[Damo]

Silent Hunter 3 started it all for me, brought me here, got me fascinated by Uboats made me buy both SH4 and 5. SH4 was underrated and a great stepping stone between SH3's playability and SH5's graphics. Ultimately though, my favorite is SH3, because after years of modding and tweaking it is the most polished and feature complete version of Silent Hunter that exists and I doubt now whether it will ever be matched.

When talking about SH5, I feel that new players to the Silent Hunter series that start with 5 are at a distinct advantage to those that started with 3 or 4, simply because they don't have any expectations about what a 'good' subsim is, and after they manage to fight their way through the minefield that is modding the game they very likely end up with a game that provides them with much enjoyment. Unfortunately, for people like us who DO have those expectations and previous knowledge of the SH series it can be a frustrating experience to say the least, although things have improved immensely since the original 'console port' was dumped into stores like a unruly child disowned by it's uncaring parents.

See, I WANT to love SH5, I want to feel it's grip as I look at the clock ticking into the early hours and I gotta be up early. But once you get beyond the stunning visuals and past the truly magnificent efforts of the modders to fix so many issues, you are left feeling well, a bit empty. It's a shame that SH5 is both beauty and the beast as I'm sure everyone will agree with me that they WANT it to be better than the previous iterations, I mean that's what's supposed to happen right?

In SH3 you have SH3Commander that adds so much to the game, you feel attached to your crew, to their story, and feel a genuine loss if one of your crew are killed. Every time you dock after a successful patrol you can review the mission, promote crew members that performed well in some of your more memorable skirmishes and visit the nightclub and it all makes you feel like you are part of the war and that you make a difference. In SH5 none of this exists, apart from the odd promotion or finding out that the cook's violin strings have been cut. Again. No, you end your patrol and you just end up in the bunker to go back out again to do more of the same. It feels a lot less rewarding and featureless. Even while on patrol I'm left wanting by the sinking mechanics as one of the most enjoyable things for me in SH3 is watching my prey succumb to it's wounds and sink in often spectacular fashion, whereas in SH5 it all gets a bit samey and after you get a confirmed kill you sail right off without looking back. I could go on and on with comparisons of gameplay but you already know what I mean and I really wish I could tell you it's a worthy successor but as it stands, it just isn't, the depth isn't there (pun...).

Unfortunately for me, I will take edge of seat gameplay over stunning visuals any day and although I've recently set it up with Wolves of Steel 1.04 and have started a new career which so far is providing me with some enjoyable hours I have this niggling suspicion in the back of my mind that just around the corner it's going to turn around and frustrate me. That's not a good feeling to have in a game you want to love and it's a tainted experience, one that ultimately, will probably see me return to SH3 before long. Like I said though, SH3 has had many more years of modding love than SH5 so I will always hold a certain optimism that one day I will be able to hold SH5 in the same high regard as SH3 but it's going to take a lot, maybe too much for the existing code to handle. SH5 may have killed off the subsim genre for a very long time to come as far as future prospects are concerned, but that is solely the fault of Ubisoft.