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One of these days, I'll make a proper review touching on the ups and downs of this game, but after getting through all three endings and a total of four campaign clears, I can solidly recommend this game without even a second thought.

I'll be frank and say that this game, like any other FromSoftware game like Dark Souls, Elden Ring, Sekiro and so on, is going to be difficult to start on and will kick you while you're down more than once (see: filter memes). However, to help remedy that, I'll advise two things: being aggressive in combat and flight if you can afford it energy-wise and not to be afraid to vary your builds if need be. Balteus, the infamous filter boss, took me about 20+ tries on the first evening and I ended up rage quitting via alt+F4. Why was I having so much trouble? Because I didn't change my AC's parts at all- not even the weapons- because I was being way too stubborn for my own good. My loadout had gotten me this far in the game, so why wasn't it working now? Why should I need to change?

But when I got back the next day, that was the first thing I did. I slapped on a pair of missile launchers onto my AC's shoulders, picked up a different kinetic weapon for my right arm, and kept the melee weapon on my left arm and got to work. Guess what? Beat him first try. This game will actively be difficult in some sections no matter what and some builds are going to have a much more difficult time than others, but that's one of the main points of Armored Core. It's to try new things, leading you to learn new methods of beating your enemies and opponents and learning which ones work better in certain situations.

So if you're interested, give this game a try. The first boss will not be kind as I had to try five or six times to beat it myself, but once you get the hang of things, you'll be cutting through missions like they're nothing.

And when you run into another version of that first boss, you'll be able to go through it just as quickly.

So, a quick tl;dr for those of you who don't want to read through the totality of my review: recommended, although extended playtime and replays will probably require mods to keep engaged. Look for the * in my review to find my recommendations for said mods. For those of you who wish to actually read through it, here's the start.
[EDIT] -- As I've played a good bit more of the game, I feel like I should add this note: If you purchase the game, I strongly recommend getting used to how vanilla plays for a while, then go straight to DotMod. As good as base-game is, DotMod elevates it far higher with the addition of smarter and fairer AI, some edits to the campaigns, extra mission types, and a lot more stuff like even being able to manage your own towed sonar array. I will repeat what I typed out at the very end of this review- I STRONGLY recommend playing with this after getting a handful of hours and some familiarity with the game.

Cold Waters is something I'd call a sim-lite. It's not nearly as arcade-like as Ace Combat nor in-depth (heh) or detail orientated as something like DCS, but instead uses approximations and knowledge known to the public to create an engaging and sometimes incredibly tense game with encounters that WILL challenge you regardless of skill level and play time. Obviously, there are some flaws with the game will I will mention later on, but I do believe that Cold Waters does deserve your attention and at least a spin if you think you can determine if you wanna play this game through the course of two hours. Granted, if you're afraid of even the $40 USD price tag, you can wait for a sale which will generally be favorable and will often times be found during the usual seasonal stuff.

Now, I'll get to what I think makes this game good. Not great, not decent, but good. Details within the game, although not extremely pretty, are very much up there when it comes to small details up to the impressive models that one could at times overlook. Launch noises, crew assistance through callouts (kinda Arma level, but you gotta keep things light on the voice files unless you want to start making a new line for every single degree of bearing), weather affects on the sea noise level- there's a lot one could miss when you start to pay attention. Equally, on the surface (heh), details are also good. General sound effects, visual effects, fairly realistic weapon behaviors, surface fleet formations, inclusion of civilian shipping (mostly in the China Sea campaign), textures, and so on. With that being mentioned though, do not expect this game to look like games of the same year when it released. Make no mistake, this is a smaller game developed by a smaller team, so things won't be super-duper clear or shiny, but things will, as intended, still look good overall.

Much like looks, the AI behaves good overall as well. Although there are some extremely odd behaviors at times as mentioned in other reviews, these I believe are mostly down to surface vessels attempting to maintain a formation and then feeling the need to resort as the encounter begins despite the fact that they shouldn't have an idea that you're there yet and often won't. ASW (anti-submarine warfare) aircraft are much more in line and will generally patrol an area ahead of a fleet or target that you want to hit which is primarily the job of helicopter patrols while fixed wing ASW units will patrol a wider area, each using a mix of sonar and surface radar to sniff you out. They are persistent and sometimes even break the flow of the game with how annoying they can become if you're spotted.

As far as your own side goes, you won't be seeing any of your own fleets or friendly ships which I feel is a missed opportunity for unique missions, but they are still fairly varied even without needing to deal with friendly units. However, in campaigns, you can view how the wars progress as you complete missions, whether they be preventing enemy subs or surface vessels from breaking out and hitting convoys or going on the aggressive and hunting capital or replenishment ships alongside their escorts. Hell, even in the later campaigns, you can get tasked with getting a special forces team somewhere in the warzone or even launch cruise missiles for strikes behind enemy lines. You will be kept on your toes for missions and once you start getting into a rhythm, you will eventually slip up and will be punished for it. Be careful.

Speaking of mission variety, there is also a very nicely diverse set of campaigns that come with vanilla, of which there are three: North Atlantic in '68, North Atlantic in '84, and the China Sea in 2000. Now, one might ask about two of those being in the same area- but the eras, despite them being only 16 years apart, see the capabilities of both your own boat and the enemy's go FAR higher. Sonar, quieting, weapons, tactics- all got better, especially for NATO, within that relatively short time span and thus both campaigns demand radically different approaches, things that you could get away with in the '68 campaign won't at all be possible in the '84 campaign as you'll have to be far, far more cautious, but you also become far, far more deadly. The sharper contrast in these campaigns is the China Sea campaign which takes place in the year 2000. Now, things here are obviously more advanced as well, but the jump isn't as felt. However, your environment is radically different and the distance to your home port is much further. Shallower waters, a more varied mix of enemy capabilities (some worse), and a greater distance to constantly travel adds another layer of depth (heh) to this campaign and will force you to consider what you engage and where carefully.

All of these things make for an engaging and interesting game of what often times turns from an ambush into cat and mouse, whether it be against submarines or surface vessels.

*
- Playable Subs and More
Pretty much right what it says on the tin. This mod includes a large host of submarines for the player to use, even including those that are in service as I type this. Now, does that mean that classified info got leaked somewhere? No, this isn't War Thunder, but they are approximations of their capabilities and what they look like, so there isn't a need to look too deep (heh) into it. Alongside the subs are a set of more playable campaigns. Admittedly, I haven't played this mod in a long time, but I do recall them working for the most part save for one of them which would often glitch out, that being the campaign directly inspired by the book Red Storm Rising. However, all of the other ones function just fine and allow you to bring whatever is available into the field, historical or otherwise.

- EpicMod
EpicMod is a Russian developed mod that attempts to deepen the game to an extent and add a whole slew of additional functions to the game, including surface vessels which you can use to good effect, though they're not at all that practical for the most part, so beware on that front if you decide to bring out some smaller fleet vessels into the campaigns. Besides the new ships though, there are new functions which include MANPADSs packed into the tower of your submarines to swat those pesky helicopters and maritime patrol craft and far more capable AI added into the mix. You'll need to use all of your tools at your disposal too keep up with this mod, so bear that in mind, especially in the new/reworked campaigns. Also, nukes in '68, use 'em or they'll get used on you. (Also-also, they're LOOOUUUDDD.)
~Disclaimer: this mod, as stated before, was developed by a primarily Russian team and translated into English, so there are a few things that don't really translate too well and there are some text errors here and there. Additionally, there is a STRONG bias towards Russia in the new 2002 campaign's premise and it doesn't take a genius to figure out why or where it comes from.

-DotMod
***STRONGLY RECOMMENDED***

Edit: May, 2023 - You were warned.

I have an incredible amount of time dedicated to this game since the "Steel Generals" update and have enjoyed it heavily before, but now I cannot honestly recommend this game to anyone at all. Not only have the developers ignored players greatly in a good amount of examples, the simple language barriers between the player base and developers has led to some difficulty for bugs or inaccuracies being reported or additions suggested via the game's forum alongside a few other problems like cherry-picking by moderators on said game's forum.

This, coinciding with the fact that the game has progressively become worse and worse when it comes to the matters of premium vehicles - those familiar with games like World of Tanks, World of Warships, Armored Warfare, and others will be familiar with a topic like this. However, War Thunder's developers have gone even further above and beyond simple greed with slightly better premium vehicles and gone straight for Pay-to-Win/Dominate. The most recent and prominent example of this being the Ka-50 Black Shark for which the most recent (and rushed) update 1.93 "Shark Attack" is named and centered around.

The Ka-50 has the ability to engage both air and ground targets with the 9K121 Vikhr ATGM. What makes it such a potent missile is that it is an air-burst capable munition with a range of 10km (which should be 8km due to only fixed wing aircraft being able to launch it from 10km), beating most - if not all of the ground based A2A vehicles that it will fight as of this review. It does poses access to the purpose built A2A all aspect IR missile - the Igla-1V. But remember what I said about the earlier ATGM? That's right, it can act as an A2A missile as well via auto-tracking and laser guidance. Combine this with the ATGM's capability of air bursting and you have a missile which can engage, out range, and possibly kill *anything* in the game in the air or on the ground with nigh impunity. The only case in which these things can be killed is if one is tunnel visioned while you're flying another aircraft and sneaking up on it, driving a dedicated A2A vehicle while they just so happen to be in range, or are flying a Ka-50 yourself for the low, low price of $50 USD and your self respect. If this doesn't sound bad enough ask around other veteran players and they'll tell you that this isn't the only offender in the game, either.

This helicopter is the crown example of what's happened with the game: adding too much on top and ignoring a lot of complaints and bugs made from the player-base in favor of just adding more and more and more in order to make more money. If you considered playing this game in the past at all, you missed your window to enjoy it quite a long time ago. Don't play this and just watch it go downhill further from a safe distance like a lot of other WT veterans.

Seriously. Don't.

Update: Okay, the game has changed a lot nowadays and given how long it's been since I've posted this review and having racked up another 1100 hours thanks to my addiction to this game, I feel like I should go ahead and throw out an update to this.

I'll be honest, in a LOT of areas, the game has improved. Repair prices have come down to a decent degree, balance to a major extent has been improved save for a few vehicles and the specific BR bracket at 9.0-10.0 and top tier itself, graphics, servers (mostly), hand-waving the adherence to 'historical accuracy' for the sake of balance to some degree, so on and so forth. Other things have NOT improved at all or have outright gotten worse, like with the borderline insane grind for events, premium pandering to nations like the US (which is hard to admit as a US main, but it's seriously annoying that we're getting a *third* premium tier 6 aircraft that we don't need and will yet again be flooded with inexperienced players to hamper teams and provide a very dumb skip), critical balance issues in Tank Realistic Battles from around 9.0+ between CAS and ground vehicles and things like the BMP-2M, the enteral meta struggle at top tier Air battles, progression can be outright glacial at top tier without a premium account, the profiting made off of your sheer frustration from some parts of the game, and so on and so on and so on and so on.

As you can tell by the fact that I've left my review as a negative one, I still can't recommend this game at all because of the required time sink is kind of ridiculous to get to the tippie-top of the tech trees and when you need to sink in so much time to reach a single piece of equipment in a single tech tree, you step back and realize that it's pretty damn dumb. If you don't want modern vehicles and are more interested in the low and middle tier tech trees, then I say give the game a shot because that's the area that's actually somewhat fun at the moment.

Admittedly, perhaps I've become a sort of Boomer when it comes to how WT has panned out since I started playing in late 2013/2014 which is a likely factor, but I can't really stand by how this game and its community has been treated and sometimes even straight up ignored or left behind by the devs, especially when Gaijin smells money in the water. Yes, they're a company and need to make a profit in order to sustain both themselves and the game, but at some point, you need to look at the state of the game itself and need to really just ask yourself if it's worth it to sacrifice your players' enjoyment to make more and more money off of them.

Thus, tl;dr: the game's gotten better in some areas, but where it matters and where you'll feel it in the long term, it hasn't. Steer away from the game or don't bother going very far into the Cold War sections of the tech trees in the game if you want. The game will frustrate you to paying for it and it *will* turn into an addiction at some point like it did for me. Don't fall for the trap and spare your sanity.

Skip War Thunder.