Her Majesty's Ship, an 18th century naval management game from indie developer Every Single Soldier, puts players in the role of an ambitious ship captain in a race to become iral. The sim comes to Nintendo Switch a year after the game's release on Steam, bringing some extremely frustrating UI and questionable use (or lack thereof) of the console's abilities on top of what was already a tedious, disappointing experience.
Her Majesty's Ship takes advantage of the increased abundance of pirate and naval-based media following the blockbuster success of Pirates of the Caribbean, such as the ever-improving Sea of Thieves, which is still adding new features through updates. The game is very focused on being historically accurate, with many different tasks required of sailors at the time depicted and represented with real-life naval flags. Voice-acted lines from the sailors and captains also reflect accurate orders, responses, and titles. The clear enthusiasm for naval history and obvious research put into accuracy is one of the few laudable aspects of the game.
For a management simulator, Her Majesty's Ship actually only has the player managing one thing: time. Tasks are presented to the player via flags that descend down a wire. Completed tasks yield a reward, while the player is penalized for missing one. There's no deep strategy, customization, or decisions for the player to make beyond some very basic resource management. The ship can be sent to various towns and islands across an overworld map, where extra resources and enemy ships can be found, but for the most part travel is used to complete objectives from the iral.
The conversion to the Switch is disastrous, however, and detracts from what few elements the game offers that might salvage it. While an apparent visual glitch has been removed, the UI is incredibly unintuitive all the same. Windows will often overlap each other or stay open, even when paused. A menu must be accessed to switch between three different modes: one to interact with nearly everything on the ship, another to view information about different icons, and a third to accept tasks from the iral or learn more about the other time-sensitive tasks (if the window isn't covered up). Touch controls are, bafflingly, non-existent. The challenge of navigating menus and constantly switching between modes is much greater than the challenge the game provides. Compared to recent sailing-focused games, like the delightful Windbound, Her Majesty's Ship feels dead in the water.
Her Majesty's Ship is so disappointing because it's easy to see how a good game could have come out of it. Every Single Soldier is clearly ionate about military history, and a historically accurate simulation of the many decisions an 18th century ship captain would have to make, while simultaneously gunning for a promotion, would be engaging for fans of strategy, pirates, and naval combat. Unfortunately, with the Skull & Bones to come (if it ever comes out), it might be best to leave Her Majesty's Ship anchored in port.
Her Majesty's Ship releases September 15th on Switch, with a PC version already on Steam. Screen Rant was given a Switch key for the purposes of this review.
