War Thunder

27% of the longer reviews complain about progression, and the share barely changes with playtime: 22% of reviews under 10 hours, 30% above 1,000 hours. Newcomers describe a fast, fun start that hits a wall around rank III or IV and a "second job" they cannot fit around work or school. Some short negatives are the single word "grind", and others are a line like "the grind just kills it after work". Veterans get specific: research costs that multiply each tier while RP rewards barely move, stock vehicles that lack spare parts, fire extinguishers, usable ammunition or countermeasures until dozens more matches are played, crew training and Silver Lion purchase costs on top of research, repair bills that make average games a net loss, forced filler vehicles to unlock the next rank, and reports that RP rewards were cut again in 2026 without notice. Many estimate hundreds to thousands of hours per nation even with a premium account, which several say only turns "impossible" into "a second job".

28% of the longer reviews criticize monetization, rising from 15% among players under 10 hours to 38% among those above 1,000 hours. Players point to $70 to $80 (and higher) single-vehicle packs that cost as much as a AAA game, a premium account they describe as mandatory, loot crates, battle passes and marketplace vehicles selling for hundreds or thousands. The pattern reviewers return to is premiums launched overpowered at a low BR to drive sales and nerfed months later ("nerfed after sales"), with the T58, BMPT-72, Su-30 variants and 2S38 named as examples. 7% explicitly call the game pay-to-win; a minority counter that it is "pay to progress" and that a new player who buys a top-tier premium mostly buys a quick loss, which feeds a related complaint about low-level premium buyers who die once and leave.

13% of the longer reviews raise balance problems (22% of those from players above 1,000 hours), and 6% name Russian or Soviet bias specifically. Players cite Russian vehicles surviving shots that should kill them (fuel tanks and autoloader carousels that eat rounds, generous ERA), top-tier Russian missiles, air defenses and CAS that outclass NATO equivalents, and the BMPT and BMPT-72. The BMPT comes up in 109 reviews, more than any other vehicle, and is described as ruining the 10.7 to 12.0 range for months. Other reviewers blame the balancing method: BRs set from player statistics mean minor-nation vehicles played by veterans get overtiered while vehicles popular with beginners get undertiered, and reviewers accuse the developers of demanding extensive documents for NATO buffs while accepting thin sources for Russian ones. American, British, French and German players each feel their own nation is the neglected one. Reviews that dismiss the bias as a meme are hard to find; the meme mostly comes up in reviews saying it is accurate ("soviet bias is not a meme").

9% of the longer reviews complain about matchmaking. The core issues are the plus or minus 1.0 BR spread combined with years of compression, which puts WWII tanks against Cold War HEAT-FS and APFSDS and early jets without flares against all-aspect missiles, and a feeling that most games are full uptiers, sometimes attributed to boosters or premium status. Newcomers add a separate complaint: level 100 players with thousands of battles "seal clubbing" at low tiers, and the absence of any level or skill separation. Several suggest era-based brackets, a smaller spread, or keeping new accounts apart from maxed ones.

8% of the longer reviews criticize maps, rising to 12% among 1,000-hour players. Ground maps are described as either small city meat-grinders or open fields with one rock of cover, frequently with sightlines from one spawn into the other, so matches are decided in the first minute and the losing team is spawn-camped for the rest. Players say spawn protection is too short, top-tier vehicles are fighting on maps too small for their weapons, Air RB maps turn into objective-free deathmatches, and the few decent maps rarely come up. Two reviewers add that only one map can be banned, and only with premium.

8% of the longer reviews report technical problems; one reviewer's summary is that "every update adds more bugs than content". Reports include crashes to desktop and full PC freezes, black screens, frame-rate collapses after the 2026 graphics changes, the game hanging on exit, controls and key bindings resetting after updates, missing engine sounds for nearby enemies, broken weapon or missile behavior after patches (radar and missiles not locking, the ASU-57 barrel traverse), and daily multi-gigabyte updates. Linux and Mac players add launch failures and anti-cheat conflicts.

5% of the longer reviews describe shells that vanish or do nothing on hits that should penetrate (a "ghost shell"), volumetric armor that treats a bolt or weld as meters of steel, rounds with hundreds of millimeters of penetration stopped by tracks, fuel tanks or mudguards, and HE, HESH and ATGMs that under-deliver, while their own tanks die to glancing hits. Players describe this as turning a knowledge-based game into a gamble; one veteran calls it "mostly RNG whether hits will connect, penetrate, disappear".

4% of the longer reviews, mostly from ground players with long tenure, say close air support ruins Ground Realistic Battles: planes are cheap to spawn after a kill or two, revenge bombers delete tanks that just won a fight, top-tier helicopters and jets fire from outside air-defense range, and anti-air vehicles are unrewarding to play. Suggested fixes include a tanks-only mode, higher spawn-point costs for CAS, and limits on aircraft per team.

4% of the longer reviews object to AI-generated profile icons, decals and textures, with the Senrai Maidens premium packs (where a Gemini watermark was spotted on textures) the flashpoint; some say it should at least be disclosed on the store page. Two related complaints come up alongside it: copy-paste vehicles, where the same Leopard, Abrams, F-16 or T-72 appears in many trees and nations lose their identity, and anime crossover content that some players feel does not belong in a military game. Most of the reviews raising AI art come from long-tenure players.

5% of the longer reviews (9% among 1,000-hour players) say ground battles are still the same capture-point domination, air battles are still team deathmatch with little for bombers to do, and new content is almost only new vehicles. Players ask for objective-based and attack/defend modes, a ground-only mode, historical matchmaking, larger modern maps and permanent versions of event modes. Some are wary of the upcoming infantry mode, seeing it as effort diverted from the core game; a few testers liked it.

4% of the longer reviews report server problems: packet loss spikes that kick players mid-match (then lock their crews as if they left), desync that makes planes dive into the ground or shells miss, and disconnects that waste active boosters. Players in Oceania and Southeast Asia ask for local servers instead of 150 to 500 ms ping, and several players blame region mixing for poor connections.

4% of the longer reviews say cheating and botting have grown, describing wall-hack style pre-aiming, suspiciously perfect aim, obvious bot accounts in naval and low tiers, and reports that seem to go nowhere.

5% of the longer reviews describe the first hundred hours as unwelcoming: a thin tutorial, an overwhelming and confusing interface and control scheme (dozens of bindings, many unbound by default), no explanation of weak spots or ammo, and being matched against veterans. Steam's playtime figure is a poor guide to who is new, though: 19 reviews logged at under 2 hours say their writer has played on Gaijin's own launcher or a console, often for hundreds or thousands of hours. The genuine first impressions in that group are about controls ("the controls are out of whack"), menus that are "way too complicated if youre a new player", and getting killed without seeing the enemy.

A small but bitter group reports unhelpful customer support: hacked accounts whose losses are not restored, purchases that went to the wrong account, bans or chat bans they believe were wrongful, and the inability to transfer or link console progress to Steam or PC.

Teammates who ram, team-kill, ignore objectives or leave after one death are a frequent source of jokes and some real anger, and a minority report racist or extremist chat that goes unmoderated.