After Years Of Development It's Back! - Kitakami First impressions 

I owned this ship back in the early days of the game and WG took it off me and replaced it with an Atago, I think the pricing for this event is one massive piss take by WG

Lets be clear: no ship is worth so many resources, unless its play by itself and always win. Saying that, the question is if it is decent enough to be played frequently

I looked back at a video by jingles on the kita in 2015 during beta. The ship was at T8. You have the launchers all loading at once, and the torps will kill friends and foes alike. The ship was designed to punish noobs who sail in a straight line. The ship would have been matched at T6-T10This ship would have been a pain if it came out as originally designed for T6/T7, not so much at TT8-10 matches. The changes: 1. Not at T10 so it'll be facing T9 to superships. 2. Prevalence of hydro. 3. Lack of noobs at T10. Anyone who encounters a wall of torps would have either pushed forward to spot you if in a DD with hydro and probably would have torped you like that DD did in the 2nd game. 4. Launchers are now loaded sequentially. Wall of torps now available at 5 min. Battle impact now minimized. I originally thought it was not worth the price to get it. Glad your video affirms that decision.

Idk... I rather get the Jinan that can launch the same amount of torps while having good guns

Well the good news is: It's not the OP ship many were afraid of. Seems a bit like Jager; If you land a perfect salvo the thing is a monster. But, it's so situational, anything short of that makes the ship inferior to ships like Jinan, Austin, Mino, etc.

It can be called a handicapped Jinan. I absolutely love Jinan because of its 32mm upper belt plating, hilarious AA along with DFAA that can make CV players cry as well as 40 deepwater torps. Smoke and good guns.

From what I've seen so far, using high caliber HE on Kitakami is a lot more effective than the AP.

I remember this memeboat from beta, back when it was a T8. One trick wonder, but that trick was pretty brutal. Sidenote: anyone else find it hilarious that they release kitakami to the whales in the same patch they give a bunch of newbies free yamatos? LoL

As a former Kuma captain, I was screaming "GET LAST STAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAND!" right at the beginning, lmao.

Imagine how expensive it is to unlock this instead of a Jinan Shima or a Research ship. Its such a unbelievable bad deal. Cant believe that people spend this many ressources and lets be honest money on this. Mark my words: There will be a ship even mor expensive than this in the future.

12:41 LMAO that quick death XD XD

*_I've met one today with my FS Colbert. Our meet was very short .....about 6 second's and IJN Kitakami was escorted to the Port by the Les Baguette Express..._* 😂

Kita is less than Jinan

Thanks for confirming my suspicions about this ship. Zero impact meme machine.

I love how easy it is to citadel a kitikami with a dd. Altho i did get killed by one as i wasnt aware of the torp switching capability lol. The thing was launching deepwaters so i thought it was safe to rush and not worry about torps ha. This was when it first started showing up as a test ship in my games

Still have PTSD from the CBT of this ship sending its gifts out of smoke and seeing a wave of red coming out of it

Good to see it has lots of weakness's on top of being very hard to get. Plus it gives some yolo vibes

Damn so that's how frustrating it feels to miss that many torps :)

AA Defense rating is a 9? Unbelievable! Kitakami is literally CV food!

I had a guy in like 6-7 of my games with a kitakame. He waited a lot longer for torps, stayed way closer and used his guns a lot. Looked for opportunities and one shot with torps. He won every game.

thank you for the demo on this. 2 years it is

Never have i ever clicked so fast on video 😂

Jager on steroids with a citadel

Thx for the great review. Yeah like you mentioned, this ships is not OP but the other ships can do what this ship is capable of. The best part of Kitakami seemed to be launching 40 torps at a time. So, I feel like it might be better if WG add reload booster for all launchers as consumable. 2 or 3 reload boosters might be decent and a player can add one more by captain skill. I don’t have enough research points and recourses to get the ship all combined, so I’m not too worried about not getting this ship. But your review with actual battles is always entertaining and educational. Looking forward to watching more of Kitakami videos in near future. Best.

One of my fav ship back to good old navyfield days

when i first saw the event i knew that i would just wait the 2years for a normal release lol As a Huge KC fan i've wanted Kitakami since forever, mostly because of collection purposes, but i would probably play her like once and never again, so yeah, i won't even try to get her (also hate how WG made her "Over Gimmicky")

The torpedo carrier - TCV

It seems like the best way to play it would be to keep one side full while the other you do your more often drops with? Then if you get a nice juicy target you just flip to the other side with your excellent ruddershift/turning circle and dump the load.

of all the torp ships, Asashio, U-4501, Jinan, Paolo Emilio, Yamagiri/Shima, Halland, are all much more fun to play, in different ways

Making Defense look like the deal of the year. Jinan seems like the better value.

I stumbled into one about a month or so ago, I guess someone was testing it. My DD spotted it very briefly and never saw it again, but the torps… it was a horizontal rain coming at us all the time. Fortunately the guy had poor aim and never hit anyone but it denied us the flank.

Honestly, i think this ship was way overhyped seeing how it came out. Also could you do a video on the Stord '43, I'm curious how that ship is.

I remember playing this ship really *really* briefly out of the closed beta way back in the day and it just completely filling the map with torps.

You need to be using that smoke in an ambush role to dev strike isolated BBs and heavy cruisers. Like a big Pailo Emilio. When you cant do that working closely with your team for area denial and to stop pushes. It doesnt seem like the ship is particularly strong though. As many have said theres actually several other ships in the game that can do similar on better gun platforms.

Id have given the ship a 3min 40sec reload to get all the torps back at once. Also it to have freisland main gun reload with minotaur AP performance while keeping its current HE.

You can also smoke up CL, DDs, BBs to save them or help them dps down a ship.

I always remember the kitakami in the game 'Navy Field EU'. Pretty much every battle involved each team dodging multiple blind fired Kitakami torp walls before your carrier planes got close enough to spot for the battleships.

Jinan does the same but like much much better

Fun fact: you can citadel these with cruiser HE from any angle basically, provided you have decent enough pen. I have citadeled a Kitakami in a Goliath from the rear like 4 times.

Seems like a Benham that can do a yolo-run in smoke like a Paolo Emilio and take out multiple ships. Could be a fun ship but I'm not going to spend all those resources for it.

good lord. i remember before i started playing seeing videos of all these torps. open water mele.

I remember back in the days of playing Navyfield, this ship would just launch waves of torps into the enemy team and everyone would try to run away instead of crossing the T.

Good video. Legends player, with a notable fondness for weird Premiums. Certainly heard of the original Kitakami. I'm guessing this version will EVENTUALLY come to Legends, and she sounds interesting. Whether I can actually afford her is another story. :)

Was my first beta ship. Miss it.

Kitakami really feels like a T10 squishier Yolo. I mean engine boost+fuel smoke means unless the ship you are charging down has radar/hydro they can't do much of anything to stop you outside of blind fire, and speaking as someone who has had a Kitakami rush around an island in it's fuel smoke with no active way to detect it, it feels just as bad as getting rushed by a Yolo Emilio. Like I honestly do not understand why Wargaming brought this thing back if they were going to make it so bad for general use, but also frustrating to play against. Like sure the torp mechanics do make a triple div of these a lot weaker, but it also makes the ship so situational that it's just not worth it. I mean even at each set of 4 torps taking 60 seconds, that's still 5 minutes to load 40 torps, Jinan does that every 5 minutes as well, only between doing that every 5 minutes, it's throwing 20 torps in the water every 2 minutes. Only Jinan has good guns on top of that. I mean if we break this down, Kitakami is 40 torps every ~5 minutes, Jinan is 40, 20, 20, 40 in that same time. So as a torp cruiser, it's not even the best. Yoshino can dump 32 20km torps into the water in almost the same time. It takes Yoshi an extra minute. Only Yoshi's 20km torps can hit everything, and Yoshi has guns. Fucking Yodo can put out 48 torpedoes in 5 minutes that travel 15km. The only advantage Kitakami has is the fuel smoke and engine boost, basically making it Paolo Emilio with a citadel a tier higher. I'm not saying I would have wanted old Kitakami back, 40 torps as often as Jinan can fire off 20 is a bit much, I'm saying Wargaming should have just let this ship die. Or used it for some special game mode only. Imagine an operation where your entire team is made of old Kitakami and you have to ether attack into or defend something and team damage is turned back on. That would be funny as hell. Or they bring back the battle royal mode and the only ship choice is an old Kitakami, so it's a 12+ person free for all with everyone just spamming torps everywhere. That also would be fun as hell. Instead we get this. A mix between a sub and Paolo Emilio, with a citadel.

this ship enters into a stealthy activity of surprise attack between islands and flanking... based on the information presented in the offensive arsenal and armor... it must be effective in surprise attack (where the enemy least expects it)...

I think the Jager is a better value. This ship dropped from a Christmas container. It is a DD with a detection of 5.4 K. The torps speed is 90 knots in 5x3. Each set of three reloads in 65 seconds. Damage is 7533. The top speed is 38.9 and is equipped with a 120 second 8% speed boost. It has 4 heals. The turning circle 670 meters with 3.4 second rudder shift. No smoke. The attributes of each ships is nice. What I can't do is compare the battle impact each brings. A comparison contrast of these two ships would help the community especially given the cost of the Kitakami.

Im just wondering - how you was gaining speed at 16:40 with broken engine without last stand? Is it because of engine boost?

I got this ship just in time to not play any games before WG replaced it with an Atago 😢 Looking forward to trying it out 😁

This ship is really tricky just like I-56 and like I-56 this should do well in asymmetric battles.

As a torpedo main seeing others not know fish fu is heartbreaking.

I missed this ship from Closed Alpha and Beta days. Still has the highest Teamkill ratio.

I remember someone on the enemy team have kitakami and i use the kaga to pick it citadel all game

torp boats require 4d degrees of foresight to pay off. Probably best paired with a 20km shima buddy to scout and pressure movement

I just wanted to say thank you. After watching this video, you helped me decide if I'm going to dump the resources to grab this ship, but this looks absolutely god-awful to play. I understand they had to do a balancing act and giving what it's capable of doing they had to give it a lot of weaknesses, but this does not look fun or enjoyable in the least bit.

This video singlehandedly removed any and all FMO I might’ve had for this event. 😅

It's fatal flaw is ship based torpedos. The superior version is submarine launched torpedos.

Battle impact seems really situational. a bit of a relief.

i used to have this back in the day . i found a lot of team mates would troll in front of you trying to get you to torp them so they could complain . lol, it was a great little ship.

This ship is the definition of “ spin to win”. No thanks… always look forward to the uploads tho… gj PQ

About a month ago I played against one. I think I was in my Somers. He was a good player and held his own in the early-mid game. I'd found his general location by the mid-late game, and both teams were under half. He was kiting me and it was very difficult to spot him for more than a couple of seconds as I maneuvered to avoid torps. I had chipped away at his health but he eventually got me with a torp. In no-CV games, and in decent hands, this is a bitch to play against. I can't imagine troll-divisions of 3 of them.

This ship definetly now worth that amount of resources, since it is very hard to play a tier 6 kuma body at tier X.

So to be clear, you are the super unicum & I am not. That said, I was surprised by the way you tried to use this ship. Honestly, I would think the idea is the "massive wall of skill torpedo attack" sort of like a Shima, but more extreme. Hence I would assume we would stay quiet for the first 5 minutes until our torps are maxed out. Then fire one whole side of the ships torps as a wall of skill attack. Then circle around & look for a target for the other broadside of torps to launch another wall of skill. Depending on how long that takes maybe the other side of torps is ready or will be soon. I actually think it's supposed to be a fairly boring ship that simply launches 2 major attacks in a battle and then in the "late game" you just use what's available. On the other hand, it also could just be WG fucking over it's players with a ship that looks super OP at a glance only to find out after all your resources are gone that it's a dog turd.

I blew a bunch of coal and steel before really researching this, which now i regret. I'm gonna take on the challenge and grind her out with Coal and RB points. It's a long grind, but I'm up for it. I got the Harugomo line reset 4x at this time since I had 1.5M free xp sitting. At least, I can get to Defence and call it there 😅

want to see Defence.

i will always remember the time i was grinding the Old Colorado, and ended in a mtach in the old diagonal Islands of Ice with a full div of Kitakamis on the other team, and of course they were in my flank, but i ended up killing all 3 of them, just after they lanched their walls xD (1 may have been a KS, but whos counting :V)

Either you die instantly from anything or you wait 5 minutes for a likely huge whiff in torps & become useless... glad it isn't anything like people panicked over.

I want this ship in World of Warships Legends so badly.

this is the ultimate area denial ship

Buyer's Remorse Maximus = Kitakami

I Love my slava even more now

By the looks of it the name should probably be Kitetakami. She looks more like an area denial ship with defensive strengths.

This ship requires way more patience than you have. If you plan to launch single rack on CD then just play something that can reload faster, that's not the point of the ship. Point is to prepare massive wall of skill, wait for perfect opportunity and decide match with single massive launch. You are scalpel, not a club.

Honestly I'd prefer to play a torp build Jinan, she's free and more confortable to play

what if you try doing a regolo with the exhaust smoke

Torps boats are about luck hitting with torps.. his spotting is amazing... its like having an extra DD on the team. Its unique for sure.

It's a little short. like cow bell, I need looooooooonger kitakami

Anyone else remember when 74 knots wasn't even possible for torps? Now it's considered the "slow" option.

Sounds crazy but you should wide spread more.

Yay another ship I can't get :)

LAMO that reload, Jinan is literally a better torpedo cruiser

what's the new torpedo mod in the thrid game? those unreachable markers and stuff? Can't find it in Aslain's package.

It’s a cool ship. I did want it but I don’t think I want it anymore.

I was citadeling Kitakami's with DD HE.

I feel like it is played like a pan-asian cruiser, but nerfed all along exept maybe the torps. This is amplifies the poor battle impact: People mostly push agressively (what you need) , when the battle is decided anyway.

Can you build it for smoke yolo and try rush and torp?

I thought WG premium days also can be used to redeem along with RB, Steel and Coal?

Remember this is alrd a nerfed state compared on her CBT. Her CBT was way more powerful. She has Smoke Screen back then. And Deepwater Torpedoes never was a thing so it can killed any class including teammates. PLUS. Back then 20km torps have the same detection range as Gearing Torps. And it still have the same speed as other Type 93s. And those torps reloads independently means you can deploy 40 torps every 2-3 mins. Yep. They were seriously broken back then. Just imagine throws these 20 side torps and you can do triple kills with single Torp Salvos. But also back then shells doesnt over pen or bounce much. I did a simple math. Tbh, I prefer Kitakami having normal IJN torps that reload every 3 mins on all launchers than 5mins broadside reload. Now I’m not sure if Kuma hulls are small enough to have a Smolensk Syndrome. But for safety avoid gun fight as much as possible. Avoid Cruisers. You are torpedo boat destroyer (with citadel) who can deploy lots of torps. And due to Kuma hull, He citadel tends to happen, ALOT OF TIMES.

The defence is apparently worth it. So just go half way

19:00 it acts a lot like a DD

It's a useless gimmick, but as IJN fan I really wanted this one. I was saving resources for a year. As it was unclear, I was saving all of them. And still I don't have enough. And you can't even throw money to get it. Well that's a good thing I guess ..

The og wall of skill Good thing is... Of this shit gets spotted it gets blasted instantly

Personally, I’ll try to get Defense unless it can be obtained later or turns out to not be very good. Kitakami, I’ll wait for 2 years

the best thing about this event is that this ship seems to be useless and the special camo for 20 phases looks ugly. Having said that, I think that this ship will be for players who will wait these 6 minutes, fire all their torpedoes at once and die, which doesn't seem very fun to play against

Just get a Jinan....its the same boat, but more cruiser than DD XL.

When it was in the firat test I fought aganst 3 kitakamis. It was not too bad..the ship is t4. So any good shot from any CAs it will be deleted.

I was part of the STs when WG dared to revive again the Kita. I committed so many friendly killings lol! It was junk but a deadly piece of junk for literally everyone

Poi intensifies

I had this ship, too. WG took it away and I want it back, and I'm NOT paying for it, either!!

i feel that since i already owned it i should be allowed to trade back the Atago they replaced it with for her.