UBOAT

I was going to wait until after the games is fully released next week before writing a review but the game won't be changing drastically before then so thought I may as well do it now.

Uboat is the absolute definitive ww2 submarine simulator covering mainly the battle of the Atlantic and a few surrounding areas. I first purchased Uboat way back in 2019 when it was branded as a ww2 submarine survival game with some sim elements. Uboats early access journey has been long and after all the updates it has had it is now a fully fledged simulation with all the bells and whistles.

Most of the settings are configurable as well so if your not a fan of realism or challenge then you can play the game the way that suits you. You can even switch of crew management if you don't enjoy that aspect.

For some context, I am a self confessed submarine fanatic and have played every single sub game ever released going way back to the early 80's as a small boy playing hunter killer on the old spectrum 48k computer. There have been many since then including Silent service series, Aces of the deep, 688 attack sub, the Silent Hunter series plus all the other more arcady ones.

The Silent Hunter series (not the disaster that was SH5) was for me the benchmark going all the way back to the mid 90's when the first one came out. Silent Hunter 3 and 4 (heavy modding is required) have been my go to sub sims for most the the last 2 decades.

Uboat in its current form blows all of those games out the water on every level, be it graphics, sound, atmosphere, realism etc

It includes 5 Uboats in the base game with other subs hopefully coming in dlc. The early patrols will have you operating under prize rules, investigating ships etc. It will then progress to the massive convoy battles where you will encounter convoys with 60+ ships. When you first encounter a large convoy you will immediately be brought back to the classic war movie das boat, there are plenty of nods in that famous movie's direction which I personally love at its probably my favourite war movie ever.

The dlc and modding potential with Uboat is huge.

Other highlights include,

The most realistic tdc ever programmed for a computer game.
Sounds of ships sinking on hydrohones
Crew management, unlike with the Silent Hunter games you never feel like you are alone on a sub anymore
Plenty of historical campaigns to work though including optional side missions.
Possibility to affect research prioroties
Wolfpacks
Contact reports from bdu and other subs
Full uboats interior where you can walk around
best ever graphics for a sub sim
career progression, medals etc
Random crew and equipment breakdown events
Excellent modding support, could we see a gwx type megamod in the future? Don't see why not.
Very receptive developers who are willing to listen and implement ideas they hear from players

Like with all games though, there is always room for improvement. There is not a massive amount of ship types with the base game so would be great to see more variations with merchants and other warships, I would even happily pay for these as I know there is a lot of work that goes indeed to making these.
They have also just implemented a blue print system for sub upgrades which could use some more work to iron out some rough edges.
The point system which is used to buy/upgrade things is on the easy side so there needs to be more balancing work done on that as well.

Overall all though I've been having a blast playing Uboat and I would recommend this to anyone who has even a remote interest in what it must have been like to spend weeks out at sea on these things.

Going to give Uboat a solid 8 out of 10 with hopefully good post release support and dlc pushing it up to 10 out of 10.

Been playing all major ww2 sub games since wolfpack on DOS back in the day.
This game has allmost everything i want from a ww2 subsim, And some stuff im not to much of a fan of, like:
-Sailor management gets very tedious very fast. Especially on the type IIa boat where fuel management is critical.
i run 2 shifts, and having to assign 2 sailors to engines every 12 hours during transitions kills the flow of the game imo. Timecompress for 12 hours, then pause when shifts change, assign sailors, timecompress for 12 hours, repeat.
-Lack of automation
I really wish they would add the ability to make me able to automate actions more, So i dont have to micromanage as much.
Like:
-Keeping sailors on critical stations like engines, and not the officer at all times.
-Setting red lights at dusk
-White light at dawn
-Turning on Blue light enables silent running and then turn off gyro and eletrical diveplanes.
-Turning on compressors after surfacing after a manual set depth dive
ect.
Then there are actions i would like to not have automated, like alarms
-Slots in the storage hold
IMO the storage in the cargoholds should only be limited by weight and/or a grid rather than a few single slots.

At first I stayed clear of this because the gaming community commonly referred to it as "The Sims - U-Boat Edition." Frankly, I was looking for more a sub sim with some... depth... and passed it by as a subsim with a gimmick that perhaps doesn't work well. But in spite of my initial misgivings and having fond memories of previous WWII subsims, I decided to take the plunge and try UBOAT.
I have to say it up front... I believe this is the best WWII sub sim since Silent Hunter 3.
Everything has a familiar feel to SH3, but with a fully modeled sub that you can walk bow to stern unhindered and interact with a multitude of stations, better graphical fidelity, decent audio, and good variety of mission types (Some not historical, but can be disabled if you aim for the monotony of "full real") in a "Dynamic Campaign." The customization options for difficulty are plentiful as well, ranging from highly automated "arcade-like" to hardcore sim which doesn't hold your hand and requires you to plot intercept courses, gather all information for torpedo firing solutions (which you can then input into a fully modeled, realistic, TDC), and manage any crises that can and will arise.
If I had one major complaint, I would levy it directly at the audio, which is a bit of a mixed bag. Thankfully, there are sound mods and full steam workshop integration. There are even mods which add many new ship types, both ally and enemy, to encounter in the world which can add a great deal of unpredictability.
The "Sims" aspect is present, but not as annoying to manage as I expected. Depending on how much micromanagement you wish to deal with, settings can be customized so that sailors and officers will, for the most part, go about their duties without your interference. However, if you want to get the best out of your crew, you can set specific schedules and tasks, assign specific sailors and officers to priority tasking, and even assign what priority level your crew should give to individual tasks on the boat. It can be either complex, or simple, your choice.
In addition, when combat starts and things begin to go wrong, you may see crew get hit and knocked out, ragdolling down, while your medic rushes over to help, carrying them to a bunk where they can be stabilized. An example of what can go wrong... I was on a patrol near Tobruk in poor weather and my watch crew were minimal because I thought the visibility was so poor, we'd never stumble across a warship. I was wrong. A corvette opened fire on us just after the watch sounded the alarm. I looked to the conning tower and was presented with the explosion of a cannon shell... which was close enough to one of the watchmen that it knocked him unconscious. The blast knocked him back, off the rear of the tower, bouncing off the deck, and into the water, where he drowned as I heard the calls for man overboard. I ordered the crash dive and we were able to get away safely, but lost two sailors in the process.
Another interesting example of what can happen: I recently intercepted a carrier group, at night in a light rain storm, and rushed at them on the surface at flank speed. The hope was to get into a good position, close enough to get hits on the fleet carrier with a full salvo. At great distance, I see star shells being fired to illuminate the area. I know they couldn't possibly have spotted me as I was still just over the horizon and could only see the tips of their masts. I then observe... explosions... jutting up over the horizon. It took me a moment to realize... another U-Boat had also intercepted the carrier group, and had scored at least two torpedo hits... and the destroyer escort was now hunting him. After diving, my sonarman confirmed this theory when he was able to identify the screws of an allied U-Boat... desperately trying to evade the destroyers.
Seeing things like this happen is something that sets UBOAT well apart from its predecessors. It can look and feel a little "janky" at times, but no more so than other sub sims on the market today or of yesteryear. It's a very well done sim, and if you are interested in the strategic, slower pace of submarine combat, it has a lot to offer.

This is some serious next level strategy, easy to play (kind of) difficult to master...but when you start getting good what a dopamine rush it is when you sink that first destroyer.

good stuff

After completing the campaign and unlocking every achievement, I can say that this game is really fun for casuals but annoying for hardcore people or just anyone trying to get the achievements.
The first 2-3 years of the campaign were really manageable and relaxed, except for the norwegian campaign which it felt really pressured and I did on the nick of time (the difficulty on the escort missions are really punishing too, wanting you to destroy +4 destroyers/corvettes numerous times throughout one single escort mission).
On the last part of the campaign where the enemies start having better radar and hydrophone, the amount of scripted air raids and aircraft spottings was extremely infuriating. You sail? Air raid. You resurface? Aircraft. You submerge and resurface again? Aircraft. You submerge and wait god knows how much? Aircraft again. It feels extremely scripted and makes a normal patrol feel endless.
It also feels exagerated having a sailor bleed out because my submarine is going at 2 knots and scrapping the sea bed...
Aside from all that, a couple of persistent glitches/bugs stood with me around the last 2 years of the campaign.
- GRT not resetting after a patrol (I literally ended the campaign with it saying 1.3 million tonnage).
- Persistent "damage" that doesn't fix when arriving at a port.
- Neglected interiors after going at 15000x speed... numerous times (doesn't go away).
- Bugged port arrival/exiting automatic waypoints. (The most common is the port close to Italy). If you don't pay attention you might as well ram against a shore.
Overall, the game is fun and has a lot of mechanics that you'll learn along the way. In my case, the campaign was so long that I had to take several breaks between months to finish it, so you have a lot to do. If you enjoy submarines, you might want to try it. If you like realism/difficulty, oh boy you're in for a ride.

At first i wanted to send British boats and their crew to the bottom of the ocean.
Turns out i like to run them down and order them to surrender the vessel because I am an honorable Captain.
I got a message one of my men had a daughter waiting for him at port, you bet your ass I promoted him and put him on a research mission deep inside friendly territory, so he can raise his child.
When Peters got killed i ordered as many Officers and crew onto the deck as i could, so we could shoot off a few rounds from the cannon and give him a proper send off...

Its more than boats.

U-Boat is a really good simulation game and the best sub sim made in quite some time. I’ve played a ton of the various Silent Hunter games (pre-Steam too) both vanilla and modded so I enjoy a good historical sub sim. For the most part U-Boat is decently historical although choices in play style might impact the authenticity a bit ( for example; allowing the player to determine when certain upgrades become available v. allowing automatic development which does seem to follow the historical development). There are mods available for players to choose from too.

The devs have been active with eleven or so patches since launch which bodes well. I’m hoping they continue to develop the sim adding in some of the later subs, more variety in enemy shipping and such.

The campaigns play really well and are a lot of fun. I play Dead is Dead and at the time of this review I’m now on my fourth crew having started from 01 September 1939. Current crew has survived until late January 1941 (longest so far lol). You have lots of starting options, including boat type, year, flotilla, and homeport.
Crew management is actually really well done (something unmodded SHIII would have benifitted from) and when you set up your game you can choose a micromanaging style to a hands-off style. I play hands-off but give direct orders when needed. You schedule crew work/sleep hours, set up tasks for officers and petty officers. I love the dive schedule as well. One neat touch is you can have your officers and ratings start the patrol clean shaven, and when you come back to port a lot of the boys will be sporting beards/facial hair.

Playing the game, alternating between map mode and the sea view is pretty awesome, especially with the sea state and weather effects which are pretty vivid and well done. Nav map table work is good, standing watch in the conning tower is cool. Actually being able to play in 1st person is great, given the freedom to move through the entire vessel- you definitely get the sense of cramped quarters.

There are multiple ways to set the sim up to run attacks- from all manual (you do all the work), to having the crew run everything from observation, gathering data, setting the TDC. Even if you have it set to ‘auto’ you can take control at any point.

The missions you are offered can vary, anything from mine laying, doing a clandestine spy drop on foreign soil, hunting specific targets, or amassing tonnage and I’m finding that quite cool- BDU will even order a change in patrol sectors, or order a reconnaissance mission etc.

Graphically the game is very well rendered. The inside of the subs looks photo-real, and my 3070 holds up well. If you choose “Darker Nights” from the gameplay options be forewarned the devs mean darker…like almost pitch black lol, although some of that is alleviated if you run redlights during the evening/night.

TLdr: To sum up, U-Boat is a solid sim, very enjoyable to play, historically accurate, with a lot of options available to play the way you want to. If you enjoy naval sims I’d highly recommend this game. Like any game however, YMMV.