Recent reviews by Damn Right!

To start this review:


War Thunder in Point Form

- Representation of vehicles is expansive, but it's more breadth than depth
- Several in-game systems are functionally bugged, or outright lack consistency
- Gameplay loop remains to be either a TDM, Capture-the-point, or a mix of both

- Economy (So XP and "free currency", or currency earned by playing and is used to purchase regular items) has been slowly declining since War Thunder's inception, and has currently fallen into a black hole
- Ability to unlock vehicles slows incredibly past Mid-WW2 vehicles, taking roughly a year of 8 hours a day of non-stop playing to reach a single "top tier" vehicle, assuming no premium economy purchases
- Vital, equipment is locked behind the same, extremely slow, tedious, and complicated economy system
- Premium currency and premium time does little to improve your progression
- Devs are constantly looking and attempting to HINDER [/b] player progression

Dark Patterns

The game contains the following dark patterns (Psychological tricks to manipulate YOU, the player into becoming addicted. Read more here https://www.darkpattern.games/). As you can see, there is many.

-Playing by appointment
-Daily Rewards
-Grinding
-Infinite Treadmill
-Can't Pause or Save (unless singleplayer, but this is a primarily a multiplayer game)
-Wait to play (if vehicles are repairing, for example)
-Pay to skip (ex. unlocking vehicles)
-Premium Currency
-Pay to Win
-Artifical Scarcity (ex. with limited event vehicles)
-Recurring Fee (Premium time)
-Loot Boxes
-Power Creep (Especially with balance changes)
-Pay Wall (with the caveat the game effectively has one in practice, despite not technically having one in theory)
-Waste Aversion
-Social Pyramid Scheme
-Social Obligation (e.g. clans)
-Encourages anti-social behaviour
-Fear of missing out
-Competition
-Invested/Endowed Value (This is a Major one - sunk cost fallacy exists, folks)
-Badges/Endowed Progress
-Complete the Collection
-Variable Rewards

Conclusions

-Promising concept, terrible execution
-Lack of fundamentally engaging gameplay loops that get old fast
-Developers that actively nerf or remove features that are fundamentally required to play and progress in the game
-Has MANY systems that actively aim to make YOU a loyal, addicted paying customer


There's a reason why that I quit this game despite having logged 3300+ hours. The game gets worse over time, but you're actively manipulated into sticking with the game. Veterans like me have quit because the game is actively degrading over time, and those number continue to increase as people break through the sunk-cost fallacy and quit. If you're thinking of playing or spending money on this game, don't. I suggest picking up other games like DCS (esp. Flaming Cliffs 3), GHPC, or literally any other game that's not War Thunder.

I do not recommend this game.

Edit 1: Fixing formating