Victory At Sea Review and System Requirements

OS: Windows XP SP3
Processor: Core 2 duo 2.4Ghz
Memory: 2 GB RAM
Graphics: GeForce 9500 GT
Hard Drive: 4 GB available space&nbsp;

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.

Verdict: 50/100

System Requirements

Minimum: