The goal is to move cargo and passengers up and down a river. You are involved in both loading/unloading in addition to the actual shipping. This makes for a great river simulator. Because in real time, these trips would take forever, a time compression feature is available. As a secondary goal, after you accumulate enough points there are boats that offer shorter missions like ferrying cars and trucks across the river. Plus, if you just want to explore a bit, a speed boat is also available. My only complaint about this simulator is the quality of graphics as they are clearly below standard as seen in the screenshots. Plus, I expected more in terms of graphic detail which was disappointing. The learning curve is medium. I was not able to get started, until after going through the in-game tutorial. I believe serious fans of ship simulation games will find this one a nice asset to their collection. If you are looking for a lot of bells and whistles, you should avoid this one. I like this game, and found it enjoyable enough for a four star rank.

This is ship simulator as you know it.

The positive.

First of all there are some new ships and you can now also load your ships with cranes ect.

That is nice with this new feature. And when you start a new game you now have to unlock the other ships in a kind of reward system where you get experience points. I also like that but can maybe be a little anoying for some players that do not. Other than you sail on a VERY long river, and let me say it like this traveling from one city to the next take a very long time and from one end of the map to the other is a trip that take so long that you should consider getting a life if you ever do that. ( it take more than 24 houres at least maybe days )

But for all of us that do not like to spend that much time you can also use a fast travel function found on your map. Here you can see your possesion of pickup and delivery. If you clik on any city map you get a ship icon in the right side of screen that will make you fast travel to that location. So basicly you can just load and unload and skip the long trip.

But no matter what you have to manual sail into the harbour to the correct place. This maybe sound simple but its not. You will pretty fast find out that there are alot of current that will push you ship in many different direction so it can be kind of tricky not to hit the pier. The same happen when you sail from A-B then you will notise that you ship get pushed in different directions and that it change according to low or high tide.. This is really great.

The loading and unloading of a ship can be done either manual or automatic. So far i only tried the bulk/coal craine and it is really well done. Now you can see excactly where you unload your coal or sand since it look just like in real life. If you load it in the front it will stay there and if you load in the back it stay there. It do even load different and you can see this just like in real life.

You ships also have various trusters and you really need them in this game.

The negative.

Well I have a 6 core cpu 3333mhz 12gb ram and 3 ssd drives... For me with a high end computer the game do not run smooth if I do not lower shadows and other stuff. Also the antializing is not good enough ingame so streight lines do look a bit blurry, example in the cockpit of the ship.

I was never a huge fan of ship simulator but i did enjoy the 2011 version i think and especially the ferry pack. But to be honest I just feel that this new river simulator feel a bit borring since it look very much the same everywhere ( the house on the river bank ect ).

Also i miss the feature being able to walk on your ship ( maybe i did not find the key yet ).

I did also have some exidents with other ships that "over take me" and then cut in front of me making our ships collide but its very rare.

All in all

Its a nice simulator and the price is right.

If I was a big fan of ships I would maybe be more happy about the simulator than I am right now. But i recommend you buy it if you like ship simulator.