Escaping the Free-to-Play Grind in Aces of Thunder
For over a decade, Gaijin Entertainment’s War Thunder has dominated the military vehicle combat market. It boasts an incredible physics engine and a massive roster of historical aircraft. However, it also famously features one of the most punishing, soul-crushing free-to-play grinds in modern gaming. Unlocking a top-tier plane can take hundreds of hours or hundreds of dollars.
Enter Aces of Thunder. Released early last month, this standalone, premium title is essentially Gaijin’s olive branch to the hardcore simulation community. For a flat $30 entry fee, it completely strips away the microtransactions, the in-game economies, and the endless research trees. You get beautifully recreated World War I and World War II aircraft, authentic flight models, and pure dogfighting.
Currently sitting at a “Mixed” rating on Steam, the community response has been polarized. Having spent extensive time in both VR and on a flatscreen setup, the reason for the divide is glaringly obvious: Aces of Thunder is a spectacular flight simulator buried beneath a miserable user experience.
The Hangar: A UI and Setup Nightmare
Let’s address the massive, fiery elephant in the room first, because it is the sole reason for 90% of the game’s negative reviews. Setting up your controls in Aces of Thunder is an exercise in pure frustration.
If you are a flight sim enthusiast plugging in a HOTAS (Hands-On Throttle-And-Stick) setup, prepare for a headache. The game currently lacks intuitive presets or simple “plug-and-play” functionality for many popular rigs. Players are reporting dead zones, unmapped axes, and a UI that refuses to cooperate. Pro-Tip: If you are struggling with throttle response on a HOTAS like the X56, you need to dive into the settings and crank the “non-linearity” all the way up. Furthermore, the game offers absolutely zero tutorials. Gaijin has essentially handed players the keys to a high-performance P-51 Mustang, pointed at the runway, and walked away. If you don’t know how to manage engine mixture, propeller pitch, or manual trimming, you will find yourself in an unrecoverable flat spin within three minutes. You will need to rely heavily on YouTube guides and community forums to learn the ropes.
For a game that proudly advertises its native OpenXR VR support, interacting with the menus using VR controllers is surprisingly janky, often requiring you to clumsily point and click through menus that clearly weren’t optimized for virtual reality.
Taking Flight: The Unmatched Immersion
However, if you possess the patience to survive the agonizing setup phase, Aces of Thunder rewards you with one of the finest combat flight simulation experiences on the market today.
Once you are sitting on the tarmac, the game’s pedigree shines. The physical flight models and damage systems are lifted directly from War Thunder’s Simulator Battles, ensuring a high level of realism. Departure from controlled flight has real consequences, and learning your aircraft’s specific flight envelope is mandatory for survival.
In VR, the immersion is absolute. The cockpits are meticulously detailed and highly interactive. You can physically grab the throttle lever to open up the engine, flip switches to toggle the landing gear, or pull the canopy release. The sensation of opening your canopy, physically leaning your head out into the slipstream to check your blind spots, and diving onto a target is breathtaking.
For those without a VR headset, the game functions exceptionally well in standard flatscreen mode. Hooking up a head-tracking solution (like TrackIR or a smartphone app via UDP) to a curved ultrawide monitor delivers an experience that rivals the heavyweights like IL-2 Sturmovik and DCS World.
Quality Over Quantity
The base game offers over 20 carefully recreated iconic aircraft spanning three key theaters of World War II (Western, Eastern, and Pacific Fronts) and World War I.
You can hop instantly into legends like the American P-51 Mustang, the German Bf 109, the British Spitfire Mk Ia, and the Japanese A6M3 Zero. For history buffs, the inclusion of World War I machines—like the Fokker Dr.I flown by the Red Baron—adds a fantastic, low-speed, high-maneuverability dynamic to the dogfights.
It is incredibly refreshing to just pick a plane because you love its history, rather than flying a plane you hate simply to grind XP for the next tier. (Note: The $50 Deluxe Edition adds five extra planes, including the F4U-4 Corsair, which is undeniably gorgeous, though arguably a steep price bump for just a few extra airframes.
The Multiplayer Problem: Empty Skies
Where Aces of Thunder currently struggles the most is its population. The botched launch regarding control setups clearly drove away a large chunk of the casual player base, leaving the multiplayer servers painfully underpopulated.
If you jump into an online match today, you will likely find lobbies padded heavily with AI bots. While the bots are serviceable for target practice and learning the ropes, they lack the unpredictable, desperate maneuvers of real human pilots.
There are also some baffling design choices regarding multiplayer respawns. The game occasionally forces you to cycle through different aircraft in a lineup rather than allowing you to continually respawn in the specific plane you actually want to fly. If you join a server explicitly to practice ground-pounding in an IL-2, being forced to fly a fighter you have no interest in after your first death is intensely frustrating.
The Good, The Bad, & The Stalled
| The Good | The Bad | The Ugly |
| No Grind: A flat $30 entry fee gives you instant access to legendary aircraft with zero microtransactions or research trees. | The Setup: Binding controls for a HOTAS is a nightmare of unmapped axes and poor UI design. | Empty Servers: The multiplayer is currently a ghost town padded out by predictable AI bots. |
| Flight Physics: Authentic, punishing, and rewarding flight models imported directly from War Thunder. | No Tutorials: The game teaches you absolutely nothing. You either know how to manage prop pitch, or you crash. | Respawn Mechanics: Multiplayer frequently forces you to fly planes you don’t want to use to finish a match. |
| Empty Servers: The multiplayer is currently a ghost town, padded out by predictable AI bots. | Menu Navigation: Using VR controllers to navigate the main menus feels remarkably clunky and unresponsive. | |
| Flatscreen Viability: Plays excellently on standard monitors with head-tracking software. |
Should You Buy It?
Yes, if: You own a HOTAS, love hardcore flight simulators, possess the patience to manually configure your controls, and want War Thunder physics without the free-to-play economy.
No, if: You are looking for an accessible, arcade-style shooter, or you rely on in-game tutorials to teach you how to fly.
Recommended for fans of: IL-2 Sturmovik: Great Battles, DCS World, War Thunder (Sim Battles), VTOL VR.
Aces of Thunder: Aces of Thunder is a diamond trapped in a cage of bad UI. It delivers exactly what simulation fans have wanted from Gaijin for years: a premium, beautiful, physically accurate dogfighter with incredible VR implementation and absolutely zero microtransactions. If you are a flight sim veteran with the patience to manually bind your HOTAS and rely on third-party tutorials, this game will easily consume hundreds of hours of your time. If you expect a polished, plug-and-play arcade experience, you should request a refund before you even finish the download. Let's hope Gaijin patches the menus and implements crossplay soon, because the skies over Tau Ceti—wait, wrong game—the skies over the Pacific deserve more pilots. – Obsidian