January 6th, 2008 by Wolfwood
Knights of the sea (cont.)
The player can play one of three sides, USA&UK (allied), USSR or Germany, in six episodes taken from real history. These episodes each consist of four to five missions each and involve six classes of ships and vessels and about 50 vessel types. All in all, the game provides a pretty comprehensive experience of the battles as they happened in actual fact and also goes for an added perk: mirrored battles. In the mirrored battles, you can actually experience the same battle from both sides of the offensive, first trying to sink a fleet of ships with your PT Boats and then trying how that same battle feels like when you try to protect the fleet from the PT Boats.
Plan and execute the battles
PT Boats: Knights of the Sea offers you a unique opportunity to both plan the tactics of an encounter by giving orders to all of the ships in your fleet and to get a hands-on experience of the battle by assuming the position of one of the crew on any of the boats in your fleet. Thus, you are not only restricted to plan the battles and order your ships on various vectors, but you can actually taste the smoke of your burning boat by piloting one of your PT Boats or taking control of one of the gun mountings on the boat. Of course, you are not restricted to PT Boats alone and can just as easily command a destroyer or a cruiser.
The transitions between these two types of play are smooth enough, but I must admit that I have not yet had the time to learn the skill of coordinating the whole fleet at the same time as I control the ships individually. The tactics screen allows you to give waypoints and trajectories to the craft in your fleet, of course, but when you forget yourself playing an individual pilot or a gunner for too long, you may miss some manoeuvre by the enemy that would require you to change the trajectories of some of your own ships to counter a new danger. And if you get way too preoccupied by playing with your vulnerable mosquito, it may well be that the rest of your fleet is remaining stationary on the sea when they have reached the destinations that you gave them. They will still fight, or course, but being completely stationary is not really the smartest idea when there are torpedoes in the sea.
Because of this, the main challenge in the game is to divide your attention between these two areas and try to keep the entire fleet action in mind while entertaining yourself at the helm of your favourite PT Boat.
Controls
Once you get the hang of the keyboard short-cuts to find your way between the tactical screens and the action positions, it doesn't take long for the controls to become your second nature. However, for me, learning the controls took some serious time – the game is certainly not as easy to step into as your average FPS, although you will find something familiar in the WASD controls used to pilot individual ships, and the mouse to look around or swivel your gun emplacement to take down attacking aircraft or other boats and ships.
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