I got this yesterday and have been playing it a bit. Started
out in September 1939 with a Type IIA U-Boat, and am
now on December 1939 with four patrols under my belt,
and with 2200 renown to my credit, plus 12,000 or so tons
of merchants sunk (two ships). Soon I shall be able to
upgrade to a Type VIIB.
FYI, "Renown" is how well you're known within the U-boat community;
the higher your renown, the more experienced officers and men will
ask for a transfer to your boat; plus you can use your renown with
the dockyard workers to have your U-boat modified, or to trade up
to a different boat.
Right now, I'm holding off fleeting up to a Type IID, or getting those
AFA 44 MAL 570 improved batteries that can increase my
underwater range, since a few hundred more and I can get that
Type VIIB, which is much better than a riced-up Type II.
The game is only available on DVD, which makes installing it much much
faster than swapping out three or so discs, and takes up about 2 GB
of hard drive space. 512 MB of RAM is required, as are Windows 2000
or XP. Windows 95, 98, or ME are not supported.
One small problem is that SH3 is StarForce copyprotected. If this game
did not have the Silent Hunter franchise name, OR an incredibly dedicated
development team PLUS a publisher which delayed it TWICE so that it
would be polished and include a dynamic campaign, I would have
passed it over because of StarForce.
I have declined to install Half Life 2 on this computer because of the
invasiveness of Steam; and I hope that this trend of invasive copy
protection is only a fad which will pass shortly.
