Alright, let's get to the meat of this one
my points should be read as:
+ better than expected, = as expected, - problems, * notes
+ loading times - whoosh! As fast as the Type XVII
+ "strategic options" - work quite well and are a neat addition, even if they might appear somewhat gamey
+ "super crew" - see above. One thing that seems to be neat about them is that the limits on their use and their cost make them hardly a cheat of any kind - just a reward for your efforts, really.
+ a great IXD2 external model and cool new asian-themed ports
+ interface tweaks - new buttons and status indicators - very handy
= graphics improvements - there are definite engine optimizations on the plus side and the environment rendering is improved. For ROW fans however, good news and bad news. The bad news is that the rumored inclusion of ROW graphics in the game didn't materialize, and what it has is not nearly as good. The good news is that ROW is almost completely compatible out of the box and it will be very easy to make fully compatible.
= interior graphics - as expected, it's SHIII interiors with new textures/normal maps
= 3D crew - no more and no less interactive than SHIVs. On the plus side, the "informal" tropical dress is great.
= campaign - pure fiction on MANY points, but fun is to be had there
= Kriegsmarine grid on the map - on the plus side, it's much, much more detailed and better-implemented than SHIII's. On the minus side, it only extends to the add-on's operations area, which means it's not going to be so easy to implement the Atlantic campaign with a grid after all.
- German voice screwup - tsk tsk tsk. While ridiculously easy to fix, that's not something that should've been in the game.
- crew config - ??? for all the super-duper crewmen, there's NO officers on the boat by default for some reason besides a lowly-rated engineer. Too many crewmen for a typical IXD2, also. Easily fixed with mods (I even managed to add officers by default on my own), but someone will need to make these.
- no training, single missions or war patrols available for U-boats - a bit strange. You'd think at least some of these would be included to draw in a more casual crowd.
- some small glitches and things to be fixed here and there. I probably haven't seen them all, but one thing that is really annoying me right now for example is the sonarman reporting contacts while on the surface, absolutely everywhere in friendly waters (which drops the TC), and well before the ships even come into view.
*Some mod compatibility out of the box - skins, sounds. ROW, as I said, is almost fully compatible - just be sure NOT to install any ROW zones/effects (it makes your sub blow up if it tries to submerge). The only problem then is that some of the interior station cameras don't work correctly using ROW cameras, but that's even tolerable. The campaign structure for the German campaign is completely separate from the American, so I think this means that RSRDC can be adapted to 1.05 rather quickly. Thanks to some separation of structure between German and American campaigns/subs, except for some common files (like Library files) that are shared for all parts of the game, it should not be too complicated to adapt major mods like RFB and TM to 1.05.
So, is it worth my ten bucks?
Signs point to yes.
Screenshots later...