Sea Power : Naval Combat in the Missile Age

I left the game running at 1x speed while I went to my nearby store to pick up some stuff (Tortilla wraps in case you're interested). When I came back 15 minutes later absolutely nothing had happened. Thanks for coming to my review.

You can sink oil tankers in Strait of Hormuz decades before it was cool and you are gonna win so much. You’re going to get tired of winning, you’re going to say, "Please, please, it’s too much winning, I can’t take it anymore."
Name does not lie, you will be naval combatting in the age of missiles. There are bugs yes, but nonethless this game is very good and I recommend it to everyone. Editor also very good, once you get bored of the campaigns, scenarios and billions of workshop missions, try the editor.
10/10

I am former United States Navy, and if you want a true simulation of Modern Naval Combat, THIS is the simulation you need. While it is still in very active development, it is fully playable now with campaigns, missions, mission and campaign editor and much more!
*note: I am a tester but I am also a technical advisor to the game because of my actual real life Naval Warfare experience where I started out as a Sonar Technician Surface in my career. Note my avatar is the very first US Warship I ever served aboard. The USS Comte De Grasse DD-974, A Spruance Class Destroyer. If you like modern warfare sims, this one is a MUST have!
UPDATE: Had someone ask why I only have 3.4 hours playtime. That's because as I said, I am a tester and the builds I run are NOT the release steam build versions. I do testing of a lot of sims and many of them are not run off steam. They are separate completely and most run on their own for testing.

Early access and big price tag is a scary combination, and you won't have the specifics of this game under control by the time you're past those 2 hours of Steam's refund policy.
But if you like this sort of game (the one where you spend most of the time looking at a tactical map), have an interest in Cold War naval and a surprisingly big amount of aerial vehicles or like long-range missile warfare, this game is worth the risk.
It offers an alright amount of missions and the devs recently released a linear campaign, the modding community adds a lot of missions on top of it (though it is one of those games where big updates kill all the mods and you have to wait for em to update). The ship models are really good looking, and have good animations on missile launches and aircraft takeoffs. The missile trails and explosion effects are also really pretty.
It's not a game without faults though, enemy AI can be really stupid, your units can ignore orders or glitch out completely and if missions go on for too long the game sometimes gets very unpredictable.
It is also a game with a steep learning curve, especially if you're new to the specifics of radar usage, submarine combat and missile defense.
If you're unsure, I recommend watching some "Stealth17 Gaming" videos on YouTube. He gives a good view of what gameplay is like for a mid-level player, he shows advanced stuff like how to calculate intercept courses and ranges effectively with mapping tools but also makes some stupid mistakes to strike a nice balance.

Love this game, this game is a Retired US NAVY SWO's (Surface Warfare Officers) wet dream. If you like modern naval warfare and strategy this game is for you. I will say I imagine unless you have studied US and Soviet naval assets this game might have a steep learning curve, but don't let that stop you. Its blue water chess. I do hope that we get SLQ-32 control on surface ships and Areleigh Burke class destroyers

This game is downright DANGEROUS. Once I picked it up, I couldn't put it down, and I consistently look at the clock thinking maybe an hour has gone by, to see that in fact 4 hours have dissapeared.
Think of this as a real time milsim that takes the Battleship board game to the max. It has the aesthetic feel of DCS for me, but with a focus on big tactical strategy over direct control of individual units. You instead control several entire ships, aircraft, and submarines and direct them across a varietty of scenarios and a linear campaign. It is very much about learning, managing, and mastering systems at it's core, which is catnip for me.
Graphics are surprisingly good for early access. The ship and aircraft models are all quite accurate and complete - the cockpits inside aircraft are even meticulously made. I love that damage on vessels is reactive, as in you hit a vessel in the side with a missle, a big hole appears where you saw the missle hit. It's a little bit limited and I'd love to see them take this even further with perhaps ships splitting in half upon 2 torpedoes in the same spot etc. Performance is a little choppy at points, but I'm hoping they can improve as time goes on.
The game does a pretty good job of balancing the AI and putting an emphasis on following doctrine. In other words, you need to play to your faction's strenghts, and even tweaking your strategy based on which specific vessels you have access to in that game, and what your threats are. It does end up being a bit of a game of cat-and-mouse. Whoever sees the other first and gets the first shots in, typically will win. But not always.
Highly addicting, extremely satisying to get wins, and for something still in early access, I'm super impressed. I can't wait to see what the full release looks like. They have something really special here.
My only critisisms are there is a pretty steep learning curve. There is probably a good hour or two of tutorial content that is absolutely mandatory if you want to enjoy the game, but even that doesn't fully explain everything well enough. And I have noticed some typos and errors in descriptions of certain vessels or weapons, or missing descriptions all together - but considering how well put together the rest of the game is at this stage, it's easy to look past.
Absolutely give this a try if you're into military history, naval combat, RTS or turn based grand strategy games, or just want something you can sink a lot of hours in to. Some of the missions, especially user-made scenarios, will take you 6 + hours!

The game certainly holds tremendous potential, along with high expectations from die-hard fans of the genre. However, it's somewhat unfairly represented by various YouTube reviews. Let me just say this: if you've played Cold Waters, you absolutely need to buy this game.
The controls are very intuitive, especially for those familiar with Cold Waters and who already understand the basic weapons, ships, aircraft, etc., from that era.
POSITIVES:
1.The game is fully expandable for future content.
2.Easy to handle, especially for Cold Waters veterans.
3.Anyone can create their own MOD or tweak existing equipment (ships, aircraft, submarines, weapon systems).
4.Incredible gameplay depth.
5.Decent 3D models overall - not all of them, but most meet quality standards with impressive detail.
6.Most importantly: there is strong community involvement in creating 3D models via the Workshop. Developers should take advantage of this and make the game more MOD-friendly.
NEGATIVES:
1.The map is overloaded with markers - too many labels and data points clutter the screen. Developers need to find a way to summarise or abbreviate events to keep the map cleaner and more readable.
2.The sea (especially the seabed) needs work - visually, it still feels underdeveloped.
3.Land-based 3D moddels - visuals, such as airfields and terrain, require a lot of improvement.
4.The game should eventually expand beyond the Cold War era to include modern-day warfare.
5.There’s no tutorial available, and we desperately need campaign missions - just like Cold Waters!
6.For me (and many other users) it's very difficult to make our own missions. The mission maker needs a lot of work (and detailed instructions - HOW TO)
7.Most critically: it’s a real issue that the majority of MODs rely on Sea Lifter and Anchor Chain. Developers, please make it easier for MOD creators to integrate their work without needing such heavy dependencies. I installed Sea Lifter and Anchor Chain just to run one or two mods, and the game lagged horribly as a result.
Despite all that, kudos to the development team!
To anyone interested: this will be some of the best money you’ve ever spent on a game. I genuinely mean it.