Arma 3
Bohemia Interactive Studio · Shooter, Simulation, Action
Overview
Experience true combat gameplay in a massive military sandbox. Deploy with a wide variety of single- and multiplayer content, a massive arsenal of modern weapons and vehicles, and limitless opportunities for content creation. Authentic, diverse, open - Arma 3 sends you to war.
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Authentic, diverse, open: Arma 3 sends you to war. The third installment in the legendary Arma franchise is the gold standard military sandbox on PC, featuring combined arms warfare, authentic weapons and assets, and a wide variety of single- and multiplayer content. Arma 3 now includes the Apex and Contact expansions, offering hundreds of hours of additional gameplay right out of the box. And for those who want all available official content from the get-go, Arma 3 Platinum includes the base game and every official expansion and DLC.
Deploy into massive open worlds where ballistics are realistic, maneuvering keeps you alive, and teamwork is your strongest weapon. Drive tanks, fly jets, command a squad, or play a range of infantry roles: Arma 3 gives you the freedom to fight your way in the most comprehensive military sandbox on PC, now enhanced with the Apex and Contact expansions.
From battling it out on the arid islands of Altis and Stratis in the East Wind campaign, to infiltrating the fierce jungles of Tanoa in the cooperative campaign of the Apex Protocol, to navigating mankind's encounter with an alien presence in First Contact, Arma 3 offers countless hours of replayable singleplayer and cooperative campaigns, scenarios, showcase missions, challenges, virtual arsenal and garage, and more.
Fight online in the massive military sandbox that is Arma 3. Form a squad and team up against your enemy in the official Combat Patrol, Escape and Warlords multiplayer scenarios, or jump into one of the many popular unofficial game modes developed by the Arma 3 community. Experience engaging multiplayer scenarios in Arma 3 Zeus, where Game Masters can curate and influence the battlefield of other players in real-time. To get the most out of your multiplayer milsim experience, you can even join one of the long-standing and dedicated multiplayer community units.
Customize your loadout down to the last detail for any mission and engagement. With over 80 weapons, customizable loadouts with short- and long-distance attachments, and a plethora of clothing and equipment to choose from, Arma 3 opens up a world of tactical opportunities.
Head into combat on foot, drive various types of light and heavy armor, operate autonomous vehicles, or take to the skies in helicopters and jets. Conduct combined arms operations over air, land, and sea, with over 40 intricately modeled and accurately simulated vehicles to drive and pilot.
Master combined arms warfare across the sun-scorched Mediterranean islands of Altis, Stratis, and Malden, navigate the dense, hostile jungles of the South Pacific in Tanoa, and survive the militarized temperate woodlands of Livonia. Arma 3 features massive terrains totaling over 610 km² of open-world terrain.
Explore over 160,000 user-generated items available for download on the Steam Workshop, ranging from custom weapons and vehicles to intense singleplayer scenarios and entirely new multiplayer game modes. Create your own intricate and immersive scenarios with Arma 3's comprehensive and intuitive Eden editor, and share your content with the community.
Arma 3 can be enhanced with a vast library of DLC that adds new assets, capabilities, and transports you to entirely new theaters of war. Additional weapons, tanks, jets, helicopters, and more are available for purchase as official DLC and Creator DLC (CDLC) to expand and customize your Arma 3 experience. Expansive terrains transport you to the treacherous jungles of Vietnam, the fields and forests of Cold War Germany, and to the sun-scorched desert of the Sahara, and more, giving you thousands of additional hours of playtime. For those who want all available official content from the get-go, Arma 3 Platinum includes the base game and every official expansion and DLC.
From the game's Steam store page.
THE GAMEQ VERDICT9,998 reviews analyzed
What players are actually saying
1. Summary
About 250 reviews call Arma 3 the best military sim or sandbox around, or say nothing else comes close, and reviewers are still saying it more than a decade after launch. The praise rests on what the base game hands to its community: Steam Workshop mods (a third of the longer reviews bring them up, and Antistasi is the mod named most often), the Eden editor and Zeus game-master tools, and a realism that makes every firefight slow, tense and costly. Reviewers who play with friends or an organized unit say that's when it comes alive, and some call it a platform more than a game. The long reviews are full of stories about helicopter crashes, mines and being shot from a bush a kilometre away.
Among negative reviews, three complaints each turn up in roughly one in seven: obtuse controls, menus and onboarding (14% of negative reviews), DLC content that locks newcomers out of vehicles, weapons and servers, along with in-game purchase prompts (15%), and the Arma 3 Pass subscription (15%). Other negative reviews point to old-engine performance, long-standing bugs and jank, AI that spots players through foliage, and trouble hosting or joining friends. Reviewers differ most on who should buy it. Long-time players say nothing else does what it does, while some newcomers give up early and point others to Arma Reforger instead.
2. What keeps coming up
What players praise
Mods and the Steam Workshop keep the game aliveHigh
A third of the longer reviews (33%) mention mods, the Workshop or named mods, more than any other theme in this report. Reviewers describe the base game as a foundation and the Workshop as the real content: total conversions to World War II, Vietnam, the Cold War, Star Wars, Halo and Warhammer 40k, plus ACE medical, AI overhauls and whole game modes. Antistasi comes up by name in 160 reviews, often as the reason people still play solo or in small co-op groups ("Antistasi Ultimate is far better than any game i've played in the past 5 years and it's an Arma mod because of course it is."). One reviewer sums it up as "Arma 3 is a alright game but an amazing mod platform".
The same reviews carry the downside. One player gave a thumbs-down because "it shouldn't need mods to be playable" beyond the first 20 or so hours, and others agree the vanilla game wears thin. Others describe modpacks of tens to hundreds of gigabytes, long downloads before joining a server, and kicks for mod mismatches. Mods also inherit the base game's jank and performance limits.
Realism and tension that other shooters lackHigh
Players praise the ballistics, the scale of maps like Altis and Tanoa, combined arms with infantry, armour, helicopters and jets in one battle, and the way one bullet can end a long patrol; 28% of the longer reviews talk about realism, milsim depth or immersion. Reviewers often hold it up against Call of Duty and Battlefield: there's no regenerating health or run-and-gun, and patience is rewarded. Helicopter flying has its own fans, and one player who has been at it for over ten years says they only fly helicopters any more.
The same slowness puts some players off (see the walking and pacing item under "split"), and a few argue that the soldier's stamina, sway and "bullet sponge" moments break the realism the game promises.
The Eden editor and Zeus make every session differentMedium
Building battles in the Eden editor and running live missions as a game master for friends come up in 13% of the longer reviews, which mention the editor, Zeus or custom scenarios. Some of these players spend most of their hours there rather than in the campaign or on public servers: "4000 hours later and i still can't find a game that allows such freedom of controls in zeus mode." What they value is the freedom to set up whatever they can imagine. A few find the editor's scripting side hard, and one mission maker says crashes during testing meant "hours of work lost".
Best with friends or an organized unitMedium
About a fifth of the longer positive reviews (20%) talk about friends, groups, clans or units. Alone, they say, the game can feel empty, and with a squad that communicates it becomes something else: "Sneaking into a town at night with a squad that actually communicates is pure magic." Long-time players recommend joining a milsim unit or a community Discord, and a few say the friendships were the best part. Without a group, some find it dull. One short review calls it "boring on its own" and gives the usual advice: "find a good group".
Vehicles, aviation and combined armsMedium
Helicopters, jets, tanks and other vehicles come up in 13% of the longer reviews. Players enjoy flying transport helicopters for other players, crewing tanks, and convoys and air support all in one battle. The complaints are about vehicle physics (cars launched into the air after touching a fence or another vehicle), DLC-locked vehicles, and aircraft controls that newcomers find hard to set up.
Cheap on sale for the amount of contentLow
Reviewers often mention picking the game up for a few dollars or euros in a sale, and recommend waiting for one. Some say it gives hundreds or thousands of hours for that price, especially counting free Workshop content: "Even if you pay $200 for the bundle....the mods alone more than make up for that value in free content." The same reviewers usually add that the DLC is a separate question (see below).
Where players are split
The campaign and single-playerMedium
Reviews that talk about the campaign or solo play (16% of the longer ones) disagree. Some enjoyed the East Wind campaign and the official scenarios ("Campaigns were awesome, had a great time playing them solo."), and solo players with mods like Antistasi or Dynamic Recon Ops say it's their main way to play. Others found the campaign buggy, punishing and badly explained: tasks failing when they shouldn't, friendly AI running over squadmates, enemies seemingly seeing through walls, and lost saves ("You WILL lose save progress without warning."). "11 Years and the singleplayer campaign is still a buggy piece of crap." Several newcomers also object that parts of the campaign content sit behind DLC.
Slow pacing: tension or tediumLow
Long walks, drives and helicopter rides before contact are part of the experience, and players disagree on whether that's the point. Fans say "You need to come into this game wanting that experience of hiking 20 minutes to find any combat". Critics call it a walking simulator, and one wrote: "During my entire time playing, I didn’t see a single enemy player, not to mention the matches last over an hour." Several joke reviews (dying after walking for 45 minutes) sit right between the two camps.
Arma 3 or Arma ReforgerLow
Arma Reforger comes up in 207 reviews. Among those that take a clear side, roughly as many tell newcomers to buy Reforger instead (38 reviews) as say Arma 3 is still the better game (33 reviews). The Arma 3 side points to scale, AI-driven battles, the editor, single-player and the mod library: "Reforger is coming along nice but doesn't have the AI or Scale that you can pull off with Arma 3." The Reforger side points to a newer engine, a cheaper base game, fewer DLC locks and easier multiplayer: "Just get Arma Reforger instead." Some players with weaker PCs say Arma 3 is the one that runs for them. Arma 4 comes up in 161 reviews, often as hope that it keeps what Arma 3 does well.
Is the player base alive?Low
Supporters say there are still busy community servers, units and events after more than ten years. Newcomers report empty servers, high ping, whitelisted or locked communities and servers that need DLC or large modpacks. One long-time player's version: "Server pop is dying, but you can still find some good ones!" A few players say they couldn't find populated servers with good ping in their region.
What frustrates players
Controls, menus and a brutal learning curveMedium
Controls, the interface, tutorials and the complexity of getting started come up in 15% of the longer reviews and 14% of negative reviews, mostly from new players. They list dozens of keybinds, odd defaults (aiming on a numpad key or right-click toggles), settings that don't save, confusing menus and weak tutorials, and a few call controller support unusable. "Come on, right mouse button zooms in instead of aiming? Are you in your right mind?" Another put it more gently: "This is not a place for beginners, nor does it pretend to be."
Positive reviews raise it too, as an accepted cost, and some players hundreds of hours in joke that they still don't know half the controls. Fans tell newcomers to rebind keys and lean on YouTube guides. The players who left negative reviews say they shouldn't have to.
DLC paywalls and in-game purchase promptsMedium
Newcomers describe buying the base game and then finding vehicles, weapons, campaigns and many servers tied to DLC, with prompts and watermarks when they use DLC content they don't own: "if someone has a helicopter of the dlc and you want to board as passager it will ask you to buy the expansion". DLC comes up in 13% of the longer reviews and 15% of negative reviews. Several object to the on-screen reminders during play: "I do not want my vision in the middle of my screen to be blocked while I am scoped in". The full bundle's price (reviewers quote $100 to $230) comes up as a barrier.
Defenders say most DLC is worth it on sale, single out Apex and creator DLC such as S.O.G. Prairie Fire and Spearhead ("Apex DLC is definitely worth purchasing on sale."), and point out that the free Workshop dwarfs the paid content. A smaller group of owners say the Gold Edition now bundles Apex and Contact with no upgrade path for existing players: "I feel like not creating upgrade bundles is a low blow to those of us who already own the game and numerous DLCs."
Old engine performanceMedium
Reviewers describe a CPU-bound engine: 20 to 40 FPS on modern PCs, big drops in towns, firefights and busy servers like King of the Hill, and settings that barely change anything. Performance comes up in 14% of the longer reviews, and 7% of negative reviews are partly about it. "Lucky if you get 25FPS on a PC made 12 years after the game came out." Some positive reviews mention the same thing with a shrug, and a few say it runs acceptably on laptops ("it works on a potato PC").
A handful of players say a recent update made a real difference ("With the last update you can finally play with an fps of two digits."). One long-time player argues that the update traded away "stability in high-stress scenarios", the huge battles they play for. Some also complain about the storage space modpacks need.
Bugs, physics and jankMedium
Bugs, glitches, crashes, broken physics or general jank come up in 12% of the longer reviews. For fans, "getting Arma'd" (vehicles flung into the sky, launched off razor wire, exploding after a bump) is part of the charm. Detractors list problems they say have gone unfixed for a decade: broken campaign scripts, desync, crashes in the editor, mods that claim to update but don't, and corrupted saves. "Its a house of cards - great time when it works - really bad time when it doesnt". One long negative review blames "a reliance on community fixes that should never have been necessary."
The Arma 3 Pass subscriptionMedium
Reviewers describe the Arma 3 Pass as a monthly subscription to all DLC that arrived at the end of April 2026, and it appears in 15% of negative reviews. Half of those were written in the following weeks, and the rest are older reviews their authors edited to flip. They object to a subscription on a game they note came out in 2013, point out that the same DLC regularly goes on sale for less, worry that it signals what Arma 4 will look like, and are angry that, as they report it, the standalone base edition was removed. "Subscription added 7 years after any DLC was released." Some of these reviewers say they still love the game: "I love Arma 3, I genuinely do, but I cannot in good conscience suggest supporting BI".
These complaints come mostly from long-time players. A few defend the Pass as an optional cheap trial of all the DLC for newcomers ("The Pass is OPTIONAL. They just announced it poorly.").
Hosting and joining friendsLow
Newcomers who bought the game to play with friends describe practical failures: hosting needs port forwarding or UPnP that doesn't work, friends can't see each other's lobbies, the server browser stops listing servers until a restart, and loading stalls on mission files. "Bought game to play with friends, can't host or find games hosted by friends. Tried over 3 machines, 2 operating systems, 2 ISPs and 3 routers." These complaints come mostly from players early in their time with the game.
AI that sees through foliageLow
AI complaints run in both directions: enemies spot and hit players through bushes and smoke from hundreds of metres, while friendly AI stands in the open or runs over its own squad. "AI is laughable. You can be in a bush, 600m away, and the AI will still know exactly where you are". Fans point to AI mods (LAMBS, VCOM) and the difficulty sliders as fixes.
Server admins, kicks and toxicityLow
Several newcomers describe joining a public server and being kicked by an admin, ignored or insulted. One wrote that they wiped out on a quad bike, "died, and was promptly kicked by an admin." Some veterans also warn about toxic or racist players on official and public servers and steer people to private units instead.
Anti-cheat, accounts and launcher frictionLow
A small group of reviews object to BattlEye's kernel-level anti-cheat, unexplained bans with no reply from support, and BattlEye kicks or crashes on joining. Others hit friction with Bohemia account linking or the launcher before they can play: "Enough with making us create more accounts just to play a game." Mac and Steam Deck players also report crashes and control problems.
3. The player conversation
The conversation is affectionate, crude and full of jokes. Most reviews are one line long, and a large share are running gags: 70 reviews joke about getting PTSD from it, and others play on walking for an hour to die to an unseen sniper or on "MAN 200 METERS FRONT". Under the jokes, the longer reviews describe a deep, janky, endlessly moddable military sandbox that pays off for players with patience, a group and the Workshop.
Complaints about controls, menus and getting into multiplayer come mostly from people early in their time with the game: the median reviewer raising multiplayer access had 18 hours played, and for controls and the learning curve it was 47 hours. Arma 3 Pass complaints come from the other end: the median reviewer raising it had about 665 hours, and 57% had 500 hours or more. Editor and Zeus praise also comes mainly from long-time players.
The positive share held steady between 87% and 95% each month from May 2025 to April 2026. In the week the Arma 3 Pass arrived at the end of April 2026, it fell to 60%, and May 2026 as a whole finished at 74%. By June 2026 it was back at 92%, and it stayed between 88% and 92% each month through October 2026. The dip lines up with the Pass complaints, which came mostly from veterans.
4. What the developers could do
- Modernize the default controls and onboarding. Controls, menus and the learning curve come up in 15% of the longer reviews and 14% of negative ones, with newcomers asking for standard defaults like holding right mouse to aim, settings that save, and tutorials that teach more than moving and shooting.
- Remove the on-screen DLC prompts and let players use DLC content they meet in multiplayer. DLC is raised in 15% of negative reviews, and players single out purchase reminders that cover the screen mid-fight and prompts when boarding another player's DLC vehicle.
- Give existing owners a fair path to the Gold Edition and keep a standalone purchase option alongside the Arma 3 Pass. The Pass appears in 15% of negative reviews, mostly from long-time players, and owners say the new bundle offers them no upgrade price for content they already bought.
- Make playing with friends work out of the box. Newcomers who bought the game for co-op describe failed UPnP hosting, invisible lobbies and a server browser that needs a restart, and these complaints come mostly from players in their first hours.
- Keep working on CPU performance in large battles. Performance is part of 7% of negative reviews and a caveat in some positive ones, and one long-time player says the recent performance update made huge battles less stable.
- Fix long-standing campaign and editor bugs, starting with save corruption and editor crashes. Single-player reviewers describe failing scripted tasks, lost save progress and hours of scenario work lost to crashes.
- Tune AI spotting through foliage and smoke. AI complaints focus on enemies seeing through bushes at long range and friendly AI driving over squadmates, and players rely on mods to fix both.
