Recent reviews by mau

The game starts off great until you hit tier 3 and then you constantly face higher tiered tanks or p2w premium tanks which you cant penetrate from either side or rear lmao. The higher tier you go in ground RB, the more time you spend looking in the air to hide or shoot CAS than other tanks. Most of my deaths in ground RB are being strafed or dropped bombs especially while taking objectives. This makes you and your team allergic to taking objectives and the game devolves into a passive snipefest until someone dies and again brings out their plane to bomb the enemy.

I don't really even have words for the clownfest that is Air RB. You get 1 spawn and if you die you are out. Get slightly damaged and back to the airfield for repairs where you are stationary and vulnerable in full view. The only playable Air mode is Arcade and even their your guns can hit Critical Damage on enemy planes and they can keep flying without a problem. Not to mention your guns will always jam if you fire for longer than 3 seconds sending you into about 15 seconds of Flight Sim mode praying that the enemy doesn't 1 shot you in the meantime with their premium p2w planes. On rare occasions Gaijin will bless you with the stupidest luck where getting your entire wing torn off doesn't mean instant death and you can fly back for repairs.

The worst part about this game would probably be its economy and how unlocking the vehicles work. When you buy any vehicle you are forced to first grind the experience require to unlock a part...(yes this clown game needs experience{RP} to unlock parts) which you then also have to buy using in game currency(Silver Lions). Unlocking all parts can take several games which is a lot of hours of gameplay. So don't even think you can unlock all the highest tier vehicles which are the more modern Cold War Era ones after possibly years into the game.

You can of course skip this entire process for the low price of several hundred $$ from buying the planes directly from Gaijin and buying Premium time. This is also the only feasible way to positively earn Silver Lions because as a F2P player you will be constantly shafted with high repair costs, vehicle unlocks also needing SL and for some reason even a simple Fire Extinguisher(FPE) in game also needing to be unlocked and costs Silver Lions. Parts and FPE are absolutely necessary unlocks because without parts you cannot repair your damaged modules in game such as tracks, engine and cannon making you a sitting duck unless a teammate helps you repair(doesnt happen 99% of the time). And without FPE you just burn to death in a few seconds.

The game is predatorily designed to push you to buy things once you start the easy mode early tiers through sunken cost fallacy or through sheer desire to play your favourite vehicle which for most people would be WW2 or Cold War vehicles unless you are a WW1 Biplane/Somme Tanks enthusiast and they are often locked behind several other vehicles, Silver Lions, Repair costs, experience and Silver lions for parts and the often abysmal queue times for your region on non peak hours or 100+ latency if you get queued away from your region.

TLDR:- Game sucks, P2W af and F2P players have a negative in game currency just by playing the game. Do yourself a favour mentally and skip this game.

Microsoft did right by the game. DE is arguably one of the best remaster an iconic game like Age of Empires 2 deserves.