Recent reviews by Alex

Man this game is so fun,
but

after waiting for over half a year since originally pointing out that on a 1080p monitor that you are not able to see all the stats of some ships due to the info panel being too large when you select an individual ship from a fleet and it still not having nested tooltips or an "info box font size" or anything similar, it's frustrating having to play detective to find out what design is what when the box is simply too large to fit on the screen. This problem has persisted for as long as the ship imperfection system has.

The game is ultimately the most liberated and visually pleasing way of creating a warship fleet to duke it out against another country in fictional engagements that I've found to be available. It's so satisfying to create ship designs that crush an enemy fleet.
There's a few elements to this game, like the politics of your country where your government that you work under asks you for inputs like on a protest, or whether to shovel more money into the naval forces, where your answers can influence the national unrest, GDP, naval funds...
There's an integrated naval invasion system where the game will calculate what amount of tonnage your fleet will require to support a naval invasion of another country.
There's a system for designing your own warships from the size of Torpedo Boats to Battleships based on a variety of base hulls which are, in a lot of cases unique to your nation, where you essentially get the buns of a burger and you have to fill it with what you need/want.
Convoy raiding is represented, but kind of esoteric to me.
The map is sadly not a continuous line around the globe, there is a defined west end and east end where you cannot scroll past, but if I recall correctly your fleet can go from one side to the other, though you will have to move the camera to the other end of the map.
There's a research system where you start out with period-accurate tech, and get to research your way from 1890's to 1940's technology
To this end you also get to upgrade a design you have already put to sea if new technologies become available or you wish to change a ship's purpose.
Submarine warfare is represented, but alongside me not understanding the convoy system, the submarine one is also the same way. Submarine warfare is also not something represented within a battle, only on the campaign map.
Airplanes and carriers are not represented. Sadly.

I recommend you also read other reviews and not base your opinion solely on any one review!
Thanks for reading.

YMES *nodding*

This game is NOT your romantic eastern block joyride, it's annoying and buggy, and the car upgrades are not well-explained.

My review will assume Realistic Battles gamemode.
This review functions more as a way for me to get some notes across from my time of playing War Thunder. It may be updated as time passes.
War Thunder is pretty fun when you understand what's going on, but it requires a lot of trial and error (read: Frustration) in terms of understanding both your plane/tank/boat and that of the enemy.
After Rank 3, premium becomes more or less mandatory in terms of enjoying the game. If you expect to free-2-play your way to the top, reconsider!

War Thunder operates with a "Battle Rating" system, in which every vehicle within 1 battle rating (BR) up or down of the highest vehicle in your lineup you have selected can be faced in your highest BR vehicle in a lineup, as well as any vehicles the user may choose to bring out, down to Reserve level. This means that as you progress in BR, it will get exceedingly hard to understand what you're facing because the amount of vehicles you can theoretically face will balloon.

The absolute size of the amount of things available to play in War Thunder is absolutely a draw towards the game, but you should know you will likely never be a top dog, except for in downtiers, which are uncommon because of the nature of the game.*

Enjoying War Thunder relies on having an understanding of when the game is just not going your way, and shrugging it off and trying to have fun, or quitting for a short time to cool off before you shout obscenities at your teammates / cat / sister.
It's heavily recommended to not focus on getting ONE vehicle in particular and thinking it will be rosy, instead you should enjoy and learn to play the vehicles on the way to your favorite vehicle.

The reason you are asked to reconsider your free-2-play mentality is primarily because after rank 3, repair costs for vehicles, and RP required both rise to such levels that an inexperienced player will struggle to earn the amounts of RP needed to unlock new vehicles as well as repair those that get destroyed in battles.

"How are you supposed to engage in playing with premium? It's too expensive for me!"
That's understandable. Gaijin holds sales a few times a year. Primarily typically a summer sale and winter sale, which will include pack vehicles, in-game vehicles and premium time on sale for cheaper.

*certain BRs notwithstanding, fx. around powerful premium vehicles, which function as magnets for nearby BR-brackets.

A really fun re-imagining of an original masterpiece!

This is certainly a good platform for another Paradox banger, but as it stands, the game is a little bare-bones. All the most important systems are in place, but there's a lot of stuff around that experience missing, like individual country events, world lore (also known simply as history I suppose), etc.

Don't embark on a 6-day caravan escort contract with only 1 day's worth of salary lined up. Food is not your only way to lose out on mercenaries, even if a handsome, fat purse of gold is waiting at the other end.

This is just MORE Souls, and improves on every aspect and including more and improved content all-around. Very positive neuron activation feedback.

The beast is demonic in nature - very icky, no good

The game has a promising future ahead of itself but by god is it unplayable in it's current state.

The final straw was when I spawned my Labor module in, went into the adjacent easybuild zone to look at my friend's design, turned around and my ship was deleted from existance.
Out of the 14 hours, the times I have not had problems was when I was flying TO an asteroid to mine, and flying BACK.