Recent reviews by Lazarus

Ever since Grapeshot removed VOIP, the community servers are unplayable. Darkside regularly made up over 50% of the total ATLAS players since 2019 and yet Grapeshot let their players down. Thank you for ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ up your game after 2k hours.
Won't recommend until this is changed back.

#HowNotToRunAGameStudio

More of a game than a simulator, and mostly for those who are interested in cold war naval tech and rudimentary tactics.

As some people already pointed out, it's not as detailed and doesn't involve micro-management as a game like U-Boat, it focusses more on positioning, the question of when to attack or evade, and shows quite accurately the technological leap the US/NATO made over the Soviets between 1968 and 1984 (the two "classic" campaigns), up to the point when playing as a US sub becomes a turkey shoot against the commies. Yes, the subs on the two sides are not balanced, because they never were balanced historically.
USSR more focussed on shoot-and-scoot tactics, they were louder and generally easier to detect, but also faster and often could evade torpedoes easier cause they could go faster and deeper.
US more focussed on listening first and building their situational awareness over time thanks to far superior sonar, and then positioning themselves in a way harder to detect, all the while their torps could go much further and had wire-guidance (which in terms of gameplay balance is almost like a cheat, compared to the USSR's torps, but that's just how things worked back then).

The interesting thing is the acoustic model the game engine uses. It's not 100% accurate in terms of the physics involved but sufficiently accurate to simulate real scenarios, even though the sound propagation paths are a bit simplified.
Also, even though a battle can easily last up to an hour depending on your play style, the acoustic conditions do not change during the battle, which is part of the arcade-y feel the game gives.

Mods
There are two major ones, one being "Epic Mod", and the other being "Dot Mod". The latter now being made by folks who worked on Epic Mod but decided to start their own project due to some beef I won't go into here.
Both add a vast number of playable subs on both sides, plus surface vessels, giving people an idea on how much harder it is for a ship to detect a sub, than a sub detecting a sub.
In general, Epic Mod increases capabilities on the USSR side, which has been met by some critics due to it not being entirely accurate.
Dot Mod puts out more regular updates and is overall more balanced, from what I could find on declassified performance figures of the tech involved.
Both mods add new campaigns which generally take much longer to complete than the stock ones.

Overall solid recommend if you expect a not-too-serious experience. If you want some solid micro-management and still have historical aspects, you might want to check out the game called "U-Boat".

Cowman Orran Ricardo was right about everything.

Pure bliss if your brain is not spoiled by 3D environments yet.

Played for a bit, it's alright

I write this review from a cardboard box infront of my old house. Had to sell the house, both cars and pay out my life insurance to afford a rig that can run MSFS at descent FPS, however still a good deal. Nothing beats seeing my (former) home in MSFS and flying circles around it - not even the real thing, so it's not a bad deal that I'm homeless now. The cardboard box is not too cramped and the new owner of the house was so kind to grant me free power for the 5000W power supply of the new PC and free WiFi for the next 5 years, and one shower per week with the water supply for the garden. Hopefully none of the 4 GPUs will fail from the moisture inside.
I don't miss the real world, I now have it all inside my new cardboard home. I just hope the rain doesn't leak inside...