The Exceptional:
1. Tons of unique and beautiful port options from which to base and raid.
2. Lots of convoy lanes and stunning ship types with sensible spawn rates.
3. Variety and flexibility in missions, items, cargo, stats, medals and achievements. Enough to satisfy a submarine enthusiast.
4. A truly dynamic campaign that involves you with transmissions while at sea, video briefings at port, and welcomes from the individual port commanders.
5. A U-Boat that feels like it has depth in both management and first-person usage.
The Good:
1. On lower AI difficulties, this game is a stellar arcade/first-person U-Boat sim for casual players and subsim enthusiasts alike.
2. On higher AI difficulties, this game forces distinctly different choices: Not every spotted opportunity is worth the risk, screens are carefully entered, targets are limited to two or three ships per sweep, and being spotted forces an immediate underwater chase. And your eye is always on the clock for oxygen.
3. The technology tree is impactful and it progresses sensibly on its own, though can speed up for those willing to invest.
4. Torpedo maintenance is uncomplicated and auto-managed, though the chance of duds is always a real one.
5. The orders screen is a vital component and works like a dream come true in most situations.
6. The map is an incredible mix of navigational ease and historical information.
7. Stuck out at sea without fuel? Call of milk cow! You’ll get your fuel and your torpedoes.
8. External torpedo storage! And it works fine in first-person, too!
The Bad:
1. Did your crew just get back from their three week vacation? Well, welcome back to a 15-bomber air raid in 1940! Courtesy of La Rochelle, Brest, and other cool ports.
2. Welcome home from La Spezia port, kameraden! We know high command just told you to pass through the Strait of Gibraltar, but they want you to go back to Italy again. It’s no big deal, right? You’ve done it once already!
3. Did you report that funnel smoke or ship you just spotted? Well, don’t worry! As you busy yourself with your deck gun, your friendly neighborhood U-058 will swoop in and launch 4 torpedoes at it too! But from the side of the ship you’ve pulled up on. Good luck with those four new holes in your boat!
4. Bugs. To be fair, Deep Water Studio is a small studio. But I remember when I first got this game when it came out: The difficulty was with everything from performance, to time compression, to running the ship aground or off pathing during time compression, to missions getting stuck, etc etc etc. This has all been patched. I seriously commend the developers. But with the dawn of the new dlc, we are still dealing with the fallout months after. The glowing purple eyes glitch was endearing. But the numerous times my submarine has attempted to fire a torpedo at exactly 180 degrees and instead did an out-of-water barrel roll? Admittedly this bug, the save bug, and some other bugs have caused me to put this game down a few times until they were fixed. I accept this as the price of progress, but it is a factor of playing this game and it must be accepted.
The Ugly:
1. On the highest AI difficulty, this game is unplayable. Corvettes will spot you creeping through a convoy screen while your periscope is barely above the waterline. They will then pursue you with ASDIC down to 200 meters depth with pinpoint accuracy. They have unlimited depth charges. And they don’t care about the convoy they have been attached to or its timetable; They will leave it behind. You cannot hide against the background of the ocean floor either, they will spot you and depth charge you over and over again. Thermal layers of water do not phase these rookies. All of this in 1939, which makes the shallower waters of the early game unnecessarily punishing. Whatever difficulty this is, it is far from historical and much closer to nonsensical.
2. Crew management completely breaks down at the most critical of moments: During major underwater flooding. Even if every officer has a rebreather and parts, and you have 4 engineers aboard, the crew will just wander around the ship doing whatever they see fit to do. They will open bulkheads you want closed and let water in. They will close bulkheads you want open and let the water pressure build up until no one can open it. They will also open bulkheads and get in the way by carrying sailors to bunks, but the sailors cannot be tended to because the bunks are flooded. You have to go to the crew management screen just to deprioritize medical treatment. However, this feels like it should be an order instead: Prioritize the boat. Or something to that effect.
Overall, I highly recommend this game to anyone interested in submarines. It has its flaws, but its boons far outweigh them. It is easily the best subsim game out there on the market right now. Especially for WW2.
