welcome.
My advice is, don't play sh3.
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don't play any ubisoft game.
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unless it's modded. SH3 has some great mods which you will want to check out. living silent hunter(
https://www.lsh3.com/) just recently published a new version (yes. for a 15 year old game). They have working floodgates in the harbors, a modelled KaiserWillhelmKanal (channel between Baltic sea and north sea), tons of new radio messages, simply... a whole game on top of sh3.
GWX is also very popular, but someone else would have to make the case for that, as I never played it.
Silent Hunter is a very slow game, so I would not waste a lot of time "checking out the base game first" trust us: It's better with mods.