When I purchased this game, it was a good game with the potential to become a great one. The custom battles using custom ships was awesome, and even without a campaign or research, it made for an excellent experience. Since then though, it has consistently grown worse and worse. Developers keep adding features that are broken, and instead of fixing anything, just continue adding more features and ignoring them. You can actually see pretty easily how much they've failed to address bugs- take a look at the bug patch notes. You will see the same exact issue appear and say its solved ten or twenty times (no exaggeration, seriously, do it with anything like the victory point bugs or turret turn bugs and you'll see it having been solved 20+ times). And then the developer dismisses feedback, even closing and locking threads and banning players because they are "toxic" or "negative." Well, yes. Of course they are. You ignored them. They paid you money, and you decided their opinions of the game didn't matter. The developer has shown no ability to learn from their mistakes, and every release has made the game less and less playable. Save your money. Do NOT buy this game. Wait and see if its improved if it ever is fully released. It's pretty clear the direction its headed (RECENT REVIEWS: Mixed (92) ALL REVIEWS: Mostly Positive (2,289)). This is an immense disappointment, as the game has everything needed for greatness, but has thrown it all away.

This is a great sandbox for you to play out your WWI-WWII naval combat fantasies, at least the ones that don't involve aircraft. I really like how much insight into the mechanics of ship design and naval combat by playing around with it.
As a game, it's got very serious issues. The "campaign" is like a homeless beggar's version of heart of iron. You got a map, you can click on some tech research, you just keep clicking "next turn" until a battle appears, so you can go and actually play the game.

Even when you're in battle it can be frustrating for example is f the enemy's ship is faster than yours then there's no point in even trying, just quite the battle. This is because you can ONLY win by sinking the enemy ship within a time limit, and that's obviously impossible when the enemy is faster than you and just keeps running away. If this was real life it wouldn't be a decisive advantage because there's land, there's crew, there's supply, there's friendly forces etc, many ways you could potentially engage a faster ship. But in this game, you're just on infinite ocean with a 2 hour timer, if you're even 0.1knots slower you're screwed.

I also feel the degree of control you have is uncharacteristic of a game like this, you cannot control individual turrets, you cannot control salvo sizes, probability of hit depends on a lot of factors yes but they're static for any given condition, you do not walk your salvos closer and closer to an enemy ship as you dial in the precise range. if you keeping the same distance, your chance to hit the opponent is exactly the same on the first shot or the 10th. You also have no control over damage control, things just happen automatically, you cannot flood compartments to right your ship, in fact ships don't really have a leaning problem, they're either sunk or they're not sunk, you cannot sink by leaning too much on one side.

It's a niche sandbox for those curious of naval combat, not so much of a fun game for everyone.

I cannot, in good conscience, recommend this game right now. They are rushing out updates in an effort to "finalize" UA:Dreadnoughts. The development of UA:D is going to cease at the end of June/beginning of July. This game is NOT ready, and will NOT be ready by the deadline. These rushed updates are breaking every core mechanic of gameplay, rendering the Campaign useless.

-GDP is so unrealistic that you're not capable of maintaining fleets larger than ~10 ships of ANY era. If you exceed this unrealistically low number of ships, you WILL start accumulating negative income, resulting in bankruptcy for your Nation. Not to mention that the AI is still capable of maintaining ~200-300 ships while your feeble USA is stuck with a handful of scraps.

-The bonuses during Campaign Battles is insane. I thought they were ridiculous before, but now we're getting 2,900% bonuses during battles. What? I can be a decade more advanced than (enter AI Nation here), and still get my fleets blown out of the water by obsolete ships. I'm not even talking about a close match either.
For example; Player Fleet of 25 ships (various classes), and 25 AI ships of the exact same Class and number as the Player's Fleet respectively, with the only difference being that the AI is 10 years behind the Player in terms of Technology. The AI will absolutely obliterate the Player Fleet. No contest. The Player will have better Armor Protection, better Armaments, Radar, etc. DOES NOT MATTER.

-The Weather System... My goodness. I appreciate the amount of work and effort put into making the Battles more entertaining, but the bugs that came with it are absurd. Again, you can be a lot more advanced Technologically than the AI, but radar is rendered practically useless during Storms/Fog/Rough Weather. The AI will come within 1km before you're able to establish enemy contact, but as soon as you do, here comes a plethora of torpedoes. The AI still see's the Player Fleet at normal ranges, and is able to decimate the Player due to this bug. This has been an ongoing problem since the Weather System was first released, and they're still struggling to fix it, among a few other bugs brought forth by Weather.

-Since V1.37R3 (I think?), Player Fleets are incapable of returning to their home ports. This bug was fixed previously, but reintroduced. Quite annoying. (now seems to be fixed: Patch 1.3.9)

-Still haven't given us (and probably have no plans to) implement a way for the Player to continuously scroll either left, or right on the Map. This should've been a basic feature. Another major annoyance that could easily be avoided.

-Shipbuilding is still bugged. They've only fixed the bug that registers as ship as 'overweight' when returning to Campaign View half a dozen times or so now. Still isn't fixed. The bug that prevents the Player from placing certain turrets on mounts/superstructure that should/could clearly fit, is still present and unchanged.

-Still missing a VAST majority of Nation Hulls, Armaments, and superstructures for hulls. Most models are universal, making some Nation Campaign playthroughs pointless if you're someone who wants to focus on Historical Accuracy.

-Still haven't given us Steam Workshop. (will be a huge disappointment to the community, and personally, will guarantee I won't purchase another product from this company.) I've had enough of the broken promises. I've followed this Team for a while now, and they always stumble and fall towards the end. UA:D was the last chance for me in regards to future purchases from this company.


There's more I can list, but by now I think I've made my point. This game is being rushed to completion, and it's simply not ready. This development team has done this with their entire Ultimate Admiral series of games. It's probably my own fault for giving them the benefit of the doubt, due to this Development Team taking on such a venture as Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts. It's the first game of this type, and I appreciate this Team opening up an avenue for further development of games using this type of gameplay. However... This development team is taking the wrong approach. Instead of pushing through and making this game unmatched by future endeavors, they're going to pump out whatever last updates/bug fixes they can, and then only providing "maintenance patches" going forward once every year or so.

Unless things change, I will not recommend this game to anyone. If it goes on sale in the future for half off or more, then maybe. Currently, this game is not worth the price they're asking. Not sorry.

Also, Hi Mr Forum Moderator 'Dartis'! I know you enjoy going through peoples profiles when they comment in the Discussions Forums. I also know you enjoy censoring anything "negative" that any other sane/normal person would take as constructive criticism. This Steam Review is just for you. I, as many others, dislike being "warned" for comments that are, more or less, bug reports. Your incredibly fragile feelings is in no way, shape, or form grounds to delete, censor, warn/ban someone. I've still got those screenshots of you talking down to people, if you still want them.


https://imgur.com/VPYjhAr

https://imgur.com/26kGFM9

https://imgur.com/3LUZBJg

https://imgur.com/mcNbPps

https://imgur.com/5dLSdVU

https://imgur.com/12WwOfI

https://imgur.com/eFJwV5u

https://imgur.com/gNniCwk


Update: Aug 31, 2023
Welp, I done did got banned from the Steam Discussion Threads. Dartis is on a rampage with banning anyone who dares mention a single problem with the game. He'll smear you, demean you, and then ban you so you're not able to respond. He's a shining example of the type of people working for Game-Labs/Stillfront Group. Crazy.

https://imgur.com/a/SKOBZwH

Another unfortunate fellow who was banned along with me due to Dartis' ultra-sensitive feelings and ego..

https://imgur.com/a/K7wTj7L

I'm also no longer allowed to comment under my own review. I find that to be hilarious.
You know,... the clitoris has over 8,000 nerve endings, but it's still not as sensitive as Dartis' feelings.

672 Hours Since Steam Release, and 100's when it was Private.

I cannot recommend. It is a broken game currently, As many have stated it has POTENTIAL. one day. as off June 2023 it is not today.

I will continue to play this game as i feel like I'm helping with bug reports. I'm sure I'm suffering from sunken cost fallacy. As they don't seem to be listening (or they can't fix the issues).

This game is confused between trying to be a top-down strategy game and a third person war game. They want you to have some agency by letting you build your ships but then taking that agency away by randomizing everything away from the player but basic movement of ships (and even that may not be directly under your control)

I DO NOT CARE about appearance, currently the developers need to be concentrating on game mechanics and game play (keyword being "PLAY" as this is a "GAME"). Currently they have been concentrating on weather affects and graphical issues, not on the mechanics behind those aspects. Alot of rushing to get to a finish line while their pants are falling off around their ankles.

Ship Building: This is the games greatest strength. It will be great fun for some time as you build your ships, the trailer makes you believe that, until you realize you can only really build your ships in 1 or 2 prescribed ways and that the LEGO blocks ONLY have 2 studs for a 5 inch piece. You used to be able to edit the game files to actually have "FUN" but they took that away. (the best word of mouth/ free press this game had online was when you could actually build ships no matter how ridiculous)

Campaign: IS BROKEN. Basically you have NO agency on what happen here. The AI/System/Game Mechanics has full control of what happens and when you can, you merely suggest what you would like to do. You can for instance build ships based on your income. which is hidden from you and that you cannot improve.

You might want to conquer enemy lands but only after you've pissed them off enough for them to declare war (you can't, only the AI may do this) then you may place ships near those lands and then start an invasion. now while you are doing this the AI WILL start invading by land ( a event you cannot do, and is done only at random for you but not at all at the frequency that the AI can). After a period of time despite meeting all the conditions for the invasion they will RNG the victory (60/40 split against you in my experience) so it may take some time to capture a single location.

This is of course IF the AI doesn't interfere with un-skippable events that you will almost always not be able to escape, and will have to play thru before you can even decide to start each turn. If you had a fleet set up with 1 or 2 battle ships, and 6-10 supporting classes in your battle group expect to be met with a completely equal enemy force comprising the ENTIRE enemy fleet (or so it seems) of 80-90 ships, 5 of which will be battleships (no big deal really), the rest being torpedo boats and light cruisers.. your game play will be dieing to torpedo spam or running away.. get used to running away... its really the only game mechanic you actually get to use.

Now that of course is just the beginning, because there are 4 more un-skippable events that you will have to do. finally after you fleet has been decimated FOR you, you may go home and GET GOOD NEWB, because these are your problems and not the game. So you will put your income into researching new stuff, putting some money into training and your supply fleet (WHICH is directly connected to your GDP so you should just MAX that out turn 1) NONE of which matters. No matter what country you chose, (because the AI will out-research, out-expand, and move all of it's ships better then you ever will) your country will ALWAYS be in last place no matter what. EvEN if you are winning.. let me explain

In the end the only way to win is to NEVER end a war. No matter how good/bad you've done, just keep it going, eventually they will go broke, Does that mean you get their lands? NO it just goes to "UNGOVERNED" and all the Other AI's gobble it all up. YOU don't get that opportunity. SO you rinse and repeat until all the enemy go bankrupt OR the campaign ends at the set end date. Which is how every campaign ends the world end after WW2. time stops no matter what and you must start over.

You will never start a fight, you cannot select an enemy fleet to attack, only the AI can do these things, you have almost no control over what happens in this game and that will be a continuing theme.

GAMEPLAY: ALSO BROKEN
See this is where the DEV's seem to be confused between wanting World of Warships levels of user interaction, but with the TOP DOWN grind of statistics and percentages and RNG the player has NO CONTROL over.

It really comes down to an "expectation" of reality. You expect that despite never being in WW1 you should be able to point at a ship with your 5 inch gun at a ship 100 yards away and hit it. But what you don't know is it's -12.4 for slightly windy, -3.5 for sun in your eyes, -45 for slight chop in the waves, +22 cause you ate your wheaties, -2 for indigestion from sea sickness, etc, leaving you to absolutely roll 1 every time you shoot. Now you can research better toys, and you can put more into training, and IF your ships survive they go from trained to eventually veteran. The stats are what control everything, and so that expectation of reality GOES OUT THE WINDOW, when even at veteran the RNG is not in your favor.

See in "World of Warships" you expect some RNG in the spread of shot/torpedoes, but YOU aim where the shots go, so you make all the calculation, and the RNG is calculated in flight and at the target, in UA it doesn't matter if you do it, it's was already calculated before the gun fired. They MATHED the PLAY out of the game If your gun has 1.3% chance to hit, that means you will watch 98.7 shots go into the water (mysteriously) around the target and despite length of time that number will NOT get better. Not in any distinguishable amount.

In "War at Sea" you will watch your ships AIM at a target AT distance, bracket the target and progressively get better until the target sinks or escapes, that is pleasurable to watch as well as play. in UA you can aim your entire fleet at the optimal range at a single enemy ship for 20 real world minutes and MILLIONS of shots but a few will go into the drink. (into a spot just to the left or right of the ship like a laser) those few will be RNG'd into ricochets, or partials. it is FRUSTRATING to watch and play..

It gets to the point that paranoia seeps in and you start writing things down, and comparing enemy stats to your stats and finding out that IN A VACUUM the AI will win out every time. because, they can see thru smoke, and they know the second you fire torpedo's because you SEE them start evasive actions despite the LOG not saying they have seen them, Also you have 12 ships and it is NOT easy, no matter how organised you are to keep up with all of them, the AI on the other hand it always maneuvering like NEO in the matrix, you keep shooting, and he keeps dodging. You will only get notified of approaching torpedoes until it's almost too late. Yes, you can most likely do something once, but you have 12 ships and you can't catch them all.. DESPITE ALL THE ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, you will figure out to just smash your ships into point blank range so that you can actually hit. Going against ACTUAL navel combat you will win most engagements. But it doesn't matter because you have to do this 3 more times in the same way, OR turn your ships around and wait for merciful release when the "leave battle" button appears.

I don't care about graphical jitters, or ships/parts mis-aligned to themselves or environment,, The mechanics are what matter. If the GAME i fun to PLAY it does NOT matter what it looks like.

This game is best described as "HAS POTENTIAL" right now it has the potential to be a very bad game.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Update, 3/2/2023. After about a month after giving this review, I have been banned by the devs. here is the message i was given;

You have been permanently banned from the Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts Hub.
You were banned by a Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts developer.
Reason: "Continued insults to the developers"

I have never said anything about the devs themselves, only the game. I was never warned either. So, like a many others here who have given bad reviews, I have been banned, lol. So, again, avoid this game at all costs. The company is toxic.

Original detailed review below. Note, i specially state its not the devs fault, lol.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I know you are asking, how can someone who has played 2100 hours make a negative review. It actually much higher than that, i have played, tested and assisted this game where i could way before it was on steam. I would read this review very carefully before I would buy this.

The issue is, the campaign is boring. I characterize it as watching TV. Very few things of consequence you can control. Its sort of like the Goat Simulator on the high seas, except the joke is on us. The whole, you are an admiral thing cracks me up. as if an admiral would be aiming guns or allowed to position a fleet to eventually cause you to get into a war. So can we please dispense with that tired trope?

It makes no sense to add elements to a game, and its a game folks, that the player merely watches pass by. A partial list of things in the campaign that we get to be spectators on;

- GDP for the most part, only impacted by transport slider, which is a one time adjustment, ohhh, how fun.

- your government type. Why implement this if the player has no say or influence. Not even really clear, even to me with thousands of hours playing, what if any impact this element even has.

- Oil, not important in the slightest. You can see they intended to have us fight over it, but its dropped on the map and that was it. This is exactly what a shoe string game like this looks like.

- land invasions, why have them? They don't matter for anything and the player has no influence over it

- Research....Well, you can control this to some extent, but imagine needing a MK 3 12 in gun and your labs tell you they don't know how to do this but here, use this new MK II 13 in gun, we are sure you will like it. So even here, player control of a core element of the game, which is what makes games fun in case you forgot, is not very high.

- sea invasions, can be done, but have no point, since they don't improve your GDP and on average, "COST" you VPs, even if you win a majority of them. Even better, you cant seem to impact chance of success, at least no one has figured it out yet. So best to not use them.

- Mines, nice pop up box, its just a HP tax on fleets. adding Destroyer may or may not help, not clear at all, but not an element that you much control over. It impacts movement decisions not one iota.

- Subs, Yawn....Just read about it in the turn summary, or not, nothing to do here. I just close the window since there is no decision to this. You can add depth charges, but again, not clear if they do anything. But subs are a annoyance more than anything not something you have to plan around.

- Task force management. Something an Admiral would be doing, is nothing in this game. Does not matter except to get tonnage in a particular sea area. Yawn.....

-No individual port expansion, something an Admiral might control, is not there. So, the importance of the map is very minimal. You cant Island hop your way to victory, since you cant do anything with captured ports, Yawn....

- Then there is the most awesome diplomacy, pretty much completely broken. I love the design decision to say, "Oh, lets make a very important element to game, out of the direct control of the player....Wow, I bet they will love reading about all that the AI is doing that you cant control". The quick fix of adding the influence button allows a very small amount of control before world war breaks out, but you cant really do much after all the AIs are fighting you or others. Again, its just watch and enjoy...not!

- Minor nations, so at the design meeting i can see how this discussion went. "OK, guys, I have a great idea the players will love. Lets waste half of the maps space on nations that they have zero ability to do anything with. They will really enjoy all the random, but not relevant, AI actions that goes on with all these minor nations....". Would have been a fun meeting to be in.

- Many other decent ideas that were implemented with a thinnest veneer of fun.....

No one is asking for HOI here, but these are the very elements to even a basic strategy game. I believe Game Labs intended to implement a full game here, but when they got bought by a low quality shovel ware company, they got their resources cut down to a single developer. Now what we have is a decent tactical game, but with a mission dispatch system attached to it called a campaign. Nothing more. If they don't unlock modding soon, this game is deader than a door nail.

In the time, 5 months or so as of this writing, remaining before they abandon the game to "Make stuff we are really going to like", there is zero chance that the dev can address even a portion of this. So, i can pretty much guarantee that we wont see any serous improvements here. Remember, the company that now owns Game Labs is a "Mobile and Browser" game acquisition company. Also known as shovel ware company. They claim all these features, and technically they are there, but just implemented in the most superficial way possible, just like you would expect from a shovel ware company. There is also a zero percent chance i will check out your "New most awesome" stuff after watching this dumpster fire for last few years.

at $10 or less the game is worth it for the quick battle game, which is decently fun. But the lost opportunity here makes me sick. The campaign is trash and not worth playing. I would have dropped the campaign a year ago and focused on the tac game and if it did well enough come back with a campaign DLC or something that could be properly resourced.

The only hope for the campaign is modders if ever allowed. And for everyone saying those of us long timers who are now giving our negative reviews are somehow Russian trolls, A few thousand hours of game time is a lot of investment for a Russian troll :)

I am extremely sad to not recommend this game but, honestly, it feels like it should still be early-access. There is an insane amount of meat missing from the bones, and a whole bunch of general dysfunction and clunkiness that bespeaks poor design.

First, the good stuff;

The game does an excellent job acting as a sandbox for steam warship combat. It is genuinely fun to build out ships, trading off armor, range, shell size, etc. The game does a truly great job of showing the various trade-offs for different design strategies and their vulnerabilities. The naval academy in particular is both challenging (perhaps a bit too challenging for most newbies though) and engaging, and it generally allows you to solve problems in your own way rather than railroading you down a specific path (though it does that too sometimes, when it's trying to teach a mechanic.)

This is a great game for simulating and learning about battleship combat.

However, that combat system really breaks apart quickly when you try and manage more than one ship - the battle line system is restrictive, poorly implemented, and often buggy;

-Ships commanded to sail abreast instead form a staggered line.
-Damaged ships turn *towards* enemies when moving to the back of the battle line, getting even more chewed up, rather than hiding behind their counterparts while running away.
-The "avoid torpedoes" function causes entire lines to loose their minds completely whenever a torpedo is launched anywhere on the map.
-The "Avoid ships" logic apparently doesn't apply to friendly ships, leading to constant collisions if lines ever have to cross one another - which is inevitable if you have one line "screen" another, because it will split the line into two lines on either side of the line being screened.
-The screen and scout functions both are poorly implemented, both because of the aforementioned "split the ships onto both sides of the line, causing collisions both ways," and because - whenever an enemy ship is spotted - the screening ships stop behaving like and actual screen and instead go running off to attack the enemy ship, regardless of how far away it is, leaving the line they were supposed to be acting as a screen for completely defenseless.

The collision bug I mentioned is particularly annoying because the game doesn't actually do trajectory calculations on its shots; it just uses a probability system that includes buffs - including a massive one for ships in close proximity. The way this winds up working out in practice is that you'll have two ships that are basically impossible for the enemy to hit at a certain range (i.e. a pair of torpedo boats) but the minute they're next to one another, the chance of them being hit goes through the roof, and often is *much* greater than the chance of hitting a ship many times larger than both boats put together. Given that the avoid ship mechanic is completely broken for friendly ships, your fleet's AI will happily make massive targets for the enemy player to hit as you try and move your lines around.

The end result of this is that large battles - that should be the most interesting, engaging, and exciting - are instead obnoxious and stressful exercises in micromanagement.

Something easier to fix but still annoyingly broken is torpedoes; you can set them to fire in "aggressive," "normal," or "save" modes, but in all three your ships will generally fire them too far away from their targets, unless you adjust the ships's course so that their torpedoes don't have a clear bearing on the target until they're within spitting distance. Though, if you wait too long, your ships just won't fire their torpedoes *at all* - which is particularly annoying if you have a ship in a close-quarters knife fight with another that, finally, has a torpedo tube pointed at the enemy, and just refuses to fire it regardless of the firing setting.

One thing that isn't broken, but is very poorly implemented is the "enemy smoke spotted" feature - first, it only gives very general directions to you as to the direction the enemy is, in a way that borders on uselessness. Second, it is clearly broken on things like convoy missions, because right after killing the convoy escort, it'll report the sinking escort's position as the direction of enemy smoke, rather than the actual convoy itself, and finally, it doesn't work *at all* if you have your fleet completely split; do you mean that there was smoke spotted to the northwest of my slow, lumbering battleships, or to the northwest of my division of torpedo boats that are now out of visual sight of the battleships because they've been trying to chase down the enemy convoy for the last fifteen minutes? What would work far better would be for a specific ship to be designated as the one that spotted the smoke, and for the game's GUI to put a marker around it indicating the direction of the smoke spotted by that exact ship.

One final problem with the battle system is that the location never changes; you are always fighting over what seems like the same empty patch of the mid-Atlantic. There are no islands, reefs, sandbars, shallows, or any other geographical features of interest, which is a real loss because many of these battles *should* be taking place near port facilities, and having something like an actual coast with hazardous shallows would open up a whole fascinating menu of tactical options.

So, in sum, the actual battle system - while fun - often feels half-built. The campaign system, on the other hand, is a cobbled-together mess that actively undermines itself.

To start with the very basics, the campaign map is not continuous; it ends on both sides a little bit to the east of Saipan, meaning that it is impossible to ever see the mid-pacific as a single area. This sucks, and it's worth noting that I cannot think of another game from the last twenty years that sucks in this specific way.

Another simple campaign map problem that comes up is that there is no way to manage stacked fleets, and the game *produces* stacked fleets as a result of the mechanism for splitting fleets; if you select part of one fleet and tell them to go somewhere else, the game creates a new fleet on top of the existing fleet, meaning that you can only select the fleet that you told to move somewhere else until that fleet has finally moved.

Those are both just the result of not thinking things through; far more frustrating is the nature of how combat works in the game. You cannot tell one fleet to directly engage another - all you can do is move your fleet so that its area of control overlaps the fleet that your're trying to fight - and then hope that on the next turn combat will ensue. Unfortunately, it often doesn't, meaning that you can find yourself unable to hunt down a fleet that's destroying your transports, or unable to engage - let alone destroy - a fleet that's blocking a key waterway like the red sea. The fact that the game offers no options for you to intentionally engage a specific enemy fleet is a serious problem in a game ABOUT NAVAL COMBAT.

More broadly, the campaign's economic system actively disincentivizes wars; GDP growth is not improved by acquiring new territory (GDP growth is worth another rant in and of itself but, briefly, there's almost nothing you can do to change it), and your GDP growth rate drops to zero (or negative) when you're at war. Given that the size of your GDP determines how quickly you do research, this means that a nation that never was a war will *always* be more technologically advanced than any of its peers, and will always have greater financial resources than them. To summarize, the campaign incentivizes you to never declare war. In a game whose whole selling point is naval combat. Right.

There's more that could be said but, briefly, the campaign mode is spectacularly bad, all the more so because it could've been so good.

These devs suck and are predatory. They are banning anybody who criticizes the game.

This game had huge potential and I was super excited, especially after the last huge update. Sadly, they just released out of Early Access. The game is still full of bugs, short on features, and just feels empty. All the potential shot. I am sure they will do small updates to fix bugs but we will no longer see any large new features added which is really sad. Based on them rushing out of Early Access I cannot recommend this game because it fall short in content.

Also the devs were banning people in the forums.

Update: It took a whole 15 minutes and I got banned because I posted my unhappiness with them about the full release. I did not say anything bad about them or the game other than I thought it was too early. These devs just proved they are scum.

Update as of 5/4/2023: Apparently the response to them leaving EA was so bad that they had to make a post justifying themselves. Still tons of people being banned from the forums for any sort of criticizing. To their credit they did have a mini road map which is only to the summer. Majority of the stuff is bug fixes which is funny because in their post they said there wasn't any. They will be adding 'dynamic' weather. They added a couple hulls. They made boarders on land more readable. That is about it so far.

Response to Jack: I would've but they banned me from the forums and for some reason that does not allow me to comment on this review or any other review. Some features I would've liked to see it better control over your navies/squadrines, better minor faction diplo, coastal interaction aka if you fight near a coast it actually would be in map, etc. There is a lot they could've done instead of focusing their attention on banning people who liked and supported the game.

Response to Esmarix: My exact quote is:
Full Release!
Jan 25 @ 10:32am - In Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts Events & Announcements
Tons of bugs, not enough content or features. Sad. This game had potential.

Response to Fellington: Yeah 119 hours over the last year. The time it was in early access. If you read what I wrote then you would understand why it is a negative review. Hours does not translate to somebody liking a game or the current state of a game.

I honestly cant recommend this game to anyone. "But you have over 500 hours" you say? Correct, i do, i dont tend to write reviews for games unless i feel strongly one way or another or i think theres a problem. The only reason im still playing this game, is because i refuse to play WOWS any further.

This game was released way to early, and it shows, as an example and just off the top of my head, here are some issues:

1. AI using nothing but submarines late game, meaning theres nothing to fight and the game becomes a clickfest as they no longer build surface ships to meet in battle.

2. UI that takes up half the screen for no reason, and no option to disable tool tips, the tooltips themselves cover up other information you might be trying to view.

3. Game optimatization is just awful, my computer blows the requirements out of the water and the game starts chugging after 20 years of in game time or earlier. Battles with 40+ Ships become a lag fest for no reason.

4. Awful pathfinding in combat, terrible formation handling, and even worse handling of damaged ships. Want a screening formation to start following another formation? Expect your ships to collide with each other, why is this a thing? Ship gets damage? Expect it to turn right into the enemy formation as it tries to reposition itself at the back of your formation, theres no way to prevent this either it just happens, so i hope you pay attention.

5. No ability to make formations/divisions before combat starts. Thats right! you cant make formations, arrange your ships how youd want them, or even decide what kind of formation they will have until after the battle starts.

6. Teleporting fleets half way across the world map so they can engage in combat, even when they arent near their location.

7 Fleets not returning to their homeport for repairs, i(as germany) had ships end up near China and Japan and id never put ships there.

8. Bugs with retrofitting ships, inability to add new guns and barbettes among them.

9. Bugs with shipbuilding, ship borders that prevent adding weapons/Superstructures etc that prevent some of the better equipment from being used on ship designs.

10. No ability to use older gun marks, thus preventing some older ships from being able to be retrofitted.

11. Illogical Naval Invasions, i hope you enjoy loosing a naval invasion despite having more than 10x the required tonnage in the encounter zone!

12. The Economy, theres three sliders and random events that pop up, you really have no control over it otherwise.

13. The Alliance system is a mess right now, between getting pulled into wars i didnt want to be in, even though i had no allies beforehand, and the inability to break them until after a year, you can end up fighting 3-4 countries at the same time the game forces you into the mess and then your allies all settle for peace.

14. Theres so many missing historical ship hulls, and so many ship hulls that get reused and just..re labelled its painful to see.

After another 189 hours heres some more issues:

15 . Theres a maximum number of ships you can build(1052), If you hit this number, you cant build any more ships, ever, in that save, it corrupts the save.

16. Random declarations of war without any warning at all.

As a note, i fully expect to get banned for the negative review, as the devs ban players who post negative reviews.

Made this review negative over a year ago by this point. Many updates have happened since and I feel happy about giving a positive review finally.

POSITIVES...
1: Devs seem to be listening to the public and have changed aspects of the game to popular demand.

2: Looks pretty in battles, albeit some goofy hit-boxes for the ships.

3: Many new ship hulls and turrets/gun models have been added or improved.

4: Load times are improved which was a huge problem before.

5: quality of life features are being added like most recent: moving ships to a single port in the fleet management screen. (be careful, moving too many ships at once will lag the game out. Max of 5 or 6 at a time).

NEGATIVES...

1: The AI has always been a weak spot in the game - be it shipbuilding, fleet management, or battle management. There have been improvements - especially in some fleet and battle management aspects. It's still not enough for me to say the AI is adept at managing their fleet and battles, though. The main problem is shipbuilding... The AI just can't keep up with your designs as technology progresses - not because they're behind in technology (usually) but because the AI almost randomly picks the tech/component choices on their ships. So while the player usually uses the best available tech/components as the ship weight allows... the AI picks somewhat randomly what to use.
EX: The AI may put the least amount of bulkheads leading to quick flooding on ships, while the player will always put maximum bulkheads and take more hits before flooding. The AI may also just not armor a battleship much at all.

2: There are bugs that pop up every now and then. If you don't like any bugs, I'd say stay away for now.

Ultimately I can now have a pretty good time playing the game. Before it felt like a chore playing the game, now, it's fun.

The concept is absolutely awesome however it has not been implemented very succesfully, the current state of the game is abysmal and it seems to get worse with every update.
The AI is terrible and most features like ecomony, diplomacy and events are very basic, crude and buggy. instead of improving these features,
we get stopgap measures and new equally basic features the community does not want. Most bugs aren't being adressed and fixes that do happen break other areas of the game and there's
been an almost constant cycle of changing how ships fire their guns, all equally broken.

From the start there was a very active community, enthousiastic gamers and fans but the community and it's pleas on solving bugs and make the game enjoyable were ignored over and over again.
The game had an active community and alot of people spend time on betapatches to help this game forward, all to no avail. We were all shocked when they declared the game "finished,"
they stated that they would continue to work on the game and asked what we wanted but so far nothing of what the community wanted has been done.

Now it has come to the point that critique is no longer allowed, I'm no longer giving this game the benefit of doubt