HighFleet

First off, I recommend to switch off the flashing effects in the settings before starting the game. I found the combat a lot less irritating this way. The game takes place on a randomized map containing cities with different bonuses. Some cities allow you to buy special items, get faster repairs, reinforce your fleet with additional ships, buy cheaper fuel, or loot long-range (nuclear) missiles. The goal is to keep your flagship safe, capture the city of Khiva, and then hold it against a merciless counterattack. Enemy fleets are everywhere and will do their best to annihilate your fleet before you ever make it to Khiva. Fleets consist of different airships. Some ships are small, fast attack ships which can evade enemy fire. Other ships are huge, slow, but protected by armour. Some ships are completely useless in a direct fight but may be great long-range scouts. Other ships can launch missiles or fighters. The key is to use each unit according to its strengths. Most of the gameplay takes place on the map screen. You will order your fleet to move from city to city. Run out of fuel or get surrounded by enemies and you are screwed. You can also split up your forces, hunt down transports, confuse enemy strike groups by creating distractions, or attack them head on if you are crazy enough. Combat takes place on a 2D screen and requires only the use of your keyboard and mouse. It is brutal but very satisfying. The more you play the game, the more neat little tricks you will learn to survive. And there is so much more: random story events, ship upgrades, decrypting radio messages, hiring allies in a fun dialogue mini game, using radar or infrared systems to track down other ships etc. The storyline is amazing, too. The closer you get to Khiva, the more unprecedented disasters will happen in the game world. Perhaps you can become its saviour. More likely than not, you will die trying. But you will want to come back and try again because this game is just brilliant.

I am serious, you have about 3 seconds. Now that all the epileptics are either dead or convulsing, let's have a pleasant time. Highfleet is self described as a fleet carrier sim. programmed entirely inside an ice fishing shack by a single Russian man. Personally, I describe it as an immersive trauma sim, because the hardest part isn't the combat : it's staying calm when all your senses, are drowned out by the screams of gunfire. The game takes place on the fictional desert planet of Kazakhstan. After a messy political revolution, rebel forces have taken over. You play as Grand Duke Mark Sayadi Salemsky, who is tasked by the Russian emperor himself, Vladmir Valdimirovich Putin, to restore order. Unfortunately, our forces to the south got glassed by thermonuclear warheads. So you could say: ''it's not going too well.'' Our last ditch effort, is to push north towards the rebel controlled city of Khiva. Our objective? A plutonium reactor the size of a city. responsible for the vast majority of power generation across the planet. The hope is once we capture it, the enemy will have to surrender, or at least, negotiate a truce. However, you're vastly outnumbered, outgunned, and flat out broke.

This game can potentially be good...if you spend a couple of hours reading guides before you even start the game, that is. The tutorial does very little to explain the mechanics of the game and you will need to search for help online. That, in my books, makes this game a failure. For example, fuel management is such an important aspect of the game yet this fact is not even mentioned. Ship design is also a mess as the interface is ugly, unintuitive and obviously, not touched upon at all whatsoever. Making money, probably the most critical aspect, was never hinted as well. Combat is a major part of the game and I can say that I absolutely hated it. Obviously, it was a design decision for the game to be arcade-like but the fact that the enemy can have up to half a dozen ships all firing at your lone ship just pushes the difficulty from challenging to ridiculous. I guess I'm just too old to "git gud" and to want to have a bit of fun. The only regret I have is that I trusted the Microprose brand and I thought the game would be as good as their previous games so many years ago. Oh well, caveat emptor and all that. I would've given this a one-star rating but the story was pretty interesting so that's worth a star. In the end, there are many more games out there that are better designed, more engaging and respect your time as a gamer. If you're a masochist, you just may enjoy being beaten over and over again.

Game is good but the GOG version is NOT the same build as the Steam version. GOG version has additional bugs and is NOT compatable with much of the mods the community has made (e.g., Flight to Hara Vera). As far as I know, this has never been addressed by the dev or GOG.