I still think the campaign was the best I've seen in a sub sim. I don't just mean the patrols but the whole shebang: The medals and promotions, transfers, the nightclub - the feel of being part of a world beyond you and your boat. The radio comms and the wolf packs just added to it. Winning a knights cross always felt like a real achievement.
The other thing I loved - and it's still not been done anywhere near as well in any of the Silent Hunter games (not even the first one,) was the damage management. There seemed to be a thousand different things that could get damaged and most of them could take a long, long time to fix.
And coming back into port with the pennants flying -
