That nagging voice...

Lerxst

I've grown up playing Flight and Combat sims (F-15 back in the 80's, up to FSX and the enire IL-2 series as well as DCS Black Shark)

Honestly, War Thunder doesn't get bad marks in the "realism" department when it comes to physics.  If the controls and game are set for it, the game plays like many of those other titles - aerodynamics play a role as do weapon loads, speed, etc. - control surfaces can get damaged, wings can break off, rudders can get shot out, and so on.

Controls, on the other hand, are a bit hard to deal with.  Anyone used to a flight sim game will instinctively want to use a joy stick.  Problem is, some/most/all joysticks suffer a huge issue with the rudder controls; you can steer and control it, but it "snaps" back to center position, causing the plane to rock and making it impossible to aim straight when you're fine-tuning your aim.

Probelm is, either the joystick controls are too harsh (and believe me, every setting, calibration and sensitivity has been tried) or the mouse controls are too forgiving.

Mouse + keyboard controls rule the game.  Of course, neither allow you to really "fly" the plane.  For instance, performing a "slip" (turning the plane in one direction while holding the rudder in the opposite direction to reduce speed and altitude) becomes nearly impossible when you're limited to a mouse and a few keystrokes.  Without any true skill required to fly, at a certain point, the game becomes similar to any other FPS.

This leads to another issue - there's either too much hand holding, or not enough tutorials.  If you use mouse + keyboard, the "Instructor" mode comes on and makes it virtually impossible to do anything too stupid on purpose; you can't stall, bank too fast or overspeed.  This makes every dogfight nearly identical - engage, turn, turn, turn, kill/die.

OK, fine, I can handle some quirks since the game is still technically in beta.  But here comes the nagging vice...

It's like Gaijin looked at the model World of Tanks uses and thought of qays to milk their customers for even more money.  I won't lie, WT is much... much... MUCH too similar to WoT to not comapre them... even the launcher looks identical.

If you've played WoT and think micro-payments for small benefits are a rip-off, "you ain't seen nothing yet!".  WoT has at least balanced itslef out over the years so that a free player may still enjoy and advance at a normal pace in the game without paying.  Spending money only gets you a quicker way to advance.  WT has made it almost a requirement to spend money in order to make any progress; the advancement is so slow, the reqards are so small comapred to the economy in the game, that it will take months, if not years for a casual player to reach the higher ranks of planes.