TransOcean: The Shipping Company Reviews

TransOcean: The Shipping Company is a strange game because I really like the core mechanics and would say it's a good game that I could play a lot of, but I also can't really recommend it to management sim fans because it has so many frustrations too. The gameplay also feels unfair quite frequently. The core gameplay loop is fun and satisfying, but there are far too many RNG, BS events. I'm playing Campaign on Hard and the actual game of managing your ships, trading goods, completing large contracts etc. is fun and enjoyable. However the game likes to throw constant hurdles at you that are very random and have no real rhyme or reason. For example, pirate attacks. The game tells you to "defend yourself against pirates", but actually there is no way to do this until you unlock the ability to buy the absolutely massive ships, which is late game. Until then, you will randomly have pirate attacks that requires you pay THE FULL PRICE OF THE ENTIRE SHIP or otherwise lose that ship forever. This can be 40-60 million euros, which is absolutely insane money for some RNG event that happens every few months and basically wipes out your entire profit margin that you've been painstakingly building up. Yes, I know pirates exist, but why can't I hire some private security for my ships like an actual shipping company would? Why do I only have access to a "water cannons" upgrade on massive vessels that I haven't yet unlocked? Also, the game forces you to keep smaller ships such as "Feeder" ships around for certain scripted missions at small ports that you must do (and if you fail you must again pay an enormous penalty). These ships have no pirate defence available, so you're basically forced to have a chance of getting screwed by RNG and losing tens of millions at random. You then also have an "investor" in the campaign who provides a lot of the challenge by taking huge cuts of your profits every quarter and also randomly signing you up to BS massive contracts that are difficult to fulfil. I can understand why she is in the game (it provides a lot of challenge), and sometimes her demands are fun. But the way it's structured is also annoying and the rewards are paltry compared to the huge penalties if you fail. Just when you start to profit, she keeps popping up and takes 30 million out of your account. Just when you sign a massive profitable contract in Asia that you want to fulfil, she pops up and tells you that actually you also need to acquire 10,000 tons of coffee from South America and you have 3 months to do it or you will get slapped with a 20,000,000 penalty fine, so you're screwed. It feels unfair and artificially difficult when these events occur. I'm not even counting stuff like 90% condition ships randomly catching fire for no reason, causing their big shipment to be late and netting you millions in penalty fees. If the game didn't have so much artificial difficulty like this, I think it'd be excellent. It really should provide the player with ways to mitigate risk, but instead it's just dice rolls that screw you whenever you feel like you're starting to make progress. I also forgot to mention the "ship docking" mini-game, which is completely pointless and irritating too. At the start you're basically forced to manually dock your ships since it costs a large amount of money to auto-dock them. This is just a waste of 1-5 minutes every time, and some ports are obnoxiously hard to dock at for no reason. Later you'll be paying for auto-dock every time, but it also means it's YET ANOTHER profit-sink and also another menu you have to click every. single. time. you dock. Basically: core game good, fake difficulty and stupid events bad.

It was really fun to play, it might get a little grindy by the end but it will be such a feeling to finish. A great management/business sim with a light and fluffy feel.