Set in the 17th through 19th centuries, Salvo is an exciting single-player game of naval warfare for The PC. Command ships from a variety of navies that include the nations of England, Spain, the Netherlands, France, and the United States. Also get your plundering fix with the pirate hordes of Barbary and the Caribbean. War is waged in a fully realized three-dimensional environment. Combat can involve a handful of ships all the way up to scores of vessels participating in a single engagement. Thanks to the innovative and highly intuitive 'action marker' system, controlling your ships is a snap. Order a ship individually, or by squadron, the choice is yours.

The Tutorials in the game are not narrated, you still have to thumb through the manual quite extensively. So in short, learning the game is quite a challenge. There are some automatic settings to aid those of us who do not have our sea legs quite yet, but for those Admirals out there you can pretty much have as much control as you want. In my opinion there is almost too much. But hey what do you want from a scurvy deck scrubber like myself.

There are a bunch of different ships that you can choose to arm your fleets all having different purposes and if your quite clever you can even capture some of the enemies as well. Ships in the game include ships of the line, sloops, xebecs, frigates, gun platforms, and bombards. The maps are quite large and there are shallow areas and land to navigate around so plan your attacks wisely. These make for unique battle tactics and add fun to the game. Though I was not too keen on the graphics, I did like how the battles were rendered right there on your screen. Forget having to worry about a bunch of boring stats, as thanks to the visual feedback you'll always know what's going on with the fleets, from tattered sails to shattered hulls. Yes there are still plenty of stats if you want exact numbers on casualties, damage, etc. but you can get a quick glimpse just looking at a sinking fireball.

This title does bring a fresh concept to the turn based strategy type game given its time and being a naval game, but I was a bit shocked to see it was only offered as a single-player game. These types of games are a blast to play on a LAN or online and was surprised to see that Shrapnel didn't take advantage of that. I did like the branching campaign structure that allows the player to chart the course of the campaign and decide where next to fight. Depending on how one battle goes there can be up to a half dozen possibilities for the next scenario. In between scenarios you can even refit and upgrade your ships.

For a game that has a MSRP of 40 bucks I would be tongue and cheeked to recommend this to the casual gamer. The graphics and sound were average at best and there is no multiplayer option. I would  recommend it to those who are in the niche market who really enjoy this type of game. 

Gameplay: 6.9
Sometimes it's nice to be able to control or micromanage lots of little details, but in my opinion there is a bit too much here. It makes the game very difficult to learn in its entirety and the tutorials would have been very helpful if they were narrated.

Graphics: 6.7
No eye candy here. Yes strategy games are not really based on looks, but this game visually looks dated by about 5 years.

Sound: 6.5
About the best thing I can say for the game is that it does have sound. Nothing really worth mentioning, just your basic game sounds.

Difficulty: Hard
There are countless options to explore, and the learning curve is very steep.

Concept: 7
I liked the idea of a naval strategy game set between the 17^th and 19^th centuries.

Overall: 6.8
This is a niche game and one for those who are a huge fan of this type of game.