Recent reviews by Mattoropael

I am, unfortunately, no longer able to recommend this product due to the developer's continued toying with his existing customer base.

Despite the repeated teasing of new content for the game over the years, the 2.0 beta that we PC players did get has exactly NONE of the teased content, NONE of the cut content teased before release (e.g. the A-10), and of course not the PS5-exclusive Frontline 59 that the dev was obviously very secretly working on for the LONG time that PC received no content, no fixes, and barely any communication dangling carrots in front of us (which as I said, all turned out to be thin air). All we get are minor fixes and a balance pass, and MANY old issues from release remain unfixed according to multiple reports.

Oh and it broke every single mod in existence, many of which won't ever be updated due to the poor state of the modding community. So not only did we not get any new content in 2.0, we actually LOST player-created content.

This is a broken, unfinished game with missing content. Only pay for what the game actually is, not the moon that the dev keeps promising. Oh and watch out for him breaking all the mods, again.


Disclaimer: Played the demo before, just finished Campaign at the time of writing this review

An excellent Ace Combat-esque game that arguably does the core gameplay better than Ace Combat 7 (well not really "arguably" if we're being honest). Story is... interesting, you should pay attention and I won't spoil here.

The good:
- Excellent core gameplay (Try the guns! Especially if you switched from Ace Combat 7)
- Allies are actually useful and will aggressively kill stuff
- An engaging story
- Choosing a twin-seater doesn't just add a silent dummy in your back like Ace Combat
- Good build diversity for individual aircraft due to being able to equip up to three different special weapons (with a few understandable exceptions)

The bad:
- Plane roster is a bit on the "meh" side, many classics aren't in at the moment, including stuff they showed during Kickstarter updates (no BRRRT for us)
- Plane stat balancing is a little weird at the moment, some of the planes (like the F/C-15) are strangely weak
- Twin seaters are rather rare, and actually non-existent among endgame planes, meaning the WSO character is currently a bit wasted

The ugly:
- Boss fights emphasize on padding out the fight with enormous health bars more than engaging mechanics, but at least there's no plot armor other than the phase changes for certain bosses
- The final boss. URGH. It's not THAT hard if you know what you're doing, but it feels like a huge chore more than a fun battle, not helped by your alarms blaring the entire time for no good reason, and the game screwing up your HUD in more ways than one.

Good fun for people looking for nice cooperative PvE games like me. (Note: PvP is basically dead from my observation, do not grab this if you only want to PvP)

For all of a certain franchise constantly saying "In war, no one fights alone", it rings a lot more true in RWR than there. You can solo, but even if you deck yourself out in the most outrageous rare gear possible, there's still a limit to what you can achieve alone (and you can lose said gear easily, more on that later). Team up with bots (and other players) to slowly, but surely push the endless waves of enemy soldiers back. Personal heroics are possible but fairly limited due to how squishy your character is, even with the consumable armor upgrades.

If it isn't clear by now, don't be fooled by the cartoonish graphics. This is a game about brutal meatgrinder battles.

What I'm not happy with is how the game handles rare gear. You'll lose any gear you're carrying when you die, and rebuy them on spawn if they're available in the armory, which means if you die with rare weapons (never available in armory) on you, you'll lose said weapon permanently. It's possible to recover them before they despawn, but other players can grab your precious rare equipment, and they have no obligation to return it (although a lot of players will). If you don't have a steady stockpile of those things, it effectively makes a lot of good weapons "too awesome to use" for the risk, relegating them to permanent safe storage in your stash.

With that said, the game is perfectly enjoyable even if you completely ignore rare items and stick to armory weapons like I do (plenty of gems there, like the unlockable FAMAS which is my personal favorite), so I wouldn't deduct too many points from the frustrating gear system.

Paid mods, what else can I say?

Bethesda was a decent company, all their games are riddled with flaws, but had expansions worth their prices and almost-limitless potential with modding. And now they're ditching all that decency and is all about monetizing now, community goodwill and player experience be damned.

Time to seek greener pastures.

EDIT: The sole developer has gone AWOL since around November 2016. Do not buy unless you're absolutely certain you'll be satisfied with the game as-is.


Not recommended at the moment, even though it has some real potential and I'm actually having fun with it. You can consider getting it when a considerable sale is taking place (talking about 50% off or more), but getting it at full price is frankly not worth it.

I'll start with the good.

• People familiar with Ace Combat should feel right at home... except for horribly-inaccurate missiles and guns that don't "snap" onto your target, but I digress.
  
• The game doesn't follow the usual "F-4 is complete crap, F-22 is hyper-maneuverable" pattern that most arcade flight sims seem to follow, so it's rather refreshing.
  
• Plenty of variations for many aircraft families. Some of them are interesting (e.g. FB-22 sub-family), some of them powerful (e.g. F-35X, F-15Z) and some of them downright hilarious (e.g. F-104 VTOL, Su-74)
  
• AoA limiter-off mode is a bit unrealistic, but it's plenty fun to spin your plane around like there's no tomorrow.
  
• Modding support is good and TS actually responds to modding-related requests, so I'll only expect it to get better down the road.
  
• As mentioned above, TS actually listens to user input. That is already a big plus.

And the bad...

• Extremely CTD-happy. It would be easier listing how many ways the game does NOT crash than the other way around. It's so unstable it would be hilarious if you're not the one playing. It's not Skyrim-level of crash-happy but VT isn't that heavyweight, so it's still rather unacceptable.
  
• Lack of content. The Hollow Thunder campaign introduces you to the Battle Weary World, but doesn't actually follow up on it. It is really underwhelming, and that is already an understatement. Combined Operation and Ziz Hunt are the only included battle scenarios and you'd get tired of both quickly unless you're just using them to test your modded aircraft (which Combined Operation is actually good for).
  
• Lack of aircraft. Yes, there are plenty of variations for each family, but there aren't enough families. No Typhoon (WIP as of this review), no Rafale, no PAK FA, and not even the F-18 Hornet made it.
  
• TS being a one-man team means that updates are slow and most of them aren't really big, especially in terms of new content. I can't blame the man, but it's still a fact.
  
• The lack of official content means that you'll have to look for mods to make the game enjoyable. As it stands there isn't nearly enough either. There are planes, battle scenarios and a whole ton of Ace Combat skins, but things that stand out are far and few in between, and more often than not you'll have to make the battle scenario that you actually want to play with your own hands (which I do).