| Sea Power: Naval Combat in the Missile Age | |||
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| Gameplay & Story | Release Date | Pre-Order & DLC | Review |
Take to the seas of an alternate Cold War with the cutting-edge naval weapons of the era in Sea Power: Naval Combat in the Missile Age! Read on to learn everything we know, our review of its early access release, and more.
Everything We Know About Sea Power: Naval Combat in the Missile Age
Sea Power: Naval Combat in the Missile Age Plot
At the peak of an alternate Cold War where hostilities have begun between NATO and the Soviet Union, players are tasked with taking command of the most modern ships, aircraft, and land forces of the era to secure victory.
There isn’t much of a plot beyond that, however. The setting is all that glues together Sea Power’s vehicles, maps, and preset scenarios. It’s essentially a naval strategy sandbox where, once you’ve mastered the available mission scenarios, it’ll be your turn to make your own scenarios in the Mission Editor. But you won’t be playing this game for the story anyway; it is a military simulator through and through, and it wants to show you the precision and destructiveness of modern naval combat instead of a compelling plot.
Sea Power: Naval Combat in the Missile Age Gameplay
Sea Power plays a lot like your typical real-time strategy game. You select your units with the mouse, plot their course on the minimap with a left click, and watch your flagship sink into the depths of the ocean after it gets hit with an anti-ship missile from seemingly nowhere.
What sets Sea Power apart from other strategy games is the functionality of your units. Don’t want to get sunk by missiles from far away? Activate your ships’ surface radar, send out early warning aircraft to scan the skies, or deploy a towable radar to seek submarines in the ocean’s depths. This functionality, however, can get overwhelming if you’re not used to this type of game, especially since as of this writing the game makes zero effort to teach you its ins and outs.
Sea Power: Naval Combat in the Missile Age Release Date
According to its developer, Triassic Games, Sea Power: Naval Combat in the Missile Age will be available globally via Early Access through Steam on November 12, 2024.
Sea Power: Naval Combat in the Missile Age Review (Early Access)
Daunting but Unmatched Naval Combat Realism
"Eternal Father, strong to save. Whose arm hath bound the restless wave…"
This will be a hot take, but military simulators are typically either boring, hard to get into, or both. Be it naval games like the Silent Hunters series, or Sea Power: Naval Combat in the Missile Age by Triassic Games and published by Microprose is both of those things, with the added whammy of a very basic graphical aesthetic. It’s in early access, after all.
But when the game's early access launch trailer featured the voice of an elderly gentleman uttering these lines over footage of fighter jets taking off from an aircraft carrier, there was no doubt in this reviewer’s mind that Sea Power was going to, as the kids say, "go hard," regardless of the genre’s trappings. And after playing it via Early Access, all we can say is: "go hard" it did.
The basic setup is that you pick from one of the over 20 preset scenarios, which will give you control of naval units in theaters like the Mediterranean Sea, the Gulf of Tonkin, the Persian Gulf, and even the North Atlantic. From there, you either complete the mission as it was or just… do whatever you want with your ships, really. Have your submarine dive 1000 feet into the depths of the Atlantic, have your carrier fire SS-N-19 Shipwreck missiles at far away suspected enemy vessels, or have an F-14 VF-41 shoot down bogeys you’ve detected from far off. If you have the units in the scenario and the means to find your enemies, you can do almost anything with them. Rather easily, too, with its controls being similar to real-time strategy games.
This is where Sea Power’s strengths shine. Once you give your units orders, the game renders it in an accurate simulation (battlefields can be hundreds of miles long, and your units/projectiles will travel across them in real time) and gives you satisfying visuals (explosions, large ships sinking into the murky ocean depths, the vapor trail left by a supersonic missile). Actually completing the scenario you’re given is just a bonus.
However, once you’ve completed all the scenarios, there’s nothing much to do except to create your own scenario, and this is where Sea Power finds itself lacking. At this early access stage, Sea Power does not teach you how to make your own scenarios. Or even how to control the game, really. Though there’s an option for Tutorials in the main menu, as of this writing there’s only one option for a video tutorial named "Test Link 1" which will bring the player to the front of YouTube (At least, this reviewer hopes that’s all it did). It remains to be seen if we will start receiving targeted ads for second-hand Soviet nuclear submarines or discounted surface-to-air missiles.
Joking aside, players will be hard-pressed to figure out the controls or even Sea Power’s basic concepts if they’re going just by the game alone. Having played a good number of "milsim" strategy games, we were able to get by with guesswork. But those entirely new to this genre will be left wondering just how exactly they will make their missile cruiser move, let alone fire missiles. The only controls they might end up learning then will be how to request a Steam refund.
Of course, it’s entirely possible that the game will have a complete tutorial over the course of its early access period. As it stands now, however, both milsim enthusiasts and new players will have to do some testing and sleuthing to figure out how the game works.
Vast Array of Ships, Planes, Weapons Rendered in Decent 3D
One look at the game’s "Encyclopedia" and any Cold War military enthusiast will be in for a nice surprise: Over 150 naval units, 60 different planes, 130 weapon systems, and 50 ground units and objects. We are talking about different kinds of aircraft carriers, missile cruisers, destroyers, submarines, patrol torpedo boats, and even cargo carriers and oil tankers. All of them are toting weapons appropriate for the era, such as the RIM-8 Talos surface-to-air missile, the RGM-84 Harpoon missile, the RGM-109B Tomahawk, and a smattering of similar systems for the Soviets.
The models for all these different units and weapons are rendered in detailed 3D with good lighting and shading. What’s more impressive to us is that the models themselves have tiny details covered, such as little crew members standing on the decks of aircraft carriers, or the different small flags being hung near the smokestacks of certain ships. When your submarine surfaces, there’s suddenly a little gaggle of sailors on top of it. Such an eye for detail shouldn’t be ignored.
Immersive but Tedious
Sea Power knows how to sell itself and its gameplay well. The motif of the soundtrack is classic military "high stakes" orchestral music that would be perfect for any Tom Clancy novel. Coupled with visuals of the ships sailing through rough waters in the rain, launching missiles into the air, or burning after being hit by some projectile or other, it draws you in. You wouldn’t even notice the game repeating its tracks over the length of a scenario; you’re too focused on directing your fleet on the map and making sure that single radar blip doesn’t turn out to be an attack group of F-4 Phantoms.
But along with this immersion comes tediousness. Remember when we said earlier that units travel in real-time? And that maps can be hundreds of miles long? So, like actual warfare, your playthrough can be made up of hours of boredom interspersed with minutes of chaotic frenzy. Even if you crank up the game speed to 100x, it can take a while for your units to get where you want them to be, and thus it can take a while for anything to actually happen.
Rough Presentation
The game’s in early access and it shows. The main menu’s presentation is strong enough, with footage of the various units in-game launching missiles and generally doing their thing to the tune of deep brass horns signaling martial gravitas.
But past that, the menus turn into gray placeholder-like blocks with arial text. Sure, it’s a milsim and realistic military aesthetics can be plain and dry, but this is too much.
Limited Community Features and No Multiplayer
While playing the game, this reviewer could not help but imagine what it would feel like to play this game with friends. Imagine operating a carrier group and one guy is in charge of controlling the carrier, another guy is in charge of controlling the escorts, and a third guy is in charge of submarine support. And you’re all supposed to beat a rival carrier group with the same setup? That would be one hell of a naval wargaming experience.
But so far, with the start of Early Access, the only interactivity that there will be amongst players is Steam Workshop support and the ability to share custom missions with each other. The devs have mentioned a so-called "Dynamic Campaign" that they plan to add by the second quarter of 2025.
Not much detail on it though aside from how it will feature "an evolving theater-scale campaign" and that players will be able to upload their own campaigns. Here’s to hoping that, down the line, Sea Power will have a multiplayer mode, so that we can all play at being sea captains with our best mates and commit copious amounts of friendly fire.
In the final analysis, Sea Power is a naval combat simulator par excellence. If you’ve always liked the idea of duking it out with modern military ships at your disposal, but are willing to contend with the total lack of multiplayer or lack of help with learning how to play the game in the first place, then this title is for you.
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Sea Power: Naval Combat in the Missile Age Product Information
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| Title | SEA POWER: NAVAL COMBAT IN THE MISSILE AGE |
|---|---|
| Release Date | November 12, 2024 |
| Developer | Triassic Games |
| Publisher | MicroProse |
| Supported Platforms | PC |
| Genre | Real-time Strategy |
| Number of Players | 1 |
| ESRB Rating | N/A |
| Official Website | Triassic Games Official Website |
