I really wanted to like this game. As of this writing I have 69 hours into the game. When it's good, it's very good. At times it feels like you really are in command of naval forces in the Pacific during WW2. It is very thrilling to watch your bombs explode on an enemy carrier's deck. Or watch a wave of torpedoes drive into the side of a battleship and blow up. When it's not good, it is extremely rage inducing. At odd moments, aircraft do not do what you order them to; they just circle uselessly in the sky instead of attacking the target you just ordered them to. On multiple occasions, at the cost of most of my torpedo bombers, I have managed to get a massive wave of torpedoes on target for the killing blow that will win me the battle, only to watch my torpedoes pass underneath the target. This happened to me 2 nights ago. I rage quit. Came back. Loaded up the autosave and watched the exact same thing happen again.

Naval combat is a niche genre that I very much enjoy. When it works, it works great, but no matter how much I want to, I can not recommend this game.

Edit:
I have now played this game almost 118 hours. I just finished my campaign in it. I wish that there was something between a Thumbs Up and a Thumbs Down that I could give this game. As I said before, When the game worked, it was great and I thoroughly enjoyed. Then frustrating bugs would crop up.

Occasionally I would order my planes to attack, and they would just fly around or head back to their carrier. I even tried splitting those planes that still had their munitions into separate squadrons, and while sometimes that worked, often it didn't.

I tried to win the US campaign by dropping the nukes. Prior to dropping the nuke on Hiroshima, I had already captured Nagasaki. After dropping it the nuke on Hiroshima, the game wanted me to nuke Nagasaki, but since the I already owned Nagasaki, I couldn't nuke it. That path to victory was closed off to me. I feel like the developers should have been aware that was a possibility, and allowed the player to win with one nuke drop, as long as one of the other cities was in allied hands. I rage quit the game for a couple of weeks at that point.

The most frustrating bug for me, however, was the black screen bug. I would be playing happily along and decide that it was time to change my fleets focus, from morale to training, let's say. Hit the Fleet button, and boom. A black screen. I could go back to the Bridge screen or the Combat screen, but no other. I couldn't even save or quit the game normally. I would have to brute force close the game, and hope that the most recent autosave wasn't too far back.

The black screen even bit me after winning the game. The game just went to the same black screen instead of playing whatever victory screen it had intended. I had to brute force close the game, and replay the final moments to see the victory screen, which I found both fitting and poignant.

So do I recommend this game? It depends on your frustration tolerance. If you know what your're getting into, and can live with the bugs, then yes, I recommend it. The game does an excellent job of recreating the feel of playing in the Pacific Theater during World War II. I suspect most people will not be willing to put up with the bugs. Therefore, I think for most people, I have to give this a Thumbs Down.

• When I first tried this game in September 2018, there were quite a few micro-managing issues and bugs that made my life commanding the US pacific theater pretty difficult.

• So I made a list of suggestions for fixes and game mechanics, and sent it to the developers via steam.

• The developers responded to my post and over the past 6 months they actually used some of my ideas in the game! 10/10 dev interaction.

• There are still a few glitches here and there, such as ship AI smashing into islands if you're raiding ports that have a lot of islands nearby. The boats look really nice but the port base defenses and port buildings look pretty barebones. Combat AI is pretty trustworthy at open sea, I can order one of my fleets to engage an enemy fleet and just relax, sit back and watch the battle play out without worrying about micromanaging. Lastly there is no unit cap so you can make as many fleets/ships your computer can handle.

• As a Real Time Strategy fan I think this is a pretty good strategy game to get, especially if you can get it on sale. Watch some recent gameplay on YouTube before you buy if you want to check if this game will be fun for you.

Victory At Sea Pacific is the second "Victory At Sea" game developed and published by the studio Evil Twin Artworks. It is a Real Time Strategy game in which we're thrown in a World War II scenario, whereas our first campaign we will be playing as the United States.
The objective is to, basically, let history play itself: we're asked to conquer all the ports shown in the "Objectives" section to force the Japan forces to surrender. So far so good. But Victory At Sea Pacific isn't any RTS game, because Evil Twin Artworks went big. It is, in fact, a strategy game in large scale - to give you a general idea, it's on the same length as Crusader Kings and Europa Universalis.
Featuring revamped graphics ever since the first installment and a new UI overall, Victory At Sea makes for hours of entertainment, frustration, and satisfaction.


• The game allows for a lot of replayability, sided by lots of hours of content.
• Huge variety of vessels to choose from when making fleets.
• You're able to control just about everything regarding your ships and even your crew.
• Engaging battles that require to pay attention to planning.
• The game never leaves you without nothing to do: numerous randomly generated events - ports under attack, enemy fleets approaching, enemy cargo vessels to destroy in the vicinity.


• Feels very unbalanced.
• The AI presents several issues: I met numerous instances in which I'd tell the AI something and it would do something else entirely, or nothing, for that matter.
• Non-player friendly UI. Feels very cluttered.
• Major fps drops in large-scale battles.


General information
The formula that Victory At Sea follows is shared amongst other grand RTS games we've seen out there in the market. You're given a nation worth of forces, ports, and resources, and you're compelled to manage them the best way possible to ensure victory.

However, the game can present itself to be difficult to master and fully understand. This is mainly because it throws you in the middle of the action with a very measly tutorial that covers 1/3 of all the things that you can do, or situations that you'll have to face. Yes, you can indeed halt your gameplay to go watch the tutorial videos, or read the extensive manual that the developers wrote (here: http://www.victoryatseagame.com/vasp_manual_1.3.pdf), but having to postpone your gameplay is something hardly any gamer likes.
In the end, trial and error is probably anybody's best bet in succeeding in Victory At Sea Pacific.

We are also greeted by a not so user-friendly UI. Not only it is overwhelming, with a fair share of buttons, but the incredible variety of menus can be extremely confusing. Not to mention only one of them (The "Log" one) is explained when you first begin the campaign. Also, Keep in mind that the UI does not scale with the resolution: if you play on a 1920x1080 res. the UI will be so small it'll actually be frustrating reading through it.

Victory At Sea Pacific features a "Fog of War" system, which plays a big role in the gameplay experience. You are free to toggle it on and off if you so like. Disappointingly enough, if you were hoping for an easier match doing so, it seems that toggling the fog of war off does not affect whether you're able to see or not the enemy fleets. You need very specific in-game information to track those down.

After finally becoming skilled enough to maneuver through the game's functions, the game becomes extremely enjoyable and rewarding. There are a thousand ways to go about conquering the enemy ports in the Pacific: a personal favorite has been blasting through them with fleets of Carriers, a choice to which only a fleet full of Battleships comes second. The amount of ships that we can choose from is remarkable. In my playtime, I'm yet to see and unlock all the ships that the game as to offer, which are seemingly more than 100.

The battles are exciting and engaging and on higher difficulties, they can keep you on edge. You are given direct control to every vessel in your fleet: be it destroyers, cruisers, submersibles, torpedoes or carriers. You can even control the aircraft that take off from your ships.

Before starting a battle - whether you're conquering a port or are fighting against an enemy fleet - you're given the option to place your Fleet's squadrons in a more suitable formation. If you're fighting to conquer a port, you're also given the opportunity to send submersibles to scout the enemy base or skip this phase and commence the aircraft bombing as soon as you're in the port's proximity. After having engaged against the enemy defenses, given that you did fully scout the base, we can finally launch the amphibious assault.
Beware that the landing ships move extremely slowly even at a x25 speed, so your best bet is to exit to Bridge view and speed the game up to x1000.

All in all, it was an enjoyable experience, there's nothing more satisfying than having full control over the seas.

Combat System
You can slow the game down until completely freezing it in order to run through your ships and give individual orders - as in which guns to use, if to shoot the torpedoes or have the aircraft launch. When we have decided how we're going to attack, it boils down to a simple point and click, and the AI will do the rest.

Content
The game's strong point is just how much replayability value it has, especially through the different types of campaign modes we're given. It can easily offer up to more than ~50 hours of content.


Graphics
The game features a very minimalist, yet really pleasing to the eye, graphics.
Loved the attention to the sea water and the reflections of the sun and the moon on its surface.

Sound and music
Nothing extremely noteworthy here. The sounds are just like how they should be, loyal enough to actual battleships shooting their guns, or to the roaring of the planes. Music wise, there are just a few tunes that replay themselves over and over.

Performance
The performance was for the most part very smooth. I, however, encountered really bad lag moments during large-scale battles. Speeding up to x25 in those situations caused the game to crash a few times.
I also suggest turning Motion Blur off from the Options panel to ensure a smoother experience.

AI
If you're in a battle yourself, the AI isn't too much of a problem, you can control most of it anyway. However, there were times in which I did wish that my fleets wouldn't fight to their deaths even when ordered to retreat. I'm still not sure if this was intended or not. Sometimes they ignore the orders, some others they don't.

HUD
As aforementioned: really bad scaling, makes it frustrating whereas you try to play on a 1920x1080 resolution.

Bugs Encountered
Sometimes the game would get stuck on a loading as soon as the game started up. Had to restart the game a few times before it would let me play.


Victory At Sea Pacific is a game with a lot of potentials, and a very active - and open to feedback - team behind it. I can see this becoming huge at some point. It is worth the money if you have the patience to learn everything you need in order to survive out in the seas and deal with the issues that the game has in its current state.

Follow our curator page, Alexander's Club Curations if you like and want to see more reviews like this one.

I've finished the US Campain and have a few other partial games. This may be my first review on Steam, but I'm a long time gamer and old Grognard. I have waited for this game looking very forward to it. I have the first game, and wasn't a huge fan, but I kept it in hopes of helping the development of this game. This game has the potential to be an amazing game, but as it stands now, I cannot recommend it in it's current state.

The AI and combat results are way to buggy. I have watched wave after wave from my carrier group do no damage to an enemy fleet. This went on until my fleet was out of aviation fuel. When you order a task force to attack, your carriers try to hug the enemy, even with "allow to launch planes" enabled.

The campaign also needs some work. The US campaign starts off down two carriers, Yorktown and Hornet, which puts the US in a very difficult position. You don't have enough forces to cover Midway and assist Australia. There's really not enough to hit objectives and cover Midway/Hawaii. I've seen 5 Japanese carriers show up at Midway in January of 1942.

I like the way amphibious assualts are handled, but it seems a bit easy for the Japanese to blitz half of Australia in the opening months. I'd like to play the Japanese Campaign, but there isn't one. I guess that will be DLC.

TLDR: Tons of potential, but not ready for Prime Time.

First, I'd like to discuss some of the negative reviews that almost made me not purchase this. With regards to bugs, there were some weird things that happened that I just didn't understand why, but they ended up not being bugs. Once I understood the game mechanics like carriers needing to be with the wind to take off (and sometimes to land) aircraft, I had no issues with them landing and taking off again. If the carrier is not positioned in such a way, then the aircraft just fly around until you move the carrier into the wind. There are arrow indicators at the bottom that make it very easy to understand and know when you are not lined up correctly. There was another instance I had an issue with aircraft not landing. Again I'm sure like the other people, I thought it might be a bug. However, I realized that the runway and also carriers can be too damaged to allow aircraft to take off and also to land. It was a game mechanic that I did not yet understand, not a bug.

Another post mentions a battle that he should have won. The reality is that your fleets can only execute the orders that you issue. Therefore, if you issue the attack command and allow the enemy fleet to engage with you, they will only attack until another order is given. The AI however, will be able to think tactically throughout the entire match if it is just left alone. If you allow auto resolve, you will most likely lose every time. This is the same as I said before, simply someone not understanding the game mechanics. Carriers should be played at max range especially if you have the carrier advantage. Every ship has its own stats too, so just because you have more ships doesn't mean you have a better fleet. They may have higher tier ships that are just better at everything. Honestly my only complaint with the game is that it was too easy. At the time of writing I have only played on hard mode, so I intend to play on hard+ to see if it will be more challenging. I didn't have any issues with balancing or bugs or any other the other complaints in these reviews as long as you understand the mechanics and play to the strengths of your fleets, you should have an easy time of it as well.

In my Japanese campaign, I played very defensively until I went from having 6 carriers to about 15. You get war bonds over time and by sinking literally anything so you can just defend your bases and pick off supply fleets that pass by in order to have the points to be able to build more ships. Carriers are OP when at max range. You bomb targets and keep moving away from them until they either die or you run out of aircraft. The aircraft repair fairly quickly when you are in port, so when you have that many carriers, you can just cycle them in and out of ports as you need repairs. Everything else (subs, cruisers, battleships, and destroyers) I used either to defend my carriers or to defend ports. It was quite easy at that point just bombing and repairing and repeating that strategy. I really enjoy the game. The only thing I would change is to make the AI more aggressive and more often send a large armada to attack rather than smaller fleets that are easily defended against. If you enjoy WW2 and understand the mechanics, you will likely have a blast with this title.

I was in two minds about downloading this title, as i struggle to find the Ultimate Wargame experience, as I started pushing small lead ships around the floor with some dice, ruler and a book of rules in the 1980's. I did, and I have to say its justy about there. Yes it needs a few tweaks, and it has some bugs, (I am impressed with how the developers are treating these, reacting, and making hot fixes available) but, in this modern age of some people criticising every single floor, I have to say its very good and I would reccommend it to other Wargamers who started as I did, but want more than Sudden Strike/Blitzkreig, The option of planning your strategy, supplies, land based aircraft and the surprise of the enemy just popping up where you least expect it is very appealing. Graphics are reasonable, so will run on many rigs, I have mine on full on an i5/12GB/GTX960/SSD. Its not War Thunder or WofWs when you go to the "ship level", that would be the ultimate.... So yes, Buy it, and expect it to improove over time, but have fun...

As someone who really want's to like this game, and I truly do want to like it, I'm sorry to say that I can't really recommend this game in it's current state. The gameplay is fine and can be fun, specifically when your right up in the action having the ship maneuver to avoid torpedoes and air attacks, and launching submarine attacks on convoys and task forces.

But while the core gameplay is really solid, the fact that it is so filled with bugs and glitches makes it really difficult to enjoy what's there. Ships can just disappear from a taskforce, even though it is possible to find their models and still click and control them manually. I've had a case where I lost an entire taskforce of submarines to limbo because of a glitch despite the fact I was able to use said submarines to sink a flotilla's worth of destroyers. I've had a similar case where I lost three battleships to limbo when I tried to control them manually.

If it weren't for this single bug, I could probably at least tolerate the rest of the games problems and enjoy what's there despite of its problems. This should be a top priority for the devs and has to be fixed as soon as possible along with any other game-breaking problems that are in the game. I think the game really should have been play tested more before it was released as I think a lot of the problems in the probably wouldn't be as apparent as they are now.

As for improvements to the gameplay itself? I can come up with a few.

1. More visible indicator to tell a player what a ship or fleet is currently doing and what is happening to it.

2. Automatically pause the games internal clock when ever something important happens.

3. More depth and additions needs to be added to certain things like Aircraft and Naval bases. I believe that more ground based Aircraft should be added like the P-38 Lightning or the P-51 Mustang. I also think that even the most simple of Naval bases should at least be able to have three more flights. Flying boats should also have the ability to launch without needing a functioning runway as they take off from the sea, though this might be best held off when it can be sure that they won't just fly around in circle until their fuel runs out.

4. The ability to create defense forces to avoid cluttering up the Task Force tab.

5. A way to tell one Task Force from another besides the number. Perhaps being able to change the color of a TF's tab or add an icon like what is done in Hearts of Iron IV.

6. This should be at the bottom of the priority list. The addition of more ship classes like the Nevada, New York, and Renown class would be really nice and maybe you can even add some classes that weren't ever built like the Montana or Lion classes? Again this should be bottom priority, as there are more important things to attend to.

There are probably some more things that I could add, but these are just things that I believe could make the game better, AFTER the game breaking stuff has been fixed. Devs if you are reading this, know that I am not hating on you. I hope this criticism help you improve your game and does not dishearten you. I have a love of naval strategy, and I wish there were more games that covered naval warfare in a fun and interesting way.

If you have trouble finding the glitch that I mention, try controlling ships manually. Have them fire their guns, launch torpedoes (preferably one at a time as that what I did,) and just overall mess around with them while constantly exiting back to the bridge. I hope that this allows you to find the glitch if you are unaware of it.

An game that has massively improved as the patches have come. A truly immersive game that combines naval strategy with tactical game play down to ship & flight level. It does have some glitches but a lot of it arises from the sheer ambition of the game itself.
For people considering to buy it but are put off by the initial reviews please note that a TON of bugs have been fixed and the developers do listen to player feedback with releasing patches. Its a unique treat for naval history enthusiasts of the WWII era.
Its definitely not perfect but its does try to strike a balance between simulation while still being enjoyable. This is not an arcade style game but a joy for those who enjoy attention to detail.
There are many things that can still be improved but as long as the Devs keep up the work they have been doing then its worth buying it!
I understand that some players are hesitant paying for a game that still evolving but I personally am happier with a 75% product with a team that constantly trying to improve it than a 90% product that has been given up on by the dev team. For a game this complex expecting eveything to be ironed out to be unrealistic though I only bought the game 4 months ago so dont know how it was way back at launch.

Dev activity
They're quite active. They reply promptly to direct contact on the Discord and are equally ready to implement suggestions into the game. Most notably when it comes to expanding modding support. Some reviews claim the game is dead or the devs have run off so the patch history follows.

9-14-2018 Public release, 9-19-2018 Patch 1.0.4, 9-20-2018 Patch 1.0.5, 9-25-2018 Patch 1.0.6, 9-28-2018 Patch 1.0.7, 10-5-2018 Patch 1.1, 10-11-2018 Patch 1.1.1, 10-18-2018 Patch 1.1.2, 10-26-2018 Patch 1.1.3, 10-30-2018 Patch 1.1.4, 11-8-2018 Patch 1.1.5, 11-23-2018 Patch 1.2 (introduced modding), 11-26-2018 Patch 1.2.0p2, 11-27-2018 Patch 1.2.0p3, 12-17-2018 Patch 1.2.1, 12-20-2018 Patch 1.2.1p3, 12-21-2018 Patch 1.2.1p4, 1-9-2019 Patch 1.2.2, 1-11-2019 Patch 1.2.2p1, 1-23-2019 Patch 1.2.3, 3-4-2019 Patch 1.3.1 Royal Navy added, 4-2-2019 Patch 1.4 Custom battles, 6-19-2019 Patch 1.5 Minor factions, 10-30-2019 Patch 1.6, 11-4-2019 Patch 1.6.1, 11-13-2019 Patch 1.6.2, 2-6-2020 Patch 1.7, 2-7-2020 Patch 1.7.0p1, 2-26-2020 Patch 1.7.1

Clearly they've been actively improving the game, with many of the later patches implementing new modding abilities and fixing new bugs those changes brought about/exposed.

Bugs
On the topic of bugs, there are some and they appear to stem from the expansion of modding. As the author of the Improved Realism mod I've run into many of them first hand. While it's true that some bugs were more persistent than others, the devs have so far done an excellent job in hunting them down and I fully expect they'll resolve the few remaining ones in short order.

Game Play
The gameplay is a healthy mix between complex and simplistic. It isn't Star Ruler or Distant Worlds but it also isn't candy crush. There isn't much in the way of resource collection/management or base building, but you will need to manage your warships and aircraft production.

The AI loves to press attacks, even when they're outmatched, but its aggression can change the tide of battle if you aren't watching. The campaign starts are roughly historic, so if you're playing as the US you will be starting on the back-foot.

Modding
This is probably the area I'm most biased in. The ability to mod this game is really good. I've been rolling out Improved Realism updates for over a year now, finally adding in new models, and the process is fairly easy once you figure things out. Basic modding is done through CSV spreadsheets, like the original game, and models are added though the Unity Editor via the included bundle exporting tool. There isn't a massive modding community yet, but there are other modders working on new models as well as a few other mods.

Conclusion
I would recommend this game, but I'd be selective to whom. This game probably isn't for people looking for an arcade type game, as it's far more an RTS/RTT. It also isn't for someone with limited patience since it isn't entirely bug free just yet. That said, if you're looking for a good naval RTS but the hardcore simulation titles aren't for you then Victory at Sea: Pacific is probably what you're looking for.

I really wanted to like this game. As a naval history fanatic there are so few games of this type, genre, and scope out there currently, and for someone like me, it's very annoying when I see a game with promise like this pop up only to be sorely disappointed as it misses the mark.

There are some things I like about this game. Most of these come from the overall campaign system, as there are some features gameplay-wise that I think are quite neat. The first and foremost of these is the amount of options you have regarding commands and bases, with the ability to recon, refit, patrol, raid, or outright invade given different circumstances. Bases can be upgraded with different facilities, which is neat, and each base has its own supply inventory that relies on convoys to send said supplies to fill their stockpile. Furthermore, I like the fact that carriers require the ships to turn into the wind in order to launch and recover aircraft, which is something not enough games have these days. A nice little touch in that regard.

But herein lies the problem with this game. It has a couple of cool, standout features, but the gameplay itself is quite lacking.

Combat is incredibly uninteresting and bland. The ships are so unbelievably accurate that, even with mods to reduce the accuracy, even large battles are usually over in 2-3 minutes. The AI is quite dumb when it comes to maneuvers and tactics, and often friendly formations will fall into disarray from the simplest, avoidable thing (a sinking ship that one can easily sail around, for example). Aircraft are very vulnerable to AA fire half the time, and the other half they're nigh-invincible. Torpedo bombers drop so ridiculously close to their targets and their torpedoes do so much damage that I really don't see the point in any other aircraft. Ships rarely use their torpedoes, even when ordered to, and when they do they never hit anything. All of this, combined with a very odd and often frustrating damage model, comes together to create a combat experience that's not fun, not interesting, and half the time doesn't make any sense.

A couple of other gripes:

1.) The tutorials are not very detailed, are video rather than gameplay, and are very short. There's no decent tutorials for the core mechanics of the campaign, meaning you're kinda thrown in a sink-or-swim situation.

2.) There's no music in the campaign screen, or in battle (that I'm aware of). You just sit there in silence, contemplating why you decided to buy this unpolished mess.

3.) The models are incredibly ugly and the lighting is honestly headache inducing. Fighting during the day is like staring at the sun for a couple of minutes.

4.) AI air attacks are literally worthless. I watched my carriers launch 6-7 raids against four light cruisers without sinking any of them or even damaging them significantly. I had to take control for myself, and once I gave the orders, all four cruisers sank in like 60 seconds. It was stupid.

5.) There are bugs. The AI will completely bug out and sail in circles, the game will get stuck in an infinite loading screen, it'll have random frame drops out of the blue, etc etc. It's very unpolished.

I really wish this game was better. The scale and setting shows that the potential is there, but inherently uninteresting gameplay really gets in the way of enjoying it. If the combat could be reworked, modeling/graphics improved, and bugs worked out, this game could honestly be great.

But none of those things have happened, so it isn't. I really hope it will be eventually.