Fleets of Valor: the dive on the carrier is superb, everything else waits its turn

Objective: attack enemy carrier Shokaku.

On the tactical map, it is a red cross and a few arrows. You order the bombers in, you position the escort, you set waypoints. Then you click the squadron, the camera swings behind the plane, and you are in the cockpit a few thousand metres above the ship, with the flak starting to climb.

Fleets of Valor exists for exactly that moment, and that moment is a success.

The principle blends two games. On one side, a real-time tactical map where you direct carriers, battleships, cruisers, destroyers, submarines and squadrons. On the other, a third-person view where you take control of a single unit. When you switch to another one, the previous unit carries on by itself. So you jump from a dive bomber run to a battleship salvo, then climb back to the map to see how everything else is going.

The night battles around Guadalcanal are the best part of the campaign. Close-range surface combat, shells lighting up the water, silhouettes appearing too late: it is the game's strongest atmosphere.

And then you are done. The campaign has five historical missions, from the Coral Sea to Okinawa by way of Midway and Cape Esperance, plus two training missions. The Japanese side can only be played in custom battles, it has no campaign. The studio also warns that history is sometimes bent for gameplay. Custom battles, with weather and fleet type of your choice, stretch things a little, without replacing written missions.

The interface also betrays the budget. Frontmark Games states on Steam that generative AI was used for some visual assets, the main menu background, ship and plane icons and part of the in-game HUD, while noting that the voices and music are by human artists. And you can feel it: the menus are cold, the interface screens look like prototypes. Watch the system requirements too, 16 GB of memory is the stated minimum.

At 14.86 euros, it is a game to recommend to someone specific: the person who dreams of dive bombers over Nagumo's fleet and is fine with seeing it all in a handful of evenings. A free demo exists, with the Pearl Harbor mission. Start there.

Tactical map or flight stick? Warship fans argue it out on the InsertCoins Discord.