I took a chance on this as I didn't even get the demo first. A friend told me the demo didn't do it justice and to just buy it, so I did.
I'm so glad because this turned out to be an incredible game. It's like 4 games all rolled in to one and put together beautifully. It's partly a real time strategy game where you capture bases which generate points that you spend to buy ships, submarines, air craft carriers and aeroplanes. Where it really takes off though, is in the fact that you can actually control all and any of these units whenever you want. So for example you build an air craft carrier and a destroyer and battleship to protect it, and you send them all out in to the deep ocean. Then you build a scout plane on the carrier and send it out to scout the nearby area. You see enemies approaching so you have the carrier build some bombers, rocket planes and fighters, and then you have them circle in the air waiting. As the enemy approaches you take control of one of the planes and fly in and bomb them to pieces, while the AI takes control of all the other units. If you get shot down, you just tab to the next plane. After you finish bombing and turn around to fly back to the ship, you look down on the huge ocean and see your battleships and carriers and stuff, knowing that you not only built them and put them wherever they are, but you can now switch to any one of them and take over... It's incredible.
There are literally dozens of planes too and a massive selection of boats going from small speedboats with torpedoes up to massive battleships. I captured an island and left a little torpedo boat next to it. A little later an enemy battleship sneaked past my defences and started shelling my island, but he didn't spot my little boat. I took control of it and whizzed out from behind the island towards the battleship. I could see it spot me and all it's massive cannons started slowly turning towards me, but by that point I had fired half a dozen torpedoes right at it's side which did so much damage, the ship split in two as it was sinking.
Dogfighting in the planes is a good as any action flight sim, and the same goes for all other elements of the game. I used to play a submarine simulator called Silent Hunter 4, and this game made that game completely obsolete! In this game, I can not only play in a submarine as much as I want, but when I feel like it I can just switch to a plane or a bomber or a fighter or one of my bases with artillery and flac cannons.
The game is simple and easy to get in to, and yet it's challenging and there is enough depth there that I just can't see myself getting tired of it. It's easy to get in to but it takes time and practice to master. I can fly my planes like an ace and I'm pretty good with my subs and ships too, but due to the real time strategy element, you really have to know what to build and where to send it and you have to balance defensiveness with aggressiveness or even the most talented player can end up in trouble.
The best part of it to me though, is the look of the game. A snapshot from any moment of it is comparable to any classic war movie, only I am in full control over it. When I'm dogfighting in a plane, I have enemy planes and bombers skimming past my wings and I fly in to their smoke. Every moment is beautiful and if you get that wow factor from watching dogfights and enormous battleships shelling the hell out of another ship, then you'll be in heaven playing this.
There are a few minor imperfections, but I suspect that most of those will be fixed with a patch. My PC is a dual core 2.4 with 2gig RAM and an 8800GTX (win XP). The game runs so smooth that I was not only able to crank all settings but even max AA. Great!