Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts Reviews

It saddens me to say that this game had so much potential, but even after all these updates, it still, unfortunately, falls short. A few years ago, this game seemed so promising—I had an absolute blast playing it back then, with the expectation that the bugs I encountered would eventually be patched out and that it would evolve into an awesome naval warfare game. But sadly, that never happened.

The game has an amazing concept and it's fun to play. But the game has been abandoned by the developers too early. It's not finished.

As others have said: this game is abandonware now. The devs had something special here, even given how janky it was at times, but they decided to concentrate on something literally noone asked for: multiplayer. That's right. Instead of concentrating on making the designer function properly, or optimizing the base gameplay, or improving the AI, or making the campaign mode worth a damn, they decided to focus on adding something that the game was [i]NOT[/i] ready for and that the playerbase made [i]VERY[/i] clear we did not want. And the multiplayer mode was trash (or so I've heard I haven't played it) and it didn't even come with the base game. TLDR: the devs abandoned the game that was in a rather shaky state to make a half-baked MP mode [i](that was PvP only)[/i] that noone wanted, and when it expectedly bombed they decided to abandon the game. Well done idjits.

90% fantastic design undercut by 10% flop in execution. The appeal of putting together 3D warships ranging from pre-dreadnoughts to the superbattleships of WW2 is totally realized here. You can model real life warships or go off the beaten path to make some truly "inspired" designs to your heart's content, and this part of the game really is excellent. The campaign mode is engaging, the campaign and combat level enemy AI never made a painfully obvious blunder, and there are few titles that can give the same experience of guiding a nation's development as a naval power. The core issue with the game is the combat level maneuvering AI. In a game all about building warships and arranging fleets to fight each other, the maneuvering AI cannot even sail in a straight line. The fundamental issue is a lack of look-ahead/PID control for speed or turns. When a ship needs to make a turn to follow its leader, the ideal behavior is that it shifts the rudder hard to begin the turn and then, as its bearing approaches the target, it slowly returns the rudder to a neutral position such that it does not oversteer past the target bearing. In UA:D, however, the ship will not back off on its rudder angle, overshoot the target, and then try to reverse the turn leading to a sine wave pattern behind its lead ship. Because ships cannot regulate their rate of closure, it will typically overtake the lead ship, colliding or turning away to attempt to fall back into formation, which cascades its failure to ships behind it, as well as subordinate divisions set to follow the tail of the lead division. It is more common than not to see your entire fleet - instructed to sail in straight lines due North - scattered over an area ~10,000 meters in diameter with some ships straying directly into torpedo range of the enemy force. The issue extends even down to the lowest levels of manual control of ships; instructing even a single ship to turn to a new bearing will cause it to oscillate left and right of the target for multiple minutes! This is a glaring oversight that should never have been present in any build in the game, let alone what the developers have claimed is the final release. Every other system in the game has been completely undermined by a lack of attention at what should have been a core concern for a game about ship combat. There are other, some fairly serious issues. The "Screen" and "Scout" orders roughly translate to "suicide charge the enemy," as there is no measurement for the relative threat of an enemy force, or the threat that force poses to the division's assignment. Cruisers will charge headlong into the enemy battleline - despite the fact that the enemy task force's destroyers are nowhere near in range of launching torpedoes. The campaign UI can become very cumbersome when handling large numbers of ships and ports; there is no way to see on the map which ports have ships in them, requiring you to either hover over each port or scroll through a list of every ship you have, looking for ships sitting around in a random port in the Pacific. If you want the experience advertised, play Rule the Waves instead.

This is a wonderful game that was cut short FAR TOO EARLY. Boo to the publishers! I love the strategic feel of it where you aren't entirely in control of the country. (you control the navy and operate with the given budget) It makes thing very interesting and the tactical side when in combat was very satisfying. There are definitely bugs to iron out but the overall experience was fantastic and it's a crime this is no longer being developed. I sincerely hope the modding community is able to further the game and bring out the potential this game had. This game gave me Creative labs vibes and I was excited to see it finished

Pulling the AI from your fleet management made the game unmanageable. Controlling every TB squadron and destroyer flotilla in a battle takes the more attention and time than one person has. I don't understand how the CPU AI manages it's fleet well, but giving the player a tenth of that for fleet management AI was beyond the programmer's capabilities.

it is an exceptional naval simulation that lets you design and command powerful warships along the years. With deep customization, intense battles, and detailed graphics. The historical component adds extra depth. Many improvements can be applied in the future, but I think that as for today this is the best strategic naval warships game.

I loved seeing the game progress when it was being developed, hoping that it would be made into something great. BUT, that something great is now never to come. This game is now in "full release", but in reality it is abandonware. It is still filled with bugs and performance issues, never to be fixed. If you do want to get it, wait for it to be on sale as it is not worth the full price.

The game is blatantly unfinished with countless features simply never added, from islands to proper submarines to carriers to better placement of parts on ships without as much annoying snapping. Now, the devs have abandoned the game. Nothing promised or suggested will ever be added. The last update also completely wrecked the games performance in battles, regardless of how beefy your computer is. I've corroborated this with players using 4000 series GPUs and other similar hardware which chug when playing, and my own 1650Ti could run the game without issue up until recently despite being an order of magnitude weaker, handling battles with dozens of ships without a problem and now struggling at 10 or less. Sinking ships seem to be extremely performance intensive now, possibly fire too, with it being especially noticeable and egregious in some naval academy missions or convoy hunts in campaigns where you can expect to sink multiple transports in seconds. Doing so can reduce the game to a crawl. That the devs have left the game in this state is a travesty, and I earnestly believe it should be delisted in its present state.

This game had some ups and downs, good updates followed by bad ones. Unfortunately it has been abandoned after a bad update. I really enjoyed this game for many hours but I cannot recommend it with the last and final update leaving the game in a bad state.