Not a real war game – Battle Fleet: A Battleship Wargame Review

I wanted to like this game, I really did, but it didn't take long to figure out that it is an arcade type game, not a war game. I was looking for realistic play. You won't find that here, not in the least. Despite the way it is advertised, this is not a historically-based war game. The ships have no resemblance whatsoever to real warships from WWII. The turret types are completely fictional. The movement is not even slightly realistic. (A ship can move forwards in one turn and backwards the next -- just try that in a real ship!) Others have commented on the problem with aiming and range firing, so I won't elaborate on that except to add that starting each game you can select an assistant for one or the other, but not both. It automatically defaults to the aiming assistant and if you don't select the other, forget about changing it after the game starts, because you can't. Maybe that's okay since neither one is much use anyhow! The UI is pretty bad. It looks like a PC game ported to the iPad without much redesign, which I think is exactly what it is. Mostly it just gets in the way. Want instructions? Except for a primitive and incomplete tutorial, you won't get any. Maybe that's okay too, since the game really isn't worth learning. I've played more sophisticated war games with pieces of cardboard on paper maps. One of these days someone is going to create a real turn-based war game for the iPad, and blow feeble efforts like this one out of the water.
Review by dr_millmoss on Battle Fleet: A Battleship Wargame.