Developer: Every Single Soldier
Publisher: Ultimate Games
Platform: Switch, PC
Tested on: Switch
Her Majesty’s Ship (Switch) – Review
When you look at publisher Ultimate Games’ track record, you’ll notice that the games they have released have been met with a mixed reception. Although they do bring us the occasional hidden gem (such as the excellent Catch A Duck), their releases are more often misses than hits. Unfortunately, their latest release, Her Majesty’s Ship, joins the list of disappointing titles. What went wrong here?
Story
In Her Majesty’s Ship, the player must craft their own narrative, as they attempt to become admiral of the fleet. There’s no story in the classical sense, even though the game takes inspiration from historical events. It’s clear, however, that developer Every Single Soldier took great care in crafting the right atmosphere and did some research to make sure their game was historically accurate.
Graphics
The game boasts a colorful and playful visual style that avoids being too cartoony and maintains some degree of realism. The majority of the time you’ll be looking at the side of your ship. Here you’ll be able to monitor the various rooms, each of which has its own function. When things happen, simple animations accompany the events. The game’s graphics can be difficult to appreciate to their fullest extent, as you’re continuously bombarded with messages popping up. These pop-ups don’t harm the game’s graphical performance. The frame rate remains steady throughout but given the relatively simple nature of the visuals, we wouldn’t have expected otherwise.
Sound
To our surprise, the game features voice acting. The performances are decent, with the voices accompanying the English fleet delivering their lines with a posh British accent. In all honesty, we can’t tell you whether the other factions feature voice acting befitting their respective nations as we couldn’t bear giving the game another try with a different fleet, due to gameplay issues. The game’s music, while suitable, was generic and unremarkable.
Gameplay
Her Majesty’s Ship is a sim game that is all about resource management. Your ultimate goal is to rise to the position of admiral of the fleet. This lofty goal can be achieved by playing through a series of naval missions that put you in a variety of situations. The game is all about making quick decisions and carefully juggling around your available resources in order to achieve that mission’s objective. In theory, Her Majesty’s Ship is a decent, albeit unremarkable simulation game. In practice, however, the Switch port game is borderline unplayable.
The game’s issues start with the tutorial. We can forgive the fact that said tutorial rushes you through the game’s motions without in-depth explanations. After all, figuring out stuff for yourself is half the fun of the game, right? Things take a turn for the worse, however, only a few minutes in. Once the game asks you to give your crew double rations, the tutorial’s interface freezes up and although the game keeps running, you’re left unable to do anything, forcing a restart. We tried this several times and kept encountering this glitch.
With no working tutorial whatsoever players are then left to their own devices to figure out exactly how everything works in Her Majesty’s Ship. The shoddiness of the Switch port doesn’t end with the tutorial however and the game is plagued by interface issues. These are most noticeable when it comes to menus popping up when they shouldn’t. Additionally, there is no apparent logic as to which controller button does what, and you’ll often find yourself randomly mashing buttons in the hope that you happen to tap the right one in order to perform an action. These issues could have somewhat been mitigated by the introduction of touch screen controls, but unfortunately, the game doesn’t support this feature. The result is an exercise in frustration. With time management being a core element of the gameplay, the time wasted in wrestling with the game’s interface turns the Switch port into an unplayable mess. We haven’t even touched upon some of the other issues that plague Her Majesty’s Ship, including ridiculously long load times.
From what we’ve gathered, most of these issues are unique to the game’s port. While the PC version also suffers from a few glitches, it is at least somewhat playable. It’s a shame too as it’s obvious that the original developer put actual effort into developing this game. The blame for this shoddy port seemingly lies with Black Rose Projects, the Polish company that is responsible for a fair share of Ultimate Games’ Switch ports.
Conclusion
There are no two ways about it: the Switch port of Her Majesty’s Ship is fundamentally broken. It’s a bit of a shame, as the game had potential, even if it was already imperfect in its original form. This becomes especially apparent when you’re comparing this title to Help Me Doctor, another title from Ultimate Game’s stable. Help Me Doctor is a terrible game, but at least you can tell it’s bad because it looks bad. Her Majesty’s Ship’s issues, on the other hand, aren’t with the game’s presentation. As the game looks better than it actually is, we imagine that a lot of gamers are going to end up frustrated when they buy this one based on what the game’s appearance is like and then discover it’s dead on arrival. An update might be able to resolve the game’s current issues and salvage Her Majesty’s Ship, but given Ultimate Games’ track record, we wouldn’t count on that happening any time soon.
Her Majesty's Ship (Switch) - Review,
No Comments