I got an installed SH5 yesterday and managed to get through the tutorial patrol and get out on my first patrol and over to the English east coast. Here's a quick rundown of my personal yays and nays so far.

YAY!

Graphics are fantastic, well surpassing the previous entries in the series. Lighting, shadows, water, weather, land, everything is improved, often drastically.

Being able to walk around in the sub is great. Running down the ladders, calling for periscope depth on my way to the attack scope or hydrophone station is so much cooler than just tapping a few F keys. The immersion level in those moments is great.

I like the "you're the captain of the boat" thing they went for. In the old games I always was Captain, XO, Weapons Officer, Bosun, Sound Man, Radio Man, etc. In this I feel more like the captain giving orders (except when those orders are missing)

The interface may appear "arcadey" to some but in combat situations it does a very good job of relaying most of the important information at a glance, overall I like it better than the old dials in hairy situations but the dials have some precision the new interface doesn't have (see compass comment in Nays)

I like the new nav map and I like the new periscope view with the handy attack map and unobtrusive controls. I do wish some missing controls would return, mostly the spread angle control.

Runs well for me. E6850, 4 gigs ram not all used by Vista 32, GTX 280, onboard sound. I have everything maxed except AA and shadows and it runs very smooth except in port.

NAY!

Buggy like Florida in August, The biggest problem for me is morale reverting to nothing when loading a saved game but there are plenty of others and it's already been patched once. Can't say I wasn't expecting it though.

I can issue movement orders with the new minimap thing but I like having the compass for precise control of my course when tracking distant targets via hydrophone. Please give us back visual control of exact course and rudder.

Too many missing orders. eg. No depth under keel, No return to course, No unman deck/flak guns, no targeting orders for the deck gun crew, No report nearest sound contact, no follow nearest sound contact. Those are just some I can think of off the top of my head. Some of the key commands for these can be modded back in and I set them up last night but it takes away from the captain feel and returns to the hotkey feel of the old games.

This has been a problem forever but shouldn't sub commanders be issued charts with some depth soundings?


NOT SURE

I haven't been depth charged yet, I picked up a warship and a couple merchants last night before I went to bed so maybe I can find out about that. I sunk a small merchant with the deck gun, or my gun crew sunk it, and that was cool. Night deck gun attacks look really, really nice with the new engine.

Not sure about the campaign structure yet, like I said I've only done the tutorial and left on my first patrol (sailing the Kiel Canal sucks without that auto course button from the old mods) so I've yet to see how it really works, I also want to see how it changes, if at all, when you start a another career.

DRM has been painless so far, we'll see how that goes. I'm not one to care either way about DRM as long as it doesn't interfere with gameplay and I don't get creepy "we're watching you" notes from the publisher/developer.

SUMMARY

All in all I'm enjoying this different take on sub simming. If you go into expecting SH3/4 with GWX or Trigger Maru and fancied up graphics you will be disappointed, it is not those games but something new that incorporates elements of those games. I'm hoping patches clear up some of the major bugs and modders make some changes but right now I'm happy with my purchase, I'll report back with further impressions maybe after the weekend when I've had some more time with it.

Those are my first impressions, add yours. I'll try to answer any questions as well but I don't have a lot of time in it so I may not know the answer.

I dislike the GUI......it's lost its WWII feel. It may be easier to use, but there weren't point and click ID manuals back then. The effort of paging through ship ID's was well modeled in earlier version...why change? And the torpedo selectors? The old green and red looked better IMO.

My biggest gripe is the antiquated internet connection integration. Booooooo.

Maybe you modders can mesh the best of both worlds.

There are changes to the GUI that are bothersome to me, but after finishing the "shake-down" cruise I am pleased enough with this new approach that I am more than willing to adapt. I've played enough to get excited but not enough to give the kind of opinions that might help someone's purchasing decision. It's definitely a different sim now, but the Silent Hunter spirit is there if you are a fan of WW2 naval warfare.

I plan on adding some of the mods to the GUI (getting some old key commands back in) but can't while doing the review.

I played it for about 3 hours early this am, first time I got a chance to play with the game. First impressions are fairly favorable. I haven't done a true convoy strike yet, that will be this weekend along with some other stuff with the campaign. There are some bugs noted but it is much less buggy than the preview copy so my perspective is a little different. I am seeing some things every once in a while, a few clipping issues and I wonder about the crew morale bug, that needs fixed.

Overall not bad, very pretty game, some interesting things. Some SHIII vets may be put off by the changes in the interface.

Interface is going to be modded to hell and back. The game allows for scripting, so you might not even be bound to revert to keyboard shortcuts.

I think if the GWX guys get to work their magic on this one, the result will be grand.

Anyone as navigation problems (can not turn left or right)i click on the boat with left mouse button and the arrow appears and then release and clicl with the right button and see the hand but the boat does not change direction?Am i doing something wrong or is this a bug ?
Thank you.

There are problems with it. I double click on the boat and it works fine. I'm not sure why but sometime single clicking works, other times double does.

Funny think is that this wasn't a real problem with the pre-release copy that I had.

Ok got it.
Thanks.

The crew morale bug is killing me, I can live with all the other minor ones while they get worked out but having poorly perfoming crew everytime I load the game is awful. Hope that one gets hotfixed soon or some modder devises a solution.

Hooray Modders!

Quick morale fix:

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?p=1292858&posted=1#post1292858

Edit:

Double Hooray Modders!

A compass, what a novel ****ing idea in a BOAT sim: http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=163077