Recent reviews by swiftdraw

Reminds me a lot of the old '90's RTS's like C&C and Total Annihilation. Its good.

Random thoughts on the game:
*Reminds me a lot, gameplay and control wise, of Ace Combat 4. This makes sense since the devs really made this as Ace Combat fans apparently and I'll therefore be comparing it against that series.
*It looks no where as good as 7 (and oversaturates red in late game levels), no command functionality of 6, has fewer jets, and fewer special weapons, but your allied jets, guns and missiles are much improved over Ace Combat (except the allies of 6, which were about on par with PW.)
*Your backseater/WSO/co-pilot/whatever has voice lines and shes is pretty darn good.
*The storyline is about as non-sensical as 7's, but is at least easier to follow.
*The VX-23 is a bloody abomination
*Its 450 years into the future and I'm swatting flying battleships with, more or less, a MiG-21. Excellent.
*Watching said flying battleships broadside each other with railguns is also pretty amazing to watch.

Show as not purchased and unplayable after installation.

Fun on co-op until they added the night maps. You have the choice of wearing night vision and getting blinded by a match or wear nothing and can't see anything under a functioning street light its so dark. Very annoying to play now.

If you played M&B: Warband and want more, this is it but with better graphics. A few other things have been refined a bit, but the mechanics and gameplay are almost the exact same. That's actually my biggest complaint; given its been in development for almost 8 years, very little has changed outside of some UI things and graphics.

TL:DR Not necessarily a bad game, but too fiddly for me.

I bought the game with my primary interest being in performing search and rescue operations and have a decent to good degree of vehicle customization. With co-op available, I was hoping to also wrangle a couple of my old buddies into the game to pull off some missions in some stupidly designed flying machine. While that is all available, it ended up feeling to much like work to achieve it. After a hour and a half in game I had yet to successfully start a vehicle, much less do any missions and I lost interest. Is this the games fault? Not necessarily. I personally feel a tutorial on vehicle assembly is sorely needed as it really lacks the pick up and experiment gameplay of something like Kerbal Space Program. You need to know what you're doing before getting in the game proper or your're going to have a rough time. Also I feel the description page doesn't fully describe what is needed to build and operate a vehicle to perform the missions. The PC Gamer quote in particular felt a bit disingenuous to me. But it does have a very intricate logic and simulation system, so those with the knowledge and desire can do some amazing works in this game as demonstrated in the Steam Workshop. But when I realized I was rapidly approaching the 2 hour and had to come to a decision, which ended up being to ask for my first refund. It's just to fiddly to deal with when all I want to do it jump in, tweak a vehicle to environmental/mission conditions and do some SaR.

I don't know what sucks more; the game or the community in the game. Slow pace isn't bad, but the way they enforce squad cohesion and having to stay in the trenches just makes the game tedious. Not by your NCO? 15% stamina decrease? Not following the order he forgot about 3 assualts ago? Going to be moving slower. Also if you're anywhere doing a defense put with in 6 inches of the trench, well that's desertion boy-o! The chat is full of toxic, edgelords and salty players chat 90% of the time and the in-game community is usually unhelpful. Oh, and that feeling when you have a 10 second spawn penalty for being 'overpowered' and still losing ground.

TLDR: About as fun as fighting in WW1

If you want to zoom in a modern ear jet fighter destroying a nation's entire military single handedly while taking in some absolutely stunning graphics, get it. Get it now. The DLC levels are out and they are good. Sound track can be amazing as well.

If you want a cohesive story, brilliant voice acting (not cheesey/meme-y brilliant, it can be that), and an lively multiplayer, best look elsewhere.

Its not bad, but there are a few things that just absolutely irritate me about the game.
1) You only can command one non-reinforceable lance while you can face up to 4 plus base defenses. And enemy reinforcements will occasionally drop in out of nowhere too.
2) No tonnage limits and mission designs that punish you for not taking the heaviest lance possible. By mid game, mediums are useless and a couple of the lights are niche at best.
3) Performance tanks hard in this game and I'm afraid to look down the top case vents of my PC least I look into Chernobyl's core.

The base game is a very fun colony management/survival game that can be engrossing for tens of hours no problem.

Then you discover the mods.

I want my life back plz.