World of Warships is a new naval action-themed video game produced by the same people who gave us World of Tanks and World of Warplanes. Wargaming has stepped up their game with World of Warships, which was released for PC on September 17, 2015. If you’re a fan of their previous titles then you might want to try this game in the near future. It features a good variety of military ships and some of the best player versus player battles online.

Each map you battle in will be unique in its own way. For example, the weather in the Atlantic might be different from the Pacific, and each ocean will feel different. In World of Warships you will battle in the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic.

This game is definitely about strategy and each different ship will play a different role in battle, so you have to play according to the role of your vessel or you’re likely to fail.

It’s not a game that gets boring, and it’s certainly a challenge, especially for players like me who don’t necessarily play a lot of strategic games. You will gain experience and credits based on your performance in battle, and those credits will be used to buy even more ships, as well as research. There are destroyers, battleships, cruisers and aircraft carriers to choose from. Some of them are real, and some of them are blueprint prototypes from various nations, such as the US Navy, Royal Navy, Soviet Navy, Imperial Japanese Navy, and even the Marine nationale.

Surprisingly, there aren’t any submarines or torpedo boats, and that’s kind of odd because both would make a nice addition to the gameplay. Oh well, maybe in an expansion?

In World of Tanks you had platoons, but in World of Warships you have divisions. Divisions allow a group of players to fight in battles together against another team. It’s exciting, as this is how you will gain control of a specific region. Of course, you must maintain that control or you will lose it. Different parts of the ocean are actually occupied by various clans, so it’s very similar to World of Tanks and Warplanes if you have played them.

My personal favorite ship to use is the destroyer, but I don’t use the same ship every time I play. Each of the four types have multiple tiers that represent the advancement of technology brought to them over the years. For example, the lowest tier of the carrier is the USS Langley, and the highest tier is the USS Midway.

To experience the joy of destroying your enemies in a top tier ship you will have to play this game for a very long time, or simply pay up. I mean that, as I don’t think most players will ever get to enjoy wreaking havoc on their enemy from the Japanese Yamato or the USS Midway as it takes too many hours of grinding for experience and in-game currency.

I say that because Wargaming has made this their toughest meta-economy yet, much more so than in World of Tanks. Still, you can’t purchase XP so you’re going to do a ton of grinding if you want to use the Midway. It’s not even easy to save in-game currency as you’re always repairing your ships and reloading your guns, so Wargaming has certainly made it difficult for most players to ever get one of the top tier ships.

If you pay $90 a year you can get a Premium account to earn XP and in-game currency even faster, otherwise it will take about 2-3k games for you to get enough XP to research all of the American carrier ships. It’s not going to be easy!

However, at any time you want, you can purchase the USS Atlanta for $38, and you won’t have to worry about how much XP you have. It’s not the best ship in the game by any means, but it’s definitely better than most. There are other premium ships available, so it’s not that bad. In this game, you definitely can’t pay to win, and that’s a fact.

Thankfully, the matchmaking in World of Warships goes by ship tiers, so you’re not going to get stuck fighting with the game’s best players until you’re one of them, or have managed to get one of the best ships. I believe there is a good balance in the matchmaking and it works out great.

You can enjoy this game without paying a dime, and the first four tiers of ships aren’t overly hard to unlock. After the fourth tier things get difficult and prices dramatically increase. At this point, you either keep playing and enjoy the brilliant visuals along the way, or you give up and move on to another game. Most folks seem to stick around for a while before giving up on the grind. Like I said, you will be grinding for many hours to move past the fourth tier.

The visuals in World of Warships are incredible, and you will not be disappointed by the graphics. The lighting and water effects are some of the best I have seen, and you will notice immediately as you see the reflections on the water and the destruction of an enemy’s ship. It all looks amazing and each ship is just beautiful, perfected down to every last little detail. Unfortunately, in order to see it all we must grind for a very long time and that’s the only disappointing thing about this game.

Conclusion

I must give this game a 9/10 due to the impressive graphics, easy-to-handle controls, and awesome gameplay. If you didn’t have to grind endlessly to unlock the more impressive ships I would give it a 10/10, and I don’t believe I ever gave a game that 10 rating before. World of Warships is addicting, easy to learn, hard to master, and very rewarding as you unlock the higher tier ships and defeat tougher opponents. It will eat up hours of your life, and if you like it enough, you will make it past the grind and get all the ships you desire.