War on the Sea

I really want to like this game, but I just can't, and I can't fathom the design choices that were made with it. For those of you who enjoy strategy and a fair challenge, be warned: you are not fighting an AI that follows the same rules and limitations that you do. Enemy ships are created just because. Destroying them does not erode the enemy's resource points because the enemy does not follow the rule of resource points, their ships just appear. Enemy ships are all over the place just because. They do not have to start at their bases like yours do, they're just immediately all over the place, even right outside your base at the start of the game. The enemy planes and subs know where you are at all times, and the game doesn't even try to hide that. No matter how much you differentiate your paths, change direction to avoid patrols, etc. The enemy always knows. Submarines will always be in front of your path to ambush you regardless, and attack planes will always fly directly to your fleets to attack rather than needing to scout your location first. Then there's the battles. The godawful decisions in the battles. Why is the fighter AI so stupid? It's tricky to aim a plane, yes, but why are they constantly spraying ammo bursts when their crosshair is nowhere near the target? Why do they not know what evasive maneuvers are? Altitude and energy count for nothing, and the planes that excelled in them are handicapped because dogfights only use a single axis. Every fight is a turn fight. Why do enemy subs start the encounter within a stones-throw distance of my fleet? And why does nobody in my fleet see the torpedoes until it's too late to turn? Guess everyone on those destroyers were asleep. Why do the enemy ships always know there are torpedoes inbound the instant I launch them and begin evasive maneuvers immediately, even when they don't have ships that use sonar? Then there's the god awful UI on top of everything else. It's just disappointing. This could have been a gem of a game that gave you a real feel and appreciation for the battles in the pacific, but with all of these terrible design choices and the decision to leave it mostly as-is, the devs really dropped the ball with this game.

Subs are useless. The enemy sees the torpedoes as soon as they are fired you have no chance of hitting with them. Enemy subs have homing torps that cant miss. American fighters are pointless and can't hurt anything. ♥♥♥ fighters are industructable and sink destroyers with their guns alone. The enemy knows where you are at all times your units will miss aircraft carriers and battleships until they are so close Helen Keller could point them out. Way out of balance and complete ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. Seems like every update just messes something else up. Over 100 hours in this game I really wanted to like it. I can't I'm done.

I really enjoy a lot about this game. But ultimately in the end, I have to say there is one draw back that I found, that I have a really hard time getting around “navel combat”, now let me explain. The controls, good, the graphics, good, sound, good, models, maps, you name it, its pretty good. But the navel combat taking literal and I am not joking, 45+ minutes for one battle, with pretty much nothing to do once you’ve done the busy work to optimize the fight is crazy. I love that you can save mid engagement, but I got so bored, I mean, I can only stair at my ships lobbing shells at the other enemy ships for so long. Like, I hit an hour+ in one battle and most of it was me every 10 minutes just double checking that everyone was able to shoot all their guns. Now with that said, there is one thing that I wish for and it would solve this problem. Time Compression. They have it on the campaign map which I love, but in battle there is nothing you can really do to speed it up enough. In battle it is the "F9 key" and I think it only does 5 times, which is just not fast enough for how long these fights take, it like at least 10, maybe 15, possibly even an auto resolve maybe? (Not sure about that last one). It just drags the whole game down, I mean I literally got to the point I was getting up, doing other things around the house for 30 minutes and came back and only one ship on my side and the enemies were heavily damaged, and both sides had 6+ ships. THAT’S CRAZY! In short, this is a good game, I really do enjoy it, but the navel battles and only the navel battles lasting this long is so vibe killing its crazy. Every other tactical battle, Air, Sub, Air vs Navel, Sub vs Navel, all great, none of them last really more than 10ish minutes. But the navel battles, wow, just took all the fun out of the game, I found myself dreading and cursing when a navel battle began. I really hope the devs add faster time compression to the game. Because as of right now, I don’t think I can really recommend it as is, it’s that bad. Which is really sad for such a good game. If you think you can handle how long the navel engagements are, go for it, you won’t regret this game. For everyone else, you’ve been warned.

This is my first review on Steam, and it sucks that it has to be a negative one, but it needs to be made. Firstly, for a game that was released in November 2021, it's kind of pathetic that the developers are being outpaced by the modding community in all respects. I get they're a small company, but even still. Modders aren't employed to work on this game, while the employees at the studio are, yet the employees make barely any headway in any aspect on the game. Whether it be content, patches, QOL updates, whatever, it's rare and far between to get any updates on the game. Secondly, their inability to nail down the glaring bugs and issues that have persisted since launch is laughable. Why is it, that I can have my fleet spawn within a few hundred feet of the enemy fleet, and then proceed to get leveled by them. Or better yet, why is it my squadrons spawn in directly above the enemy fleet? Why isn't it, that there is a spawn radius bubble that forces both vessels and aircraft to have a safe-distance spawn from the enemy so they don't get spawn killed? To me, that seems pretty elementary in terms of development. Thirdly, the UI is atrocious. I was in a chat with a few of my friends, and they asked me if I was playing a "Clicking Simulator" because all they heard me doing was clicking, and I had to chuckle and told them I was playing War on the Seas. I do more clicking and micromanaging through the UI which frequently breaks or glitches, than I actually do strategizing and planning out my maneuvers. Fourthly is the AI. I got frustrated at one point, and decided to pull a card from the Japanese, and proceed to Kamikaze three B17-Fs, all with successful impacts (no duds) with 2x 1,000lbs bombs on each aircraft (so, 6,000lbs or three tons worth of explosives), paired with three torpedoes (all also not duds), and the Kongo I attacked proceeded to shrug it all off, with only "moderate" damage. Then, proceeded to head to my port and bombard it. HOW does a Battleship do that and NOT get scuttled or sent home!? For comparison, (and yes I understand that the bomb dropped hit it's ammo magazine), but the Arizona was sunk with a single 60kg bomb, while the other three 60kg bombs merely started fires. I dumped over 125,000 pounds of explosive ordnance into the side of this ship and it shrugged it off like almost nothing happened. I've had HUNDREDS of encounters like that with the AI, where they are just extremely overpowered in every conceivable way. The US had Nightfighters that existed during this time frame, such as the DB-7B Havoc that both Britain and the US used early in the war. So to not be able to have these aircraft available for night time sorties to level the playing field, or even have PBY Catalinas or Mariners to perform anti-submarine duties is ridiculous! Lastly, is the fact that I cannot autoresolve battles, I have to play them out. It's a typical aspect of both RTS and turn based games, and to not have that feature is a MASSIVE oversight and blunder. It's a shame I bought this game at full price. Because frankly, given its Quality Assurance, lack of QOL patches, and the fact that the modding community is doing 90% of the heavy lifting on this game, War on the Seas needs to be a free game or at least a $5 game. I will not be buying another one of these developer's games again. And it's an absolute shame, as this game has IMMENSE potential, but they've just let it slip through the massive gaps that they as developers have created, and the Modders have had to pick up the slack that the developers are unable or unwilling to rectify. Ultimately, if I continue playing the game, it will only be due to the modders which deserve a massive round of applause and a standing ovation for their dedication to building and patching a beyond broken game. If it wasn't for the modders making all of these new Campaigns, such as the Centrifugal Offensive, The Tokyo Express Mod, ABDACOM, etc, this game would be dead, plain and simple.

This game is basically abandoned, and the mods are not in the workshop format. The game can be incredibly fun but so many of the features feel half-finished, or not fully fleshed out. Get on sale, save your money.

制作组跑路了！！！！！！！

This is actually a good game. It is probably one of the best games simulatig the naval combat of WW2 that you can find. In addition, there are a lot of great mods that add all sorts of new campaigns and ships and elevate the entire gameplay. The problems mentioned below are fixed by these mods in most cases. The tactical battles (if they are balanced) are really exciting to play. My big issue with War on the Sea is how unbalanced the core game is. When I played the US Navy Campaign, it felt like cheating. One could simply put together a taskforce, consisting of a battlecruiser, some light and heavy cruisers and destroyers and then wipe out the entire Japanese Navy. The American vessels outmatch their Japanese counterparts in nearly every Regard. They carry more amunition, they are better equipped with sensors, they come in greater numbers, they are cheaper and they carry way more guns. This leads to american light cruisers beeing almost able to outgun the IJNs heavy cruisers. So after a few big engagements, the Japanese seemed to simply have vanished, I built my airbase on Guadalcanal and most encounters were reduced to destroyer 1v1s which made my campaign a bit boring in the end. These Aspects make the Japanese Campaign extremely hard because you stand on the outgunned side of the battle and your surperior torpedos are also no big help. This may be historically acurate but it makes the game a bit less fun than it could be

This feels like the devs at Killerfish said "Oh, we have Cold Waters, let's try to tack a half-arsed RTS on top of that." There are so many frustrating elements with the game. It doesn't seem like the devs have played their own game or wanted it to be good. Some examples: - There are no indicators for remaining ordnance on planes. This is super basic, but still missing. - The interface is mostly copied from Cold Waters, and in Cold Waters it makes sense. This makes for a frustrating UI in this game. Leading units is tedious. Handling groups is tedious. Seeing what current orders units have is tedious, because you can't trust the sliders. Seeing information about targets is tedious, and so on and so forth. Very poor UX in most respects. - You need to exit to the main menu to access settings. - The unit AI is pretty bad, but controlling units yourself is just as bad. If at least one of them were good you could ignore the other, but alas. - There are no carrier-ops mid-battle. Would have been fairly simple to implement and is sorely needed. These are just a few of the things bothering me so far. With a few more months of development and a lot more QoL, this could have been a great title. As it stands it falls very short of its potential.