lot of conquest is tied to your land army which is completely independent from your control and while the AIs land army is very active my land army will literally sit around doing nothing, refusing to conqueror unoccupied territory

3. Budget has very arbitrary caps, unlike Rule the Waves where you invest x percentage of funds from your main budget into research and you having optional training that increases expenses and provides buffs the game does not seem to work in a percentage of naval budget allowed system. So for example in late game in the 30s when you have a large empire since this games economy is completely dependent on transport capacity and how much you fund it you will find your transport capacity growth stalling to zero since the hard cap limit is far too low for late game

4. Crew recruitment system makes no sense, historically for any industrial nation there is no reason why for example nations with over 60 million population can only recruit 200 sailors a month, Manpower for a navy that uses maybe 100000 to 200000 people was never a real problem compared to the Armies which needed millions of men and in comparison to Land warfare where every body on the front could arguably make a difference.

5. Another obnoxious cap that is implemented is a limit of how much tonnage can be constructed monthly in the shipyards for example you might only be able to work on 500,000 total tons of ships a month which is extremely annoying and inaccurate if you have lots of funds and simply can't spend them.

6. which brings me to the issue of having all these hard caps on ship building and funding which causes you to have a massive budget surplus after 2 decades making money almost meaningless after 10 years, I don't understand this as historically a navy sitting on $1 trillion because the shipyards where at limit and couldn't be built up by military spending is a nonsense issue that never happened,

Money and resources are the real limits behind naval limitations not the government for what ever reason not being able to spend funds on building military shipyards to offset increased naval production demands.

In Rule the waves the only real cap to the amount of ships that can be built is money, there is no need for this inaccurate system of 3 ship building caps that Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts has apart from the devs being unable to actually balance the games GDP system.

7. the AI uses old ships that are practically useless, for example a find myself going up against torpedo boats in 1931 despite the AI nation I'm fighting having access to massive amounts of funding and being near my level in technology. so you end up with every battle being a cakewalk where you are shooting ships with old armor that can block your shots, ships that can't penetrate your ship due to old guns and ships that due to having ancient hull forms move 5 to 10 knots slower than your equivalent ships.

8. Torpedoes do very little damage and are too easy to dodge, making light cruisers and destroyers almost useless and reducing them mainly to anti sub roles.

9. The meta for this game is building capital ships since lighter ships suck and anything smaller than a heavy cruiser gets blown up too easily. However with this being the case the AI will build a few poorly designed capital ships every decade but will spend big on almost useless destroyers and cruisers, further making the game more of a Cake Walk

10. When the AI builds ships it will often decide to construct ships with weak armor and many low caliber 3 and 4 inch guns that have no range, are inaccurate, and have no penetration ability.

The other issue with AI design is that when I have access to 100000 ton ships in the late game the AI will only build up to 55000 ton ships no matter how much money and technology they have. Considering the heavy ship meta of this game along with crew caps making building many small ships unfeasible this further gives the AI an extreme disadvantage.

In summary this game has so many balancing issues and the AI is so terrible that it overshadows the massive amount of bugs.

Rule the waves 3 better option despite the poor graphics for naval grand strategy that is actually somewhat challenging.

i recommend but the bad reviews are mostly true though so its your choice

Could be the greatest Naval strategy game... but it was rushed out of EA. You may enjoy it. Neutral review (as in mixed) would be more accurate. Since I am not a fan of clearly unfinished games, it gets the thumbs-down. Perhaps I'll change that in time.

The game is divided into two parts. One is as beautiful as the first snow of a long-awaited winter, and the other is like the aftermath of a harsh winter during the spring thaw. I'm talking about the well-crafted naval battles, the very engaging mode of creating your own ship, and the thrill of watching it sink.

However, the major downside of the game is the single-player campaign. It’s raw, flat, unintuitive, and gets boring rather quickly—not to mention it’s full of bugs. I keep coming back to the game over the course of six months because of the battles. But every time I start the single-player campaign, I can only stick with it for a few hours.

The game excels in the tactical element of naval combat but fails miserably in the aspect of global strategy.

Christ the devs need to knuckle down and make the campaign playable. Mid game is just Torpedo wars where the AI slams 50-100 destroyers into your fleet over and over until it wittles away. Submarines body block entire fleets "why?" and sink ships taking no damage despite having almost maximum ASW in a fleet. AI late game then just spams these until it is no longer "ultimate admirals dreadnoughts" but instead ultimate submarine warfare: click next turn.

Just add workshop support already and let the players finish the game for you.

I really like the concept of the game but just wish there was a more sandbox-y game mode where you could build your crazy ship and not have to worry about ship weight. Its a real pain trying to balance everything and in the end you are just left feeling a bit sad about what you've made. Really stops me from being drawn into the game if I spend ages building a ship and feel like its an unsatisfying comprimise

I have alot of hours on this game.
It does have it flaws but it doesn't dererv all the hate it does
If you want to try the game watch some vidoes first

A really enjoyable game. At first all the tech screens were quite intimidating. So I let the AI figure out the specs for me, just fought custom battles. but when i got the hang of the campaigns, the game went to a whole other level . Campaigns are awesome. you have really control your finances or you go broke quickly. your diplomacy has to be sharp or you find yourself fighting everybody. Also built your fleet wisely or you'll be out gunned by your enemy every time. It's strategic planning on the World map with the combination of tactical fighting at sea give the game that Total War game vibe. Love this game.

Difficult to pin down exactly what is wrong with this game. The concept is fantastic, the execution is baffling.

- Tutorials which you can fail simply due to ridiculous time constraints (literally, first tutorial, ship doesn't move or fire back. You can still lose because you didn't destroy it quick enough for the arbitrary time limit gods)

- Ridiculous expectations in said tutorials. For example, stop the raiders. Fine, they're bigger, faster, stronger, better armoured (because the devs decided that was fair), but I sink two and the third one runs. Nope, also a loss because again, arbitrary sodding time limit and in this case I could NEVER catch up to them.

- AI blatantly cheats, always landing hits more often than you, with more damage, in critical areas etc.

And of course all you get from the ever helpful community is "git gud". So, yeah, don't bother. They keep breaking it more and more with ever increasing patches. Apparently the devs are like this with their other games too, arbitrary time limits and never accepting anything is wrong. Maybe pick it up for £5, £10 when it inevitably plummets.

This game took over my life for quite a while about a year ago. This game lets you build warships from a few specific eras, pretty much the golden age of dreadnoughts and battleships. So how much freedom does it give you in building your ships? I think this is one part about this game I really appreciate, so you don't get 100% complete freedom to build whatever you want, you have a hull you pick and there are mostly realistic constraints put on you for things like weight and engine power, you are also constrained by the hull's shape itself. Why do I like being constrained? Well it takes less time for me to build a ship compared to something like From The Depths(which I absolutely love as well), the main reason I prefer this than something with more freedom is I just don't have the time to build an entire warship piece by piece, it's more accessible this way and still gives me plenty enough freedom that I can do all kinds of fun things. This game has a fun strategic campaign as well, much like FtD but with a historical framework & setting, it's complex in different ways too, managing your funds and all the fun events that can happen, balancing your fleet size, oh and not to mention a whole ass tech tree. For me the tech tree gives me Hearts of Iron vibes where you get bonuses or minuses based on what year you are researching a tech, if it's before it was historical developed then it's more expensive to research and vice versa, keeps everyone in a similar bubble tech-wise. It does make it harder to sprint ahead in tech but not impossible, especially if you play as a nation with heaps of disposable income. The game is still very much being developed and the devs are very active, they've done a great job improving this game over the last year or so and it I'll likely be diving in again soon. I will mention of all the parts of this game, the strategic campaign is probably the roughest part, which is totally fine for me, I'm not here to get a deep and complex 4X experience, the designing, testing, learning, improving loop is really what I love especially when you come up with an effective design.

All of that is a great deal of fun but the part I love the most is, of course, the battles themselves, which lean heavily towards realism(usually lol), it's always very satisfying to win by superior tactics but it's hard to beat the dopamine rush of slapping an enemy ship right in the ammo stores, see how far you can send a turret!. The ships on your side can be controlled by the AI for the most part however you can control where the ships go, in what formation, what shells to use, what speed, etc., it can help when controlling large formations or to put the small ships on AI control however the AI is not great in this aspect so I'd recommend against it.

If you're a fan of historical naval warfare or are just a warship nerd in general, I think it's quite likely you will enjoy this game. Don't let the complexity of building a warship put you off, they make it accessible without losing too much of the creative freedom(while still keeping it all mostly realistic). The designer and battles are it's strongest points right now, campaign still needs tweaks but for me it was a great deal of fun even unfinished. There are also some great mods out there for it. Keep in mind it's still in development so that means updates can and will break your saves, should be obvious though to anyone who's played a game in development before!

This game is detailed in all the wrong places. While the ship design screen and the battles are rather enjoyable, the campaign is terrible. It is playable but thats about it. The only relevant part in your finances are how much you spend in research and not how many ships you build. And when you don't pay attention your newest best battleship gets build in a far off colony where it takes a year to reach your home port.

Conclusion if you want to have flashy battles and don't care about strategy this is the game for you.

PS: Submarines are still just a giant hassle and the lack of aircraft makes the designs after 1930 pretty ahistoric

Great game however 21 dollars for multiplayer is disgusting.

Many people complain about this game but I have had a ton of fun playing it. Is it perfect? no, but what game is it? The battles are fun and just designing a ship in general and seeing how well it can perform in the campaign is a unique experience that is entertaining to me.

One thing that should be known going in is that you do need to balance your ships and fleets at least a little bit otherwise your ships will not perform well and you will have wasted time and money of the nation you are playing as in the campaign. Additionally, when you design and decide to build your ships it takes at least a few turns before they are ready to be active as it simulates them being built and then getting commissioned. So there is a strategy of designing a ship that will not take forever to build but still get the job done that you need. To me, this adds extra weight to the potential loss of a capital ship as it will take lots of money and time to replace it, whereas destroyers or other smaller ships can take 3 to 8 turns to replenish your losses.

The game is still getting regular updates(at least as of the time I am writing this), and with each update, the game gets more and more enjoyable to me. I definitely would recommend it if you like the idea of designing your ships, and fleets and managing the battles.

Honestly, this game has came a very long way. It's still got a few bugs, but they update it very VERY frequently, and the development team seems passionate about this game. It's fun and fairly easy to play. Do have to say you need a semi beefy computer to engage in larger scale battles. But it's worth a try.

I like the game a lot. They have done a good job upgrading it as time has gone on. I hope they will continue to do so in the future.

Gameplay and combat is enjoyable, however there's only so much you can do replaying custom battles.
I just bought the game, tried to play campaign, again and again... but nothing happens and it's absolute rubbish. Because you cannot just delcare war and have fun with your fleets, you must rely on in-game events to prop up war and expansion. However, I don't know if it's case with campaign still being in deep beta, subject to extensive changes or just current patch when I'm writing this review, but no matter what I do, I cannot get any wars and actually use my fleets in action. I tried new campaigns with different countries and difficulty settings, tried to follow guides on youtube, tried escalating relations with other super powers... and nothing happens.
It seems like every other country on the globe is having naval wars and encounters, invasions and what nots, but I'm sitting there, 5 years into campaign, researching and building ships I don't get to use, instead playing glorified "Click Next Turn" simulator.

All because there's no straightforward way to declare war, instead it's hidden behind some esotheric BS mechanics you need to look up on the internet for this damn game. It would be great to have some straightforward way to influence state politics with war being guaranteed in some span of time.
So far all campaigns I started (each time different timeline, different nation) have turned out to be garbage experiences. I was so stoked for campaign with conquest, progression, econnomy, but no...
12 hours of pushing "Next Turn" and marginally changing finance sliders is not something I'd recommend if you hoped for game about commanding navies on global scale.

this game is good i wish they would add 1960 tec and add carriers
if those are added i would it a 20/10 buts its a 10/10 game

the game is just bad, extremely bad performace issues, no autosave and gets boring quickly...
i hope they update the game and add many more features in the future but in its current form its very bad....

Yes I have a lot of hours in this but only by playing with mods and then spending many more hours modding the game myself. If you're comfortable with doing that and have the time then I can recommend that there's a fun enough game here. I cannot recommend the game as it is in vanilla form.

Pros -
You get to design warships across the whole Battleship era. You also get to see your ships in action with great visual effects. Explosions, ricochets, sounds are all great. I also like that you are an Admiral and as such you cannot directly control whatever nation you pick to play (although you can do some things to push relations in a good/bad direction).

Cons -
In a historical battleship game you can't design anything close to historically accurate ships. The game's weight restrictions mean that the first roughly 30 years are incredibly boring as anything you design and build will be terrible. In a game with 'Dreadnoughts' in the title the devs changed the economy to make it so you can't build many of them. They decided players were able to build too many dreadnoughts in their dreadnought game. Nevermind the fact that this period of history saw major powers with anything from a dozen to over 60 of them. After the update AI powers had 0-4 Battleships/Dreadnoughts total.

This game also has "Ultimate Admiral" in the title and yet you have no control over what ships engage in what battles. What's more is you can't even decline to send your two destroyers against whatever the AI has matched them up against. Fleet engagements are the exception, and they are great when they happen. But turn after turn you will find yourself skipping the constant CL vs CL or DD vs DD battles that don't matter and you don't care about. If you just choose not to do the battle the ships are locked in port for the whole turn. So if you had plans for them or the fleet they are part of, oh well. The game, not you (the Admiral) decides these things. There is literally no control over battles, you can park your fleet on top of the enemy and more often than not turn after turn nothing happens. When it does finally happen usually the AI fleet will just run away and you'll never even see them, wasting a ton of time until the game lets you end the battle.

There is also no way to form actual fixed fleets. A fleet is just whatever ships are in that port, so you end up micromanaging ships constantly.

It's hard to understand what the thinking is with this game. It seems that 'historical accuracy' is justified for things but you can't make historical ships and major powers can't build anywhere close to as many as they actually had. You're supposed to be the Admiral but you have zero ability to actively engage enemy fleets or even decide which ships do what.

The name should be changed to Occasional Captain: Design Bad Ships

This game had so much potential and is truly one of a kind. It could have been remarkable. Alas, it is not so.
I truly hope it will get better.
I truly hope the devs (dev?) will start to listen to feedback.
I truly wish this game was good.
I so badly want to design my own warships. It would be so fun! Amazing! Great! But in this game? Not in its current state.
Sigh...

I want to be clear and say that this is not a simulator of reality, but of the concept of naval warfare pre-airplanes. It's like the ace combat of naval games. Rooted in reality, but plays like an arcade game in practice.
it still has realistic assets, but you get a lot more action than you would in real life. It is a very enjoyable experiance and the team who has worked on it has done a great job, I would recommend this game to anyone that has a love for naval warfare.

A time hog. I haven't been stuck into a game for such long amounts of time, since I started playing the TW games 24+ years ago. Overlook its flaws, and get stuck in!

This is one of a kind at the moment. The only other games that compare to it are games I have found on mobile (Both of which are riddled with micro-transactions). If you enjoy RTS, TBS, and Naval Combat gameplay, this is the game for you. That being said, it is not perfect. The AI in game is subpar in combat as well as ship design. You should micromanage your own fleet while in combat and also take on the task of designing the enemy ships if you want to get the most out of this game. Also, do not buy the multiplayer DLC until it has been improved (See DLC steam Reviews for more info).

It's.. alright.. placement of weapons is a bit buggy. But if you like naval war fare and ship design, if you can get past the labor intensive and somewhat agonizing interface, it can be fun. Needs a good campaign mode tutorial.

This is my favourite game, but as you can see from some of the other reviews this is that special kind of game where people can play it for thousands of hours and not recommend it.

How is that?

I think it is because this game makes you care. Games are all about the consequences of your decisions and I have never played a game that gives you consequences like this one. The loop of designing ships, using them in combat and then learning the lessons from that for what you need to do going forwards is fantastic. Every decision you make has ramifications, you will have to compromise and then find out if you made the right choice potentially years later. Make a ship with everything, high speed, armour, firepower etc. Only to find out building the things will bankrupt your nation and take years to finish. Or rush out a compromised stopgap ship only for it to go on and prove exactly the vessel you need in a vital battle. As these experiences build up through a campaign you feel connected to it. Every ship in your navy is there thanks to decisions you made, each ship lost can hurt, not just because it might cost a battle, but that it can be a sign of bad decisions or compromises that you had to take.

Its hard to do it justice in a written description but take these 1000+ hour play times accounts as proof that this game is doing something very right. Which is why for some people it sucks when it doesn't reach the heights they know it can. However, if this game has caught your eye then I think it is worth a try, because you might just find the game for you.

I had fun playing this game, even though there were some bugs and some frustrating parts about ship design and combat. The main enjoyment killer is being caught in battles where the AI is running away from you and you are forced to watch and micromanage your ships for several minutes or more when the enemy isn't even on screen. The battles in dense fog and rain are super painful to find the enemy.

However, since the battle AI was removed, I just cannot tolerate micromanaging the ships in pointless battles where there is only one AI ship vs my huge fleet. The simulator feature is asinine as a single destroyer with torpedos can sink several ships or cause crippling damage against a 10X superior force. In the campaign, you're forced to micromanage pointless battles or lose your fleet in unreasonable simulations.

I wouldn't recommend this game as is.

I was enjoying it, And the campaign is interesting, but the LACK of ability to shoot accurately makes it infuriating, you cant shoot point blank without missing 9/10 shots. and at 1km You will rarely hit 1 in a 100 even with the best gunnery. It takes 1000s of rounds to kill even a destroyer at point blank few hundred meters away.

This is an interesting game, as it puts you in the position of building your warships, to a national plan and budget you decide on, and then has you fight and control these warships, fleets from a tactical AND strategic viewpoint. An excellent idea, with nice graphics and a month-by-month walk through of the international tensions, economies, strategies and positions of various Empires and nation states. Perfect!

Somehow the game keeps going down hill. The have taken the fun out the game, dont waste your money on the game. They dont even have mod support for gods sake.

Whish I could get my money back.