The best submersible boat simulator to-date.
In the calmer, quieter interior, you’ll find yourself in the control room, a true 3D- Environment, where you can look around from a fixed viewpoint and interact with fully modeled 3D crew, or click to exchange places with a crew member and operate his 3D controls with the mouse. You can also click to enter other compartments interact with the crew and equipment there. The interior modeling is excellent, and the sound and lighting just right.
The external detail of the U-boat is very high, making use of high resolution textures, and this level of detail is also applied every vessel that appears in the game. The ships look real when you look at them through the periscope, and if you manage to hit one with a torpedo or a gun, you’ll be amazed at how the damage is modeled. Very realistic.
In terms of gameplay, SH III is not a game designed to please those out for quick thrills. You can sit for hours with nothing happening, but with the potential of something happening every second, and not get bored. There’s always things to do. You can browse through the identification book, listen on the hydrophone, stand on the bridge, or go to the navigation table and plot a new course. You can also “talk” with the crew, requesting them to do certain things, or move them around into different compartments. As you sail across the north sea, you’re crew will tire and you will have to relieve them and replace them with new watches. Your crew is personalized, in that each crew member has a name and several attributes, such as rank, skill, awards, endurance and experience, and you can allocate them to various compartments and areas on the sub. The number and quality of crew allocated to a compartment will affect that compartments efficiency, and if it falls below a critical level, the compartment will not function. In the "Career" (campaign) mode, the same crew are with you throughout your career, and while you are at base you can promote them and give out medals and qualifications if they've done a good job, or dismiss them and reappoint new ones. As you progress through your career, you earn points that you can then use to buy equipment, train your crew or even upgrade your U-boat to a newer model.
When the action comes, though, the long periods of silence and uneventfulness only serve to accentuate the intensity of the experience of an enemy encounter, such as the sinking a cargo vessel, or of an encounter with a destroyer. Trying to dodge a destroyer without using the external camera is difficult, and tense, and your life may depend on that little extra bit of technology your boat may have - that extra knot of speed, or that extra minute on that Bold decoy. It will also depend on your skill, as a Captain, to know when to maneuver the boat under full power to execute a quick turn; and when to be silent, hoping that the enemy active sonar doesn't pick you up.
Damage control is advanced in this game, there being several kinds of damage. Small damage can be fixed automatically by the crew, but for larger damage, you need to assign a repair team to fix it. Parts of the sub may be damaged beyond repair.
Shipping of the axis, allies and neutral countries are operated automatically according to historically accurate shipping routes. The effect of all these autonomous systems (weather also), combined with the dynamic campaign system means that a campaign is never the same, so you start a new career and play it all again as if for the first time.
The first time you play this game, you’ll be impressed when you leave the port on the first day of your campaign. It was night when I ordered “Ahead Slow” and left the pen amidst cheering crowds and a band playing the national anthem. The journey through the harbour took about ten minutes, and I saw people walking around on the walls, soldiers, a motorbike, and then the U-boat broke out into the open sea between two lighthouses, their bright light reflecting intermittently on the black shiny surface of the water. It was like being in a "Das Boot".
Several minor updates were released with the game, but it was criticised for "not being finished" and for being too gamey, rather than a realistic simulator. . Thankfully, the modding community have brought out some excellent free mods, such as SHIII Commmander and Real U-boat, the latter of which makes the U-boat behave as a closely as possible to the real thing.