Victory At Sea

 PC
User Score
5.6

Mixed or average reviews- based on 11 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 4 out of 11
  2. Mixed: 4 out of 11
  3. Negative: 3 out of 11

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  1. Ilham
    Sep 9, 2014
    10
    What a Fantastic game !! I love this War simulator It looks so real the game is much more realistic for WW2 maritime battle than any other game Try it and you will know it !!!
  2. BananaBucket
    Aug 9, 2014
    5
    I'm a big fan of new indie developers. I'm a big fan of WWII maritime simulators. I played Victory at Sea for as long as I could stomach it so I could get a complete picture of the game, including endgame. TLDR: It starts off bad and becomes worse. It's obviously an arcadey attempt at WWII fleet sea combat, but Port Royale did fleet sea combat much, much better many years ago.

    Let's run    I'm a big fan of new indie developers. I'm a big fan of WWII maritime simulators. I played Victory at Sea for as long as I could stomach it so I could get a complete picture of the game, including endgame. TLDR: It starts off bad and becomes worse. It's obviously an arcadey attempt at WWII fleet sea combat, but Port Royale did fleet sea combat much, much better many years ago.

    Let's run through some of the lowlights:
    1. Sub games in the 80s had better AI. Really. Destroyers should be terrifying to sub captians. They are the rock to submarine scissors. Here they will run straight into OP torpedo salvos. Submarines don't submerge when they should which is the only thing that makes them beatable without unnacceptable losses. Allies will destroy a ship that has surrendered: that's sick.
    2. Weapon systems are Just. Plain. Broken. Torpedos run at crazy speeds, with short reload times, the bizarre gun accuracy ranges between pinpoint for small guns to shotgun for big guns.
    3. AI ship deployment (no chance to modify it) is so random it's invariably better to enter the battle as a single ship so the game doesn't drop your cruiser on the other side of the map in gun range of a heavy cruiser.
    4. Chronology is, how do I put this... odd. The US joins the war before the fall of France.
    5. Missions are just nuts. A battlecruiser fleet is sent to deliver a letter.
    6. Scripted loss of a major British sea port because HQ sent you to Norway and doesn't give you time to return.
    7. No army or airforce behaviour. None.
    8. The economy / ecology is terribad. Experience comes in way too quickly to keep pace with money.
    9. Permaspawning irritant destroyers and no significant challenging enemy fleets.
    10. Callous, lightweight treatment of the subject to the point of insulting the memory of the men and women who died in warships and the merchant marines.

    At the end of the day, what is the point? That said, I got 8 hours of mild, mind-numbing 'entertainment' that made me want to play Silent Hunter again.    … Expand
  3. DeadManWalken
    Aug 19, 2014
    9
    This has strong dev support and is already better than when it came out a week or so ago, I haven't seen a game with such as fast response from the devs. They have the communities back on some of the flaws of the game which are minor tbh.
    The game has 3 campaigns across the Pacific Atlantic and Med, although they are allied only at the moment the devs have promised more from it including    This has strong dev support and is already better than when it came out a week or so ago, I haven't seen a game with such as fast response from the devs. They have the communities back on some of the flaws of the game which are minor tbh.
    The game has 3 campaigns across the Pacific Atlantic and Med, although they are allied only at the moment the devs have promised more from it including German and Japanese campaigns. This is a grower!    … Expand
  4. FlashThompson
    Aug 10, 2014
    10
    For those that think it's a Sim it's not. It's a large free roaming Game that is more like Old school games like Pirates. It's faster than most warship games I've played but it allows you to play a battle faster. I think it's a respectful but more immediate game than most in this genre. It's not for sim fans to be sure. But it's got a lot of elements you can enjoy.
  5. kitsunedawn
    Aug 18, 2014
    1
    How to say it. The game is...bad. It's not to say it's not without some of its own charm, it does have that to some degree, but overall the gameplay is frustrating at best, mind numbingly bad at worst. Where to start? On the plus side, it's relatively fast paced, and since it's not a sim, but something more akin to the Uncharted Waters games from the NES days, that's okay. Enemies areHow to say it. The game is...bad. It's not to say it's not without some of its own charm, it does have that to some degree, but overall the gameplay is frustrating at best, mind numbingly bad at worst. Where to start? On the plus side, it's relatively fast paced, and since it's not a sim, but something more akin to the Uncharted Waters games from the NES days, that's okay. Enemies are in an abundance, so picking a fight isn't hard.

    It's when you GET to the fights that things become annoying. Within your first tutorial missions, you'll run into the main issue the game has. Lag. Here's the thing. It runs on the unity engine, so we can't fault it for that, but even with the textures to their lowest setting, a computer which runs ESO at its MAX settings, will still tank. This is largely due to the way the ocean is rendered, as well as the rain that never seems to stop falling. If you can suffer through the graphics induced (there's irony, considering the game's graphics) lag, you run into the second major flaw. The game's target detection is horrible. You select your guns, point and fire; only to watch your shots go in a direction you never told them to go. No matter how many times you click on the enemy ship to fire on it, your shots will routinely go further than the target. Firing with the guns is only barely effective when you figure a way around the game's system, usually by randomly clicking shorter than you want to fire, in the hope that your shells will actually get to the right target.

    Torpedoes run very fast, and you'll find more often than not, you're using those as your primary weapons. Picking a ship without them, will typically lead to defeat and game over.

    When it comes to depth charges, things really get weird. (and by weird, I mean bad.) Destroying a submarine with a depth charge in this game, requires you to hit the proverbial nail on the head. Sounds easy, but try hitting that nail during an earthquake, while blinded, and you get the general idea of depth charges in this game.

    To make things worse, your depth charges NEVER go where you intend them to, meaning most naval battles against submarines is a great deal of turning, cursing at the bad controls, and hoping, just HOPING you can get one to hit. Depth charges, historically, didn't have to actually hit the sub to damage it. Even the most arcade based games seem to understand that getting them in the general vicinity is enough to sink or damage a ship. Yet for some unknown reason, in Victory at Sea, this isn't the case. Here, you have to hit the thing, and not just with one depth charge, but ALL of your depth charges.

    I get it that the developers are indie, there's nothing wrong with that. However, I think this game is FAR from ready to release. If anything it's in an Alpha state with a great deal more work. Work that by all accounts, the devs aren't willing, or perhaps able to put into it.    … Expand
  6. Arngill
    May 18, 2016
    8
    Enjoyable and atmospheric. As the fleet gets bigger control gets more difficult but it's absorbing and has a realistic feel. On the down side, Some of the missions are frankly un-achievable and long voyages can get tedious but It's a lot better than some which cost a lot more money.I keep coming back to play it, which speaks for itself really.

Critic Reviews

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No score yet - based on 2 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 0 out of 2
  2. Mixed: 2 out of 2
  3. Negative: 0 out of 2
  1. Softpedia
    Aug 19, 2014
    70
    History buffs with an appreciation of the complexity of naval combat will find plenty to love in the Custom Game mode, recreating classic engagements and variations based on them, but for other players the title can quickly became repetitive and frustrating.
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  2. GameWatcher
    Aug 12, 2014
    50
    Victory at Sea is not without some charm. The basic ship combat is simplistic but fun, and though controlling large-scale battles is tricky and occasionally cumbersome it can be pretty satisfying.
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