Recent reviews by Elemental Sheep

Really good. A fair few bugs but still a lot of fun.
The stages are extremely well put together and detailed.

Really fun game, lives up to the first one and more. All the fun mechanics of the first game, with more added on top. It's not spectacularly new or innovative, but if you loved the first one, you'll love this one.
But it does not run well. 40 fps at low settings, and no DLSS support.

EDIT: After the patch, performance is great. 80 fps on ultra at 1440p with a 2070 super. 60 fps with ray tracing on. Only complaint is that it doesn't seem to go above 90 fps, so you won't be getting 144 fps just yet. There's also some stutters occasionally. But I'm sure future patches will fix that.

It's a bit of fun. Physics are great, graphics are good. There is no story or progression though. The most fun comes from exploration, tuning and driving different cars, and racing online.

I recommend this if you need a nice relaxing driving/racing game that isn't overly arcade.

However, currently there are a few downsides:
- performance issues after 2hrs of playing (memory/cpu leak of some sort)
- buggy foliage textures on Ultra setting
- JPEGified road textures occasionally
- the highest difficulty AI ("Unbeatable") just cheats. Insane acceleration and cornering. Stick to "Pro" or lower.

Otherwise it's chill.

I took my time with the 100 hour story, and it was by far the best one I've come across. Could not have thought of a better way to tie into the first game. Do all the side missions you come across; they're all unique and interesting.

Great with a wheel, tons of fun. Make sure to to set steering angle to 540 degrees for the faster cars.

Don't rely on using a controller though. In my experiences (DS4 and gamepad) they tend to bug out after a couple of races, like reverting the analog input to a binary on/off mode, i.e. keyboard steering, accelerator and brake.

This game (if you could call it that) is unique. It has some of the best combat vehicle simulation gameplay, and is truly on its own when it comes to this genre. The detail and physics is unrivalled in multiplayer vehicle combat games. It's such a shame that the game that the developers have built around it has some of the most predatory, cash-grabbing aspects of any video game in recent memory. Every update since 2016 has been met with universal negative feedback, and only once or twice have they reverted anything. Their mindset is "give them two months, they'll forget all about it."

But we haven't forgotten.

In no particular order: Unbalanced repair costs, impossible grinds, pay-to-win economy, broken vehicle after broken vehicle, $100 premium vehicles, free parts & FPE, ghost shells, impossible timed events, ridiculously overpowered premium vehicles, BR compression, rigged loot boxes, power creep, Russian bias (not just a meme), holes in armour, volumetric shells, buggy ATGMs, no grass on low graphics mode, anti-cheat, and much, much more.

I've played this game since 2014. Gaijin has a really good game in there somewhere. But they're doing everything in their power to drive us away.



I would like to quote this user who has made an accurate list of the predatory things that Gaijin currently implements into their game.

Originally posted by agysykedyke:

In light of the new awful economy changes, I have compiled a list of all the scummy things Gaijin does which worsen the experience for all players, in the name of profit only. I really hope they change some of these things for the better.

1. Intentionally releasing new vehicles in an overpowered state in order to make people grind as quickly as they can to abuse them before the nerfs.
   
   
2. Intentionally releasing overpowered premium vehicles and not nerfing them, in order to make people purchase them.
   
   
3. The price of said premiums being equal to triple-A games. I don't know how it's excusable for some premiums to be $70 when they already sell premium accounts for $10 a month.
   
   
4. Intentionally making SL modifiers low and repair costs high, so that the average player cannot break even in SL after a game. This encourages them to purchase a premium account or a premium vehicle. This also encourages players to leave after one death to minimize losses.
   
   
5. Implementing research efficiency and tiers to make players buy more than one premium per nation in order to grind. Keep in mind each premium can cost up to $70.
   
   
6. Forcing players to buy a vehicle previous to the one they want to buy, regardless if they ever want to use it. A lot of vehicles should be in a folder but are not, because Gaijin wants you to spend more SL.
   
   
7. Forcing players to buy X vehicles from the previous tier before they can buy vehicles in the next tier. This increases the grind and forces you to buy vehicles that you might never have any intention of playing.
   
   
8. Still making the SL and RP grind painfully slow even if you are using Premium vehicles and a Premium account, especially at the top tiers. Mind you you are paying $10/month + the price of 2-3 premiums per nation you want to grind and it's still very slow.
   
   
9. Intentionally making stock vehicle performance extremely insufferable by locking away essential needs such as Spare Parts, FPE, NVD, usable ammo, and countermeasures. This is to make players purchase these modifications with GE.
   
   
10. Introducing crew qualifications, which are arguably a pay-to-win feature. Aced crews provide significant advantages over basic. The SL cost for expert crews and the grind for Ace crews are not viable for the average player, people just purchase Ace crews.
    
    
11. Putting players in debt over their own mistake after the January 2022 incident. They could have just let those players keep their 7 days of premium as a New Year's gift and take the good publicity but they doubled down. This was so bad that some players were going to take legal action because they felt as if they got scammed, and Gaijin was forced to remove the debt because of the insane backlash.
    
    
12. Selling pay-to-win bush cosmetics, which otherwise are extremely hard to grind for, are unavailable for half the year, and you only get one random bush.
    
    
13. Implementing an RP soft cap, which punishes skillful players because otherwise they would grind too quickly and won't be compelled to spend money.
    
    
14. Introducing strike drones, to make the game more frustrating and to make people lose SL. If you get 2 kills and then die with your drone it will be less SL earned than the repair costs of what you killed due to the modifiers, a net negative overall.
    
    
15. Intentionally making one nation overpowered, then making a different nation overpowered in order to make players purchase premiums to grind the new overpowered nation.
    
    
16. Intentionally keeping the BR's compressed in order to make the game more random and frustrating, to limit skillful players, and make players more likely to spend GE on mods, crews or premiums.
    
    
17. Intentionally making minor nations have underpowered vehicles with very high repair costs and low modifiers, because they are played by mostly experienced players who would otherwise grind too quickly.
    
    
18. Making Boosters expire for no reason other than to take advantage of FOMO
    
    
19. Slashing the economy time after time but disguising it as a net positive. For example, making the players "choose", but nerfing the economy either way and putting the blame on the players.
    
    
20. Introducing extremely grindy events with vehicles that never return, or are sometimes OP, capitalizing on FOMO.
    
    
21. Introducing lootbox-style crates bought for GE, or ridiculous amounts of SL, with very low chances of getting the reward you want. This is effectively gambling at worst and very predatory at best.

They do not need to be this aggressive when it comes to monetization. This game already makes so much, I just hope they start caring more about their player base and less about their profits.

---

Old review (positive):
This game is truly a love-hate relationship. Try it for 100 or so hours, but don't expect to have fun in higher tiers. Mix up your line-ups. Play vehicles that are fun, not ones that will maximise RP gain. And please, do not fall for the trap of top tier. If you picked up this game to drive Abrams and MIG-27s then you will not have a good time. Top tier sucks and the grind to get there is worse. The fun exists between BR 1.0 and 6.7, which roughly covers vehicles up to the end of WW2. Past that, the meta becomes so convoluted that you will generally not have a good time.
If you play to have fun, you will have fun. But if you try to grind to the top tiers and drive that Abrams, you will not have fun.

pretty good

I used to play this whenever I had the time, but now it is a long forgotten shadow of my past. Freejam are not a bad company, but when they release a "game changing" update, they "change the game" by removing more features than they add. I can guarantee that around 98% of all veteran pre-new-meta players have left the game in their past. Granted, I liked the new meta, but everything that followed was just horrible. Post-meta players may like everything that followed because they were new to the game - they didn't really care what was changing.

What I'm saying is that instead of growing their fanbase, Freejam simply gets rid of the old one and gets a new one. Most of the old features we loved have been removed. Seriously, the only things that remain are the weapons and the maps. Blocks, tiers, gamemodes, electroplates, building, fighting, flying, driving, working together, communicating, nearly everything you can think of has been either removed or manipulated so much to the point where its unrecognisable.

I'm not gonna ask Freejam to fix this, as it is too far gone.

Great game. 10/10.

However,
Do NOT get this game for Macintosh unless you have the recommended system requirements. This game is really intensive on Mac and requires the latest iMac to run.
My late 2013 iMac runs it only just at lowest graphics settings.

Controls are a bit annoying to use, but great gameplay nonetheless.