First World of Tanks. Then World of Warplanes. Now…World of Warships. I figure Wargaming is locked on course to take the entire world, but for now we’re satisfied just playing around with the publisher’s phenomenally successful F2P/MMO combat games.

What started with World of Tanks, a combat multiplayer environment based around (you guessed it) tank battles, blossomed into two offshoots: World of Warplanes and World of Warships. While the former was met with mixed critical response, the recently released latter maintains a more consistent quality, possibly due to greater familiarity to the World of Tanks formula and control scheme, while mixing up the nuances to give its own unqiue feel.

Similar to World of Tanks, World of Warships focuses on control of an individual vessel over larger strategic play, though the vessel itself can be navigated via point-and-click when the map is appropriately zoomed out. I figure this control specification is made optional due to the fundamental differences between navigating a ship and a tank, the former far slower and momentum based than faster, twitchier tank controls.

What this means is that World of Warships is very much about about strategic positioning of your ship, careful analysis the generally simple layouts of the maps and working out how you’ll approach encounter zones with advantage. Reason being that, as expected for a game about naval warfare, your ships are usually equipped with a multitude of canons that have rotation and angles. Naturally you want to maximise your damage potential by having as many guns pointed at the opposition as possible, while also minimising your ship’s profile to reduce viability as a target.

This leads to some pretty fun back-and-forths, as it’s not so overly complex that it borderlines on sim, but instead utilises these basic ship play fundamentals with simple controls and encounters. Especially due to the lack of maneuverability in ship movement compared to something like a tank, World of Warships has a tense approach towards encounters followed by a sudden clash of heavy long rang bombardments, and I found myself constantly tossing up between sticking to the battle plan or risking a bit of retreat or repositioning.

Long term play, as with World of Tanks, relies on a person’s investment in the F2P environment. These games are, after all, built to monetise, and if you’re happy to splash some cash you can put dollars towars upgrading ship equipment, purchasing new vessels, and other goodies to give yourself an edge. Thankfully there’s a decent bit of content to enjoy regardless, and enough players connected to Wargaming’s Asia server to enjoy both the co-op against bots and player team battles. Daily missions are the biggest draw, if very simple, but nevertheless a way to keep playing and earn in-game currency without having to spend a cent of your own.

World of Warships is currently in its early stages, though offers a decent step up over World of Warplanes as something the World of Tanks community can connect to through similarities though appreciate for its changes. I do feel ship battles, by both design and presentation, don’t have the same appeal and accessibility of faster tank battles. But there’s still fun to be had, and I’m sure as time passes Wargaming will continue to evolve the formula and introduce new ideas, content, and objectives to keep armchair admirals sinking battleships well into the night.