Quote:
Originally Posted by bstanko6
@atleiker...
Is the game as easy as watching the videos? Or is it more complex? Mine comes tomorrow and I’m like a 39 year old kid waiting for Christmas!
|
To which videos are you referring? Do you play many boardgames? And if so are they wargames?
I don't find U-boat to be very complex rules-wise compared to board wargames. It's probably about average for a Eurogame. There have been rule updates to the game that are reflected in the app, but not in the rule book so go by the app for any discrepancies between the two.
Or do you mean complex as in there is a lot going on? If you are going to play solo, taking on all four officer roles, then you will be busy at every watch change getting your sailors into new positions, but after you get used to that it's mostly frantic action at the watch change, running at real time until you have your plan in place, then fast forwarding to a contact or a mechanical breakdown and dealing with that in real time. Then if you get located and have to deal with a depth charge attack things can get very nasty. The only time I felt overwhelmed in the game was dealing with damage and a hull breach, but there is a pause button if you need it. And after the first mission and pausing to get my bearings during damage control I haven't needed to pause since. That being said, doing the jigsaw puzzle to seal a breach hull is the stupidest mechanic I have ever seen in a game. The biggest problem with it is that once you've done the puzzle once or twice it's not a challenge to ge the hull breach closed in the time allotted anymore. I'm going to abandon the puzzle and just roll a die to determine if the patch is successful in the future. If you can't tell, I hate the damn puzzle.
I don't think anything about playing the game is complex, but it is challenging to do well at hard difficulty if you play strictly by the official rules. If you house rule activations for hydrophone and periscope operators then the game becomes ridiculously easy.
I find that missions take me about 3 to 4 hours playing solo. There is no in-mission save so if you can't complete at one sitting you may lose your progress if you minimize the app in your device. Be forewarned.
I see a lot of people at BGG talk about struggling with the attack disk and hitting targets. I can't imagine it being hard for anyone with SH3 experience. I tried the attack disk for my first attack and then abandoned it. It just isn't necessary for anyone with experience manually plotting an attack in SH3. I can tell the approximate AOB by sight in the app and can easily get my bow to the +/- 30 degree bearing required for the automated TDC solution. In all honesty attacking and sinking targets isn't nearly the thrill as in the subsims because it is just too easy. But the damage control and keeping the boat and crew alive are much more exciting than in the subsims, IMO anyway. So it's weird in that way. I almost hope for a depth charge attack just so an exciting event happens and I generate a narrative around it.
It's a busy game solo. I see complaints online about certain roles being boring when playing multiplayer, but I don't have any multiplayer opportunities so I can't speak to that.
I realize this whole post is sort of rambling. I hope you have an idea about complexity now though.