I had played a bit of SH2 since, but not as much, because sub sims are very very time consuming (one attack can last hours, if you're pinned by tenacious destroyers). The one I've played most was Aces of the Deep and it was impressively great. Ubisoft's DRM policy made that series incompatible with me. It does not allow the player to complete the entire war, nor follow the Type II - Type VII - Type IX - Type XXI career progression that players have come to expect.'

SH5 does not deliver on any of these metrics, with the exception of opening up the whole U-boat to the player.

A couple years back I was asked what I thought was the next step for subsims, I said, 'compelling radio traffic, complex objectives like shadowing convoys, genuine wolfpack activity, more role-playing with the crew, and full boat access'. That title still belongs to Silent Hunter III. 'SH5 has broken new ground with the full boat access and amazing graphics, but it's not the best U-boat sim ever made. I don't think you'll want to get that far back, but both were less complete and complex than the more modern sms, so, they were good introductions. You'll see, they're like whole different genres.Īlso, my entrance in the world of subsims was through silent service (and 688 attack sub, you can see the caracteristic gameplay differences) on the amiga. I think you'll have to play both, eventually. It's the same difference between firing air-air missiles beyond the horizon and machine-gunning another plane. U-Boote are close visual attacks and evasion. SSN are distant, blind, electronic warfare. They both provide very different experiences. The point is : you can't replace a SSN simulation with a diesel-electric u-boot smulation, or the other way round. It's a different strategy, a different style, a different atmosphere, and a different tension. Using missiles, and long range guided torpedoes, and evading them with counter-mneasures, while checking for contacts on the plotter, and signatures on the waterfall, is very different from using magnetic torpedoes at periscope level after having calculated (more or less manually) a firing solution, and then evading a surface ship's active sonars. I don't think they are different on that respect.Īnd the gameplay is very different. I think the silent hunter -if i remember well- are as realist as 688.

Silent hunter 4 mods steam