As much as I want to recommend this game, I can't. The grind for vehicles is insane, and as you progress further and further, the more annoying the grind is alongside having to fight spawncampers every now and then in ground forces. Sea battles is mediocre compared to World of Warships. The combat mechanics are great though.

EDIT (July 29th, 2019, previous edit was June 29th): To iterate on what I mean. I don't recommend the game in it's current state, but it's still one of the better games for vehicular combat out there. If you want to try it out, I won't stop you, it's actually pretty fun, but the way Gaijin's been handling things for the past 2 years hasn't really sat well with me, especially with how they've been just adding on content (Which isn't bad), but haven't been fixing half the bugs and issues that have been popping up every update.

Also, to explain what I mean on the grind for vehicles. Starting with ground forces, from tiers 1 - 3, the grind isn't so bad. It's actually fun since you can duke it out with others on the maps without many problems other than, for example, spawn camping and (if you're running stock) the lack of FPE / Parts. However, as you proceed into tier 4, you start to notice small nuances, such as ultra-low quality players, or the rare hacker ( note, this is really, really rare, like 1/50 chance of even running into one based on my experience). The grind isn't too bad at this point, but you still have to deal with the occasional ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ that occurs from time to time. Tier 5 is where it gets cheeky, where nuances begin to turn into annoyances, spawn camping occurs half the time, and either half your team or half of the enemy team quits within the first five minutes. Tier 6's grind is the longest (Understandably, but also has the most suffering), where the annoyances become everyday life, and is absolutely dreadful.
>I didn't even mention CAS at all because TLDR: CAS is apparent in all tiers. Somewhat annoying at 1-2, Worst at 3-5, not too bad but if you don't have anyone running an AA vehicle with radar at tier 6, you're ♥♥♥♥♥♥.

As for Aircraft, Same dealie, but Germans slap the ♥♥♥♥ out of anyone at 5.3ish. Bombers are practically useless since gunners are all zeroed at 200 meters iirc, and almost 3/4ths of the time when you play bombers, you'll be shot down either just before reaching the target or after dropping bombs on target. It's still fun as hell to fly in formation with other players and try to survive the onslaught though. Grind is better in aircraft to be honest, nothing too irritating comes to mind for grinding in aircraft. Gameplay for aircraft is also better despite just being Search and Destroy basically half the time.

Naval? I uh.... I haven't really touched on naval, but I can definitely tell you it isn't as fun as WoWs.

EDIT (June 29th) : To add alongside this, it doesn't help that the most recent events for War Thunder have been mainly to encourage use of their "Gaijin Market", which is basically a 1:1 replica of the steam community marketplace minus the trading.

Ground Forces at top tier is currently a mess, especially with the unbalanced, untouched maps being just released once and not tweaked again except for spawn areas even 5 years after they were released. The new shell calculations basically neutered french and japanese tanks at the start with terrible penetration values. Game modes have been the same since launch as well 5 years ago, one or three points, you push, capture and hold, rinse and repeat.

Air battles have and always been the same to me to be honest. There isn't much too bad about air forces, other than maybe how punishing it is to play bombers, or how in order to discourage players from playing certain aircraft, the repair cost for such certain aircraft is exorbitant compared to another aircraft that's also available at the same br in the same nation.

I'd also talk about jets as well, but it's somewhat? temporarily? fixed from what I can tell, with R2Y2s not having bomber airspawn anymore, and 9.0-10.0 being in a separate matchmaking section now. However, there are still problematic maps out there, especially for top tier jets, such as Battle for Wake island. This map in particular, it isn't too bad for prop aircraft since both teams have decent amounts of time to get up into the air and gain energy to duke it out with each other. However, for top tier aircraft, especially with the japanese having their hands on the T-2, and having an airspawn compared to the US where they have to take off from the airfield, and not even get 5km away from the island before being hounded on by Japanese aircraft with higher energy than them, it isn't really fair at all.

All in all, this game is decent for what it does below 7.0 in general, but when it gets past that point, alongside the grind and events that pop up every now and then that progressively get more grindy and grindy (Looking at you Battle Engineer), I can't say that i recommend this game at all.

As much as I want to recommend this game, I can't. The grind for vehicles is insane, and as you progress further and further, the more annoying the grind is alongside having to fight spawncampers every now and then in ground forces. Sea battles is mediocre compared to World of Warships. The combat mechanics are great though. EDIT (July 29th, 2019, previous edit was June 29th): To iterate on what I mean. I don't recommend the game in it's current state, but it's still one of the better games for vehicular combat out there. If you want to try it out, I won't stop you, it's actually pretty fun, but the way Gaijin's been handling things for the past 2 years hasn't really sat well with me, especially with how they've been just adding on content (Which isn't bad), but haven't been fixing half the bugs and issues that have been popping up every update. Also, to explain what I mean on the grind for vehicles. Starting with ground forces, from tiers 1 - 3, the grind isn't so bad. It's actually fun since you can duke it out with others on the maps without many problems other than, for example, spawn camping and (if you're running stock) the lack of FPE / Parts. However, as you proceed into tier 4, you start to notice small nuances, such as ultra-low quality players, or the rare hacker ( note, this is really, really rare, like 1/50 chance of even running into one based on my experience). The grind isn't too bad at this point, but you still have to deal with the occasional bullshit that occurs from time to time. Tier 5 is where it gets cheeky, where nuances begin to turn into annoyances, spawn camping occurs half the time, and either half your team or half of the enemy team quits within the first five minutes. Tier 6's grind is the longest (Understandably, but also has the most suffering), where the annoyances become everyday life, and is absolutely dreadful. >I didn't even mention CAS at all because TLDR: CAS is apparent in all tiers. Somewhat annoying at 1-2, Worst at 3-5, not too bad but if you don't have anyone running an AA vehicle with radar at tier 6, you're fucked. As for Aircraft, Same dealie, but Germans slap the shit out of anyone at 5.3ish. Bombers are practically useless since gunners are all zeroed at 200 meters iirc, and almost 3/4ths of the time when you play bombers, you'll be shot down either just before reaching the target or after dropping bombs on target. It's still fun as hell to fly in formation with other players and try to survive the onslaught though. Grind is better in aircraft to be honest, nothing too irritating comes to mind for grinding in aircraft. Gameplay for aircraft is also better despite just being Search and Destroy basically half the time. Naval? I uh.... I haven't really touched on naval, but I can definitely tell you it isn't as fun as WoWs. EDIT (June 29th) : To add alongside this, it doesn't help that the most recent events for War Thunder have been mainly to encourage use of their "Gaijin Market", which is basically a 1:1 replica of the steam community marketplace minus the trading. Ground Forces at top tier is currently a mess, especially with the unbalanced, untouched maps being just released once and not tweaked again except for spawn areas even 5 years after they were released. The new shell calculations basically neutered french and japanese tanks at the start with terrible penetration values. Game modes have been the same since launch as well 5 years ago, one or three points, you push, capture and hold, rinse and repeat. Air battles have and always been the same to me to be honest. There isn't much too bad about air forces, other than maybe how punishing it is to play bombers, or how in order to discourage players from playing certain aircraft, the repair cost for such certain aircraft is exorbitant compared to another aircraft that's also available at the same br in the same nation. I'd also talk about jets as well, but it's somewhat? temporarily? fixed from what I can tell, with R2Y2s not having bomber airspawn anymore, and 9.0-10.0 being in a separate matchmaking section now. However, there are still problematic maps out there, especially for top tier jets, such as Battle for Wake island. This map in particular, it isn't too bad for prop aircraft since both teams have decent amounts of time to get up into the air and gain energy to duke it out with each other. However, for top tier aircraft, especially with the japanese having their hands on the T-2, and having an airspawn compared to the US where they have to take off from the airfield, and not even get 5km away from the island before being hounded on by Japanese aircraft with higher energy than them, it isn't really fair at all. All in all, this game is decent for what it does below 7.0 in general, but when it gets past that point, alongside the grind and events that pop up every now and then that progressively get more grindy and grindy (Looking at you Battle Engineer), I can't say that i recommend this game at all.