Finished a career - final thoughts

[Eichenlaub]

Having recently finished my first career in SHIII, I thought this would be a good time to reflect back on the game from the perspective of a dynamic campaign. I played a patched stock game.

My setup: AMD Athlon 1.1 Ghz, 64 mb graphics card and 384 mb RAM. As you can tell, my pc is so poor I couldn't use the 3D interface, preferring the hotkeys instead.

Realism set at 79%. I didn't play DID as I'm not good enough yet and the limitations of my computer presented a challenge of its own.

Things I enjoyed:
-raiding ports
-3D interface (despite almost never using it, it still looked wonderful and added atmosphere)
-seeing my officers wearing their appropriate medals
-ordering my crew around when necessary
-building up my crew and assigning them to quarters according to my preferences (I have some issues with the way the crew is handled but the idea of crew management I certainly like)
-feeling the advances in the war; starting early and being near invincible and gradually having that feeling turned into despair at the Allied advancements
-the graphics!
-the general submarine operations of attacking convoys and lone merchants, escaping DD's and DE's

Things I did not enjoy much or not at all:
-sailing at high TC and suddenly getting "We're being damaged, sir!" and "Men down on the deck!" messages, followed by the instant death screen
-the INSTANT DEATH screen
-DC's being either almost harmless or complete one hit wonders

(those three annoyed me to no end)

-weird escort behaviour: from being completely oblivious to me whilst I'm shooting up a convoy, to being psychic and automatically detecting me at ridiculous ranges or knowing exactly from where an electric torpedo was fired
-Coastal Command that seems to send out their bombers in squadron formation - it's unrealistic to see 9 Catalina's gunning for you simultaneously
-the logs recording your career are no longer accessible once you finished your career
-limited dynamic campaign; only one type of mission and no historical operations, seemingly random patrol assignments, being rather isolated from the rest of the war and no real interaction with BdU and other U-boats
-Type XXI not living up to expectations (this might be just me though), considering how Addi Schnee handled it - I've never recreated that performance!

Maybe I'll think of something more later. Generally though I loved this game. I'm looking forward to expanding into GW and SHCommander as soon as I purchase a decent computer.

Kind regards,

Eichenlaub