Had it in my library for many years, was put off by everyone saying I needed to invest in a proper stick and throttle setup recently got a Razer Wolverine V2 and set it up for War Thunder and it was alright, but I'm not really into WT so I thought I'd give it a chance in DCS and it's amazing, lol. After going through the training with the SU-25T that you get with the base DCS I managed to fly around but as I don't speak or read Russian all the instruments and warning sounds were beyond me but I could take off and land at least.. So anyway I went on to get the A-10C II because it was on sale recently and as an American aircraft I can understand the cockpit much better..

I've only put about 14hrs into the game so far since purchasing the A-10C II so the total 16hrs right now is me not even finishing the training, I've not yet learned to use countermeasures or the air to air stuff but I can safely say it's well worth it and 100% doable with a gamepad if you have no stick. I come to DCS from an Arma 3 background so I'm used to having to use a lot of modifier buttons to achieve things, It's all muscle memory at the end of the day and once you learn the button combos and get used to the controller you can fly and adjust the MFCDs on the go, perhaps in a combat situation the joystick would make things easier but for now while I'm learning to use the aircraft it's perfectly fine.. If you just want to fly around and enjoy the game a gamepad works just as well as a full HOTAS setup.. though as I said, the stick will probably make it easier not having to do a combo of buttons to achieve the same results lol.

Had it in my library for many years, was put off by everyone saying I needed to invest in a proper stick and throttle setup recently got a Razer Wolverine V2 and set it up for War Thunder and it was alright, but I'm not really into WT so I thought I'd give it a chance in DCS and it's amazing, lol. After going through the training with the SU-25T that you get with the base DCS I managed to fly around but as I don't speak or read Russian all the instruments and warning sounds were beyond me but I could take off and land at least.. So anyway I went on to get the A-10C II because it was on sale recently and as an American aircraft I can understand the cockpit much better.. I've only put about 14hrs into the game so far since purchasing the A-10C II so the total 16hrs right now is me not even finishing the training, I've not yet learned to use countermeasures or the air to air stuff but I can safely say it's well worth it and 100% doable with a gamepad if you have no stick. I come to DCS from an Arma 3 background so I'm used to having to use a lot of modifier buttons to achieve things, It's all muscle memory at the end of the day and once you learn the button combos and get used to the controller you can fly and adjust the MFCDs on the go, perhaps in a combat situation the joystick would make things easier but for now while I'm learning to use the aircraft it's perfectly fine.. If you just want to fly around and enjoy the game a gamepad works just as well as a full HOTAS setup.. though as I said, the stick will probably make it easier not having to do a combo of buttons to achieve the same results lol.