Is Silent Hunter 4 still it? Inquiring mind wishes to know.
It is for me. Obviously personal opinion. Based on:
1. When it comes to submarine sims, I'm a U.S. Fleet Boat fan. I never quite got into the U-Boat thing (again, preference).
2. The SubSim community supports the product and players have come up with amazing mods (all without source code, mind you).
3. Between the aforementioned mods offering tweaked graphics and sounds that are as accurate as they can possibly mimic, the immersion level is quite good (short of installing a periscope in your den and getting the neighbor to lob depth charges from next door). There are skins, gramophone and radio sound packs that give you, quite literally, hours and hours of between run entertainment while dealing with the 'mundane' duties of running your boat, crew that you interact with (limited) and campaigns with realism levels that run from 'easy' (depending on your definition) to extremely hard (doubt it would fall out of anyone's definition).
I openly support this game amongst my friends here since it's really good and I don't see it as a competitive threat to AH (each game fills a niche and I love them both).
I surely love the radar when that upgrade becomes available as the campaign progresses.
The graphics never fail to please (if you don't encounter glitches from 'mod soup' - be careful).
I recommend not letting yourself get caught on the surface by patrol planes.
Occasionally, you make get lucky manning the AA, though (on less realistic settings maybe you'll survive more oft than not).
Here's one of those custom skins.
The Japanese are relentless.
