Dread Admiral

if meth and ecstasy have a child

Angry boats

Eh, it's alright. Ships are well-balanced against each other, with meaningful strengths and weaknesses. Patrol boats are cheap scouts with anti-submarine utility, destroyers demolish subs while having moderate firepower, and cruisers are tough and fast workhorses. Carriers have exceptional offense but are frail and can easily run out of planes, while battleships beat anything in a stand-up fight but die to planes or subs. Positioning and scouting are essential. I haven't unlocked all the super ships yet so I can't speak for those. Special mention to the city destruction mechanic: most ships can bombard cities to reduce their population, which denies your enemy their use and makes them easier for you to capture, but also makes them less valuable once captured. It's fun to riskily try and capture a contested city without bombarding, or else to flatten an enemy city when you realize you won't be able to capture it. The AI is surprisingly good. It knows how to attack and when to regroup, will prioritize killing fragile and expensive ships, and knows how to attack at the edge of its range to avoid taking unnecessary retaliation. It'll send recon planes to reveal your submarines, whil…

The initial learning curve is brutal, but is far, far less so than the demo. It's otherwise a surprisingly engaging fleet tactics game, which is generally most cutthroat at the start even with the option to reduce player snowballing enabled. I'd even argue that it achieves the apparent modern rarity of having relatively deep tactics/strategy due to the perks and flagship upgrades. It is also a "love letter" to a game that probably predates me called "The Grandest Fleet" to the point that most of the stats and similar are very similar or even ported directly, so if you enjoyed that game I highly suspect you'd enjoy this.

I had a lot of fun with this little gem. The game will tax your mistakes brutally and the learning process does feel like a cold shower sometimes. Still, once you get the hang of it and learn there is also a game of "rock paper scissor" on ship types and damage, things will flow nicely. Add a lot of replayability on top of those and it is well worth the price tag, definetely recommended !

Potential is there, but tedious to play - no way to skip through useless "commentary", pointless countdown screen, a distinct feel of cheating on behalf of the AI, and so forth.