Ultimate Admiral: Age of Sail Reviews

great historical battles...grow balls...and play.....

Buggy assssssssss hell game

There are no controls to land troops.

Completely unexpected how great this game is. Glad I bought it.

I would recommend the game, I played it again several times and got a 100% rating, I do wish there were more options for playing against the PC in scenarios or playing against friends or other people though. The Campaigns are enjoyable entertaining, varied and challenging, watch a gameplay video or two, this will probably tickle your 'tism if it caught your attention.

If you are anything like me; you might be looking at these positive reviews and presume that this is a good game. I'm a huge fan of the 18th century and I REALLY enjoy that time period. From fashion styles, to civilian life to warfare, almost all aspects are interesting. I bought this game under the presumption that the reviews were accurate. They are not. This game isn't polished compared to titles such as Total War. Now, you might be saying, "well, why are you comparing two different games? This game has to be good in some merit..." and you would be right. They nail the atmosphere, soundtrack and sound effects, but they fail on the basis of being a good game. The tutorial isn't very detailed enough and your very first mission will take place on the water. You'll be told to land on the island while firing at other ships. Here's the thing; there is no indication that your crew is reloading the cannons, so after firing you're left to wonder if there'll be another volley or if you have to press something. Also, I had planned for one ship to distract while another would deploy troops on land. That didn't happen either because there is no indication of whether or not you can land troops (even though the objective tells you to). Your ship could be right there on the shoreline and there wouldn't be any sort of indication. That being said, I refunded this game. If the game cannot have some sort of tutorial or explanation about its mechanics, there is no point in struggling to continue. Especially for someone who has a backlog of 600+ games.

Clunky and ridiculous gameplay. The UI is more polished than the later game, Dreadnoughts, but there are so many janky things here the games are on the same level. I'm not saying it's not playable, but I can't be bothered to play it.

A nice little game. It's worth a punt on sale for a few quid. Good concept of 18th century, combined-arms warfare (Naval and Land) in an easily accessible format. Looks nice and has lovely music. You have a character that you start with and develop, a bit like an RPG and you also buy and capture ships that you set a crew for and upgrade etc. You also buy troops, hire officers and weapons etc for your landings and assaults. Cool stuff. What lets it down for me however is the 'tactical' battles on land. They're not really 'tactical' , they are rush-jobs against a time limit most of the time. A game-style from the point-and-click 'RTS' , mid-late 90's era. (Command & Conquer etc) Lots of small groups that you have to rush to a point against a time limit in set-scripted scenarios. You aren't given time to do anything 'tactical' though as you have to rush the objective which will be sighted by invisible artillery (the artillery has stealth cloaks by the way) which slaughters your guys because you don't have time to set up a prepared attack because.... there's a time limit. Also, enemies will just appear out of nowhere behind you, killing your arty guys and generally being a pain in the arse. It can get silly and messy at times. I have never liked time limits in games, especially strategy/tactical games as they turn every encounter into a rush job. Still, you can have fun with this game for a few hours no doubt and even with drawbacks it's still a well made little game and worth a couple of quid for a few hours of blasty fun. ;-)

I love this game. I wish more games where like the ultimate general series. Loved this one and the Civil war one. The revolution one was a great idea! but it was not executed properly. I wish I could say it was though because it was so close to being legendary. Just needed more extensive interaction, like fort design or something like that.

I would say I enjoyed this game. It was a bit of a rough start learning the mechanics of both Naval and Army based missions. I also felt like I somewhat broke the game a bit when I kept capturing my enemies ships which saves you money in the long term. Once you capture your first 3rd S.O.L (Ship of the line) its pretty much smooth sailing from there (pun intended) lol. If you enjoy RTS war games where you upgrade your fleet and armies as you go through a campaign then this game is for you, especially if you played the Ultimate General Civil War game.