If anyone happens upon this review without pre-existing knowledge. This game seemingly was built to build, refine, and test the ENFUSION game engine that Bohemia Interactive will use for future Arma titles. Enfusion is very cool, supposedly the development tools are interesting and useful. The game looks good.

I've played Arma 3 for 8000 hours at the time of this review. I've primarily been playing as a helicopter pilot during my time in Arma 3. The characteristics of helicopter flight in this game are not very fun. It shipped 2 years ago and still doesn't have HOTAS support. Obviously I'm biased towards Arma 3, and like I said, Reforger is a testbed for the Enfusion engine, so HOTAS is not their #1 priority, but I personally don't enjoy the game without strong helicopter physics. I don't need *realistic* physics, but I need at-least fun physics.

Arma 3 has remained immensely popular in the military gaming community since 2013, and it's remained that way for a reason. It's a strong bed for modders to create game-changing mods. With the Enfusion engine and tools, they've really allowed modders to take it to the next step, but they scrapped everything that made base Arma 3 good when they designed Reforger. When you boot Vanilla Arma 3, the helicopters are fun to fly, the vehicles are fun to drive, the guns feel good. The downside is that the game isn't as intuitive, but the UI is more minimal. I would argue that having a less intuitive game is better. When you learn and make use of mechanics that are new to you, you feel like you're progressing, but not because you leveled up, but because you learned something new.

TL;DR Arma 3 is a much better buy for your limited money. Reforger can be fun, but Arma 3, at the time of writing, has so much more milage for your money.

If anyone happens upon this review without pre-existing knowledge. This game seemingly was built to build, refine, and test the ENFUSION game engine that Bohemia Interactive will use for future Arma titles. Enfusion is very cool, supposedly the development tools are interesting and useful. The game looks good. I've played Arma 3 for 8000 hours at the time of this review. I've primarily been playing as a helicopter pilot during my time in Arma 3. The characteristics of helicopter flight in this game are not very fun. It shipped 2 years ago and still doesn't have HOTAS support. Obviously I'm biased towards Arma 3, and like I said, Reforger is a testbed for the Enfusion engine, so HOTAS is not their #1 priority, but I personally don't enjoy the game without strong helicopter physics. I don't need *realistic* physics, but I need at-least fun physics. Arma 3 has remained immensely popular in the military gaming community since 2013, and it's remained that way for a reason. It's a strong bed for modders to create game-changing mods. With the Enfusion engine and tools, they've really allowed modders to take it to the next step, but they scrapped everything that made base Arma 3 good when they designed Reforger. When you boot Vanilla Arma 3, the helicopters are fun to fly, the vehicles are fun to drive, the guns feel good. The downside is that the game isn't as intuitive, but the UI is more minimal. I would argue that having a less intuitive game is better. When you learn and make use of mechanics that are new to you, you feel like you're progressing, but not because you leveled up, but because you learned something new. TL;DR Arma 3 is a much better buy for your limited money. Reforger can be fun, but Arma 3, at the time of writing, has so much more milage for your money.