Outstanding rendition of Naval Combat. Somewhat realistic, but well balanced to keep it fun.
This game, however, includes enough strategy and tactics to satisfy by inner Admiral, while at the same time balancing it against fun gameplay.
The gameplay, especially in mulit-player is a blast.. You can drive around in everything including subs, PT boats, destroyers, cruisers, battleships, carriers, fighters, dive bombers, torpedo bombers, and heavy bombers. On the ship units you can work the engine and rudder as wel as take control of one of several weapons systems, and direct your crew to damage control. As a flight sim, its very simplified, but good. The flight model is in 3D so you can fly in the vertical as well as the horizontal planes, and there is a big thrill to diving down onto a weaving enemy carrier, or droping a torpedo and then pulling up just in time to clear the deck.
Since you often have command of many ships and planes of different types, strategy comes into play which takes you to the map view. It gives you a good picture of what is going on, and becomes a great tool for jumping into units that need your personal attention. You can group your ships into formations, and try to maintain a position that gives you an advantage against your enemy. For example, it takes weapon masking into account, so that if you want to shoot at a ship that is directly in front of you, only your forward guns can engage, so you want to try to keep your ships sideways to your enemy so that all guns can shoot (which, in turn, makes you an easier target for torpedos).
The graphics are also excellent. The ships are modeled very well, and each of the ships weapon systems move and fire independently. As ships take damage, they catch fire, have their superstructure blown to pieces, and they even sit down in the water and/or list to one side. This makes it a lot of fun to have two battleships get side by side and blast the tar out of each other. Explosions are nice also, there is a very gratifying feeling when your battleship's big guns score a direct hit on a pesky destroyer and blow it to pieces.
The sound is nice. The big guns provide a nice tump when they fire, but the best sound is when a B-17 lays a string of 450lb bombs down the length of a ship. Nice dramatic score, sound like it came from "Victory in the Pacific".
If you are just going to do the single player campaign, the value is a little low, as its pretty short. It is also lacking a scenario editor, which would be nice. I expect that there will be some downloadable content to help with this. However, if you play multiplayer, the value is high. There are only about six maps for multiplayer, but they play differently every time due to the different strategieis that your opponents might take.
Overall, just an outstanding, and well done game. I just wish there was more of it.