As you might have gathered from my review to this point I am taking the game from the German side of things. But that is not the only flaw in the game unfortunately. This is enough to keep anyone entertained for days but there is no option to put the entire German navy against a few of the British biggest ships or to take on one of those German heavy cruisers with some British destroyers. All you get is the handful of scenarios within the game and the campaign. What I do miss in this game is custom scenario builder. It takes over an hour at least to complete a single battle like that. There is an option that allows for battles to run in real time to add that final level of realism. Manoeuvring to get your broadsides onto your opponent and steering your ships that are taking a beating out of harms way keeps you occupied and entertained. Even with such a bland strategy combat is fun. Always have more big ships then your opponent. I am not a naval strategist and I cannot comment on how well the battles represent the niceties of actual naval combat during the Second World War.
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It is best to leave everything but the plotting of the course and the choosing of your targets up to the computer since it can handle that very well and it leaves you free to direct the course of the battle. As I said earlier many of the functions onboard a ship can be manually controlled or left to the computer. Ships guns have accurate range and ships take damage to specific sections so damage will begin to diminish the ships fighting capability even though it is not about to sink. If left uncontrolled fires will spread and (obviously) take on to much water and your ship will sink or capsize. When a ship on fire or taking water these teams race to the scene and start combating the fire and plugging the hole. Damage can be repaired by damage controls teams. Winds, light level, distance and rain are just a few of the many variables you have to content with while fighting. This leaves a lot processing power to calculate all the variables that are in the simulation. No fancy graphics here just the bare minimum you need to control your ships. A dull top down view shows your ships and the enemy ships that are visible to you. Your ships can travel much faster then the British convoys so you can catch them fairly easily (convoys have to travel at the speed of their slowest ship).īattle takes place on a separate level. During the course of the game you get reports of convoy locations and you can then send your task forces in pursuit of those convoys. Once your ships have reached the Atlantic their job is just beginning. Only then they would reach the open waters of the Atlantic. Sailing out of Kiel the Germans had slip past the British main naval base at Scapa Flow (on the North tip of Scotland) and past their patrols around Iceland. As you attempt to do so you will see just what kind of a precarious mission that was. With those limited resources you need to take on the mighty Royal Navy and sink as many ships as you can. What you are left with as the Germans is a very small amount of heavy ships and a handful of destroyers. The computers of that time had only very limited memory capacity and tough decisions had to be made. The ships the Germans captured in their conquest of Europe are also never added to your total. Many of their cruisers are nowhere in sight. The Germans especially have gotten the short end of the stick. Not even all surface ships have been included for either the British or the Germans. Not that submarines do not have a role to play but they are handled by the computer and you are notified only of the results. The German U-boats are uncontrollable in the game and that is pity. GNB-NA focuses solely on the big surface ships in the war. Luckily for us most of the most mundane tasks in GNB-NA can be left to the computer (like the aiming of those guns). You control one of the fleets in all its facets, from the grand strategy down to the aiming and firing of the guns. Great Naval Battles of the North Atlantic (GNB-NA) is set during World War II and covers the convoy engagements between the surface fleets of the British Royal Navy and the German Kreigsmarine.