"Is it worth buying?":
If you are very interested in a naval grand strategy game, this is probably the best one on the market. It is not the"Is it worth buying?":
If you are very interested in a naval grand strategy game, this is probably the best one on the market. It is not the best simulator (probably sh3 or 4), and it is not the best ship-to-ship naval combat game (probably Atlantic Fleet, for not having metastatic f2p-p2w). I have played about 1000 hours of various naval combat games, and this is the one that was the most engaging for the longest period of time, and got the least boring after it began to grow stale.
I would probably need to rate this closer to a 7 if the standard for grand-strategy naval combat (set by Paradox games) wasn't deplorably simple and un-fun to use.
Detailed Review:
The core game-play of VASP is solid, and it is leagues easier to get in to and enjoy than most other Pacific War grand strategy games out there. Being able to play the game with as much or as little micro-managing as you want is a MASSIVE advantage it has over similar games in this genre. Victory at Sea Pacific is a fun game that is probably better than all its competitors for 95% of its audience.
You'll notice those were relative terms. The game had a very troubled launch, and despite plenty of additional content and extensive bug squashing, the game remains a rough around the edges. There is notable friction between the many scales of play that the player can switch between at-will.
The auto-resolve of battles is Paradox-levels of strange, but also treats all cargo ships like death stars.
Through it all, the ~dozen developers have remained very engaged and professional in their engagement with the players through the fire storm that erupted around launch. I can not certify that they will still be there doing this in a few years, but it was definitely a big boon for around 6 months after launch.
It has a very easy to use mod system that is very flexible - within limits. Anything the spreadsheet-based systems allows to have changed can be bent over backwards in tons of ways, but there are hard bumpers against stepping out of that zone without the knowledge of how to code or 3d model for unity games.… Expand
