Her Majesty’s Ship puts the player in control of a naval military ship on a quest to increase rank, expand the vessel and crew, and defeat other nations. With a complicated UI, micro managing everything can become complex and ultimately becomes a clicker game. It is not quite The Sims and not quite Fallout Shelter, but something sort of in the middle.
The opening tutorial is pretty long and covers the basics but learning how the game works comes with experimenting within gameplay. Managing the crew and ship in real time quickly becomes reaction-based work. Making sure the crew is properly fed, punishing them if something bad happens, putting them to bed at night so they don’t get cranky, and ensuring there is enough gun powder to arm the cannons are tedious tasks. The idea is to grow the ship to become bigger and strong enough to overcome each enemy. Traveling between ports to stock up on supplies and crew members might have moments of satisfaction but there just isn’t enough meat on the bone.
The generic visuals don’t do the game any favors either. Not realistic but sort of comical, everything looks low budget. At least the soundtrack is what you would expect from a sea shanty game. There are also a few annoying technical issues that also hinder the overall experience. The initial loading screen, for example, is so long and locks the loading animation, I actually thought my game frozen and hard restarted my Switch. When I booted it back up a second time, I realized the game just takes forever to load. Weird things can happen with the crew and during saving too which makes me believe there wasn’t budget and/or time to put these type of polish into the final product.
If you like to micromanage things from a cumbersome interface, then Her Majesty’s Ship might be worth a look. For everyone else, fear this title might give you scurvy.
Also available on Steam.
Not As Good As: Age of Booty (Xbox 360)
Play It Instead: Sea of Thieves (Xbox One)
Don’t Forget About: Jaws (NES)
By: Zachary Gasiorowski, Editor in Chief myGamer.com
Twitter: @ZackGaz