Arma 3 is a love / hate relationship to the extreme. For someone like me, I always recommend the game to anyone who is a fan of tactical shooters and squad-based gameplay, but I tell them to expect a steep learning curve as well. The short is - this game is probably the best game I've ever played in terms of its community, the mods, the gameplay, and the memories I've made. Nothing comes close. If you manage to grab it on sale definitely don't hesitate to buy it. Just expect a few odd crashes and weird glitches that I like to classify no other way other than just saying "#Arma".

The long version:

Pros:
- Game runs fairly well if you have a mid to high tier PC, Bohemia have released many updates to stabilize the game. Crashes are very rare nowadays.
- Longevity / value for money - this game has so many spin-off game modes, and hundreds of high quality mods that honestly the base price is a steal. Get the APEX expansion when it goes on sale, still not quite worth the $35 imo, but definitely worth $20.
- Tactics / simulation - no other consumer game comes close to this. Squad replicates the "boots on the ground" experience better imo, but nothing touches Arma's ability for combined arms warfare.
- Serious fun - If you're a nutjob like me and like communicating with someone with the mental capacity larger than a grapefruit, this game is for you. The community is the best community out there.
- Graphics - while this game was known to be hard to run in the past, most modern mid-tier hardware will have no issues at all running the game (though I recommend having it stored on a SSD for noticeable performance improvements). This game is straight up beautiful at times.

Cons:
- This game is a labor of love - sometimes it'll do things that just annoy the heck out of you like memory crashes, or weird connection issues in multiplayer. Most of the serious bugs have been fixed at this stage.
- Performance - Get a good CPU if you want to run this game, but even so especially in MilSim environments the framerate may not be ideal (even with an i7 6700K don't expect greater than 60-70 FPS in a standard multiplayer server). Singleplayer runs great however.
- If you're like me and use a crap ton of mods, expect to allocate almost 100GB for everything.
- If you are the run-and-gun type, this game is most likely not for you - there are a lot of times where patience and tolerance for boredom (i.e - kitting up, planning out an attack, inserting into the AO, calling for exfil) are not commonplace, but they are frequent enough. Those with a higher maturity level are definitely what this game's core audience is.

Summary:
If you've read this far into this review - I have 3500 hours, help to run and design missions for a now two-year old MilSim (91st Special Forces Group) #shamelessplug, and regularly work to make this game better for everyone - I might as well be a dev at this point - get this ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ amazing game. Find a good clan or group of friends to play with - you will not regret it.

ahem - www.91stspecialforcesgroup.com
#tacticalshenanigans
#shamelessplug