The former involves fighting historic naval engagements as either the attacker or defender with the option to continue in campaign mode if certain conditions are met to emerge victorious.

If the player starts with the latter, the objective is to achieve victory for their chosen nation and alliance by controlling as many of the 50 regions into which the world's oceans and sea lanes are divided into as possible.

Campaigns start either with the initial outbreak of World War II in September 1939, or after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941.

For a naval battle, victory occurs if all the enemy's deployed ships are destroyed or retreat within 72 hours.

At the start of the game however, the player has the option of choosing allies, enabling the creation of alliances that did not exist such as Germany and the United States for example, to be played for the campaign.

For example, Germany's territory includes Libya and Ethiopia (both under Italian rule), the United States controls territories in the Caribbean Sea and South America (both independent), while the United Kingdom controls Canada and Australia (both Commonwealth).

Territories produce four types of resources: money, iron ore, oil, and aluminum for the power that controls them.

Each power has one home port, to which newly manufactured ships and aircraft are stationed upon completion.

There are also 14 key regions throughout the world which are vital strategic ports with repair facilities for ships.

The game places emphasis on battleships while limiting the effectiveness of aircraft carriers, thus not reflecting the realities of World War II which saw the decline of the battleship and rise of the aircraft carrier as the dominant warship in naval warfare.

Battleships however, may be sunk by either heavy gunfire from other vessels, or being bombed repeatedly by carrier and land based aircraft.

Because one of the victory conditions of capturing a territory is destroying its existing airfields, a means of negating the effect of defending aircraft is to invade a territory at night when the aircraft are grounded and destroy the airfields before daylight if their locations are known.

Each power has a set of historic naval officers and admirals, including Karl Dönitz and Erich Raeder for Germany, Louis Mountbatten and Andrew Cunningham for Britain, Isoroku Yamamoto and Chūichi Nagumo for Japan and Husband Kimmel and Chester Nimitz for the United States.

Each commander may be assigned to various classes of warship from submarine to battleship in order to increase its effectiveness.