Recent reviews by Sogaki

We are so back!
Balance is FINALLY in a great direction and the game is absolutely back in the amazing goldilocks between rewarding and challenging that it was at launch!

We are a couple of patches in after the big "redemption" patch and things are looking great so far.
Personally I am finding myself enjoying all the new content that was added in the past and was completely overshadowed by how the bad and limited the game felt before "the big fix"

I don't know if this is a game for everyone, but it definitely a game for me!

At the time of writing, despite the huge changes to the economy that have massively improved the progression I still DO NOT RECOMMEND this game to a new player, especially if they're mostly interested in tank / ship battles.
While the core mechanics of the game are indeed very enticing, your experience will be repetitive, frustrating and demoralising because currently the game by design encourages and rewards players that play in the most underhanded ways possible (such as ignoring the objective and spawn killing)

While War Thunder as a whole is a great concept and definitely has an enjoyable core gameplay in theory, in practice it crumbles under the weight of many small design decisions and some big ones.

Here's some comments about the flaws of this game that I personally consider the reasons why it's not worth your time (and eventually, money):

There are huge balance issues, so big that in several parts of the BR progression you'll basically never see any vehicle of that faction (british/french tanks between 3.0 and 5.0 anyone?) because other factions are so much stronger at that BR that getting a decent score (and a decent payout) is just way too hard and frustrating.
It's better to just keep farming in a lower BR and skip directly to the next BR with good vehicles (which takes far longer because low BR vehicles give lower rewards, but still more than what you would get playing at a disadvantage but at the appropriate BR).

As if the balance issues weren't enough to make the game frustrating, spawn killing enemy vehicles instead of being prevented or discouraged is practically the META in all modes that allow respawns except maybe air arcade battles.
Spawn protection lasts just a few seconds and in tank/ship battles it's especially useless because it comes off after a couple of meters, which isn't nearly enough to begin accelerating, let alone get into a safer position than the COMPLETELY EXPOSED SPAWN POINT SURROUNDED BY CONVENIENT HIDING SPOTS AND SNIPING POSITIONS.
Seriously, if you're not doing it the other team will and they are going to get a huge advantage out of it because a spawn killed player usually will not have enough points to respawn again and will essentially be removed from the game.
This has been reported and complained about for so long that the community has somehow developed some sort of Stockholm syndrome about it and now considers being spawn killed seconds after respawning by a vehicle you couldn't possibly see "skill issue" (yeah. . . I don't get it either)
Quoting Gaijin's "Analysing 15 thousand entries of your feedback from the Economy Survey" post on May 29 2023
"We have tried to study our maps over a long time, creating special tools like ‘heatmaps’ of deadly shots together with the player system of likes and bans"
Confirms they've always known that a statistically significant number of kills in each game is made shooting at spawn zones

And again in the June 13 2023 "War Thunder Changes Roadmap" (emphasis mine)
"Improved indication for spawn zone protection. First is a more obvious indication of hits on players protected by the spawn zone, so that the shooter understands why their shots went through the protected vehicles. The second is an indication of players firing at the spawn zone: such shooters will be additionally marked in the game world and on the mini-map, similar to being scouted."
Having played a lot since the update I can confirm that having vehicles that shoot at spawns automatically scouted is completely useless: scouting just gives an inaccurate general location, but even if it did give a pinpoint accurate location and "see-through-walls" silhouette it would still be useless because most players shooting at spawns position themselves in very specific spots (easy to find with an online search) that make it almost impossible to shoot back at them.
The other change is just a joke, adding a convenient indicator to tell which players are still protected and which ones are ready to be shot is definitely far more helpful to the people shooting at the spawns than it is for people being spawn killed.

Don't get fooled by the playerbase in denial: this definitely is a Pay2Win game and a pretty expensive one at that. Sure not all premium vehicles are completely overpowered (a few of them are even worse than free vehicles) but by and large they do give a huge firepower and/or survivability advantage that might not ensure that you win but it will definitely make it far, far easier.

The events to unlock limited time vehicles are just pure suffering.
You'll have to complete a certain number (usually 8 for the vehicle, 9 for camo and 10 if you want to sell the vehicle, more on that later) of time-gated achievements, they give you 2 days each and cannot retroactively be unlocked later (don't worry though, if you missed some you can pay to unlock them for the low low price of around 6€ EACH)
These achievements are usually unlocked by gaining points in air, ground or sea battles, and each type of battle has their own set of achievements that unlock the corresponding type of vehicle. So 10 achievements for each type of vehicle, 30 in total if you want all three types of vehicle.
How long does it take to unlock one? It'll depend on how well you play, on average it can take me from 4 to 7 hours for each achievement (distributed in the 2 days, depending on which rank vehicles I'm using).
I believe to be a very average player (consistently in the middle of the leaderboard in each game, sometimes at the top but almost never at the bottom unless I get really unlucky or get spawn bombed/camped) so I wouldn't be surprised if other players could unlock them sooner but I'm sure most players will need a similar amount of time.
Personally I never could unlock more than one category of vehicle during an event, and never managed to get the upgrade to the coupon that allows you to sell the vehicle because real life is a thing and ended up preventing me from getting at least one of the achievements.
Sell the vehicles you say? Yes indeed! The very limited supply of these limited-time vehicles can be sold on Gaijin's internal marketplace for a different premium currency than the one already present in game, which could be considered a cool thing given how hard they are to unlock, until you see the prices.... let's say that some prices are two digits, a three digit price is common, and four digit prices are present.




You have no idea how many friends I tried to get into this game to enjoy some actual teamwork instead of playing with random people, all of them quit before even getting out of the very early game because they just couldn't stand the amount of frustrating one-sided matches they kept getting either because they chose the wrong faction for that BR bracket or just because by design the game is rigged against new players and "fair" players that would like to, you know, play the actual objective of the game

So yeah, here's why I think you shouldn't play War Thunder at the moment.

I have never managed to build a vehicle that worked as I imagined it.
10/10 would fail as an engineer again

Every time I updated this review I used to list all the cool features that aren't shown in the trailer until I realised my review was getting way too long

If you like guns and meat-themed puns, this game is for you.

An amazing entry in the Ace Combat series that will make you forget Assault Horizon ever happened.

PROs:
-Wonderful OST (as expected from a mainline AC game)
-Nice and thick plot full of twists and quirks
-All the planes you love, and then some (Except the F-117)
-Wind and icing mechanics are a nice added touch
-Great graphics and good level design that make for some breathtaking views.

CONs:
-No F-117 Nighthawk
-The whole widescreen debacle (not sure if they patched it or not)
-No F-117 Nighthawk
-Limited support for Flight sticks (who even uses them on such an arcade game?)
-No F-117 Nighthawk
-Multiplayer is fun for like an hour or two, then you never open it again

F-117/10 would buy again

I don't think there's any other game out there that is so scary and yet so comfy.

This game is everything you need if you want to relax in a rainy winter day with a cup of your favourite hot beverage.
Definitely worth its full price.

10/10: Se esistesse un bar del genere nelle vicinanze diventerei un alcolizzato.

Talmente tanti bombaroli urlanti da farti uscire sordo
10/10