You didn't come to read about DRM, I'm talking about the game itself!
To be honest I'm quite impressed the new walking around the boat feature I found very interesting, to really have a good look around a U-Boat was refreshing from clicking a button and zooming to a new compartment of which there were three or so. In these new compartments you will find the crew, they look quite bored mostly. (True according to Das Boot) Although it is nice to see them, to hear some banter between them or some shift changes would be very welcome, also when the call of "Battle Stations!" goes up there is no movement, not a sudden rush to the stations, and repair teams standing by as I'm told happened.
The morale section has came under much scrutiny, this is when you can talk to the most important members of your crew i.e Chief Engineer, XO etc. I thought this feature was very immersive, your officers talking of back home gives a good sense of being alone, and that they are people as well as sailors. Perhaps a tree style conversation setup would be good here, as it would really add the RPG element that they seem to be going for here.
Graphically this game is immense, the water looks very real, especially if you have a system capable of playing this game when everythings turned up to eleven. The same goes for the subs, the ships and the docks, which were visually lacking in SH's of old. Stalking a tanker at two in the morning, torpedoing it, then to see the huge firework display through your periscope is very satisfying.
Which brings me on to the meat of a U-Boat sim, the attacks. I enjoyed entering all the data into the TDC before, I was confused in the new title, where exactly I enter the information, ends up you tell your XO whilst looking through the periscope, this is done by clicking on his underlined dialogue whilst targeting. Hits are just as fun, just as tense and just as rewarding as before.
I'm not going to say this game has no flaws, but for me nothing that can't be fixed with a few good patches. Whilst talking to your crew they can sometimes turn their backs to you for example. There is a Co2 bug where whilst surfaced your Co2 still rises sometimes, this is solved by saving, exiting to windows and opening the game again.
I came into the game on version 1.2, and have yet to experience any crashes or major game changing bugs. All in all I don't see what all the contempt is for, a good title although not as good as SHIII, it lacks that same wow this is breaking the mould factor, slightly more interaction and immersion (crews not jumping to battle stations) would help. It does need some fixing with more patches. (nowhere near as bad as ArmA II) DRM is not a problem as I'm always online, my suggestion to people who hate it is, get over it. Hate ubi not the game.