I am wondering whether I should buy this game and would like some unbiased advice of thats possible

Some history: I used to own Il2 after hearing how good it was but wasnt that impressed and sold it eventually - didnt like the Russian planes (couldn't relate to them - I am English what else can I say?) and wasnt too keen on the canned missions and lack of a dynamic campaign. Also have to say I thought it was damned hard attacking airfields and the like with the unbelievable AA fire. But I could see some elements I liked - the visuals, the plane dynamics and damage effects mainly.

I never got any other Maddox games because of the above. My favourite games of all time were Falcon 4, Tornado, EF2000 and TAW but I also very much enjoyed Rowans BOB, Microproses B17 and European Air War.

This one interests me - with Rowans BOB must admit I mainly play shooting out of the bombers cause I cant be bothered with the flying much - didnt like the way you could drop into flights etc striaght into the action - I suppose it put me off as I am a bit lazy but half the fun is actually flying around trying to find the targets etc and this game didnt force me to do that. Also with my limited free time I used to play it quickly then give up after a couple of hours. Also I supose I neeer felt that the planes in that game were well tuned aerodynamically - never felt you were actually landing a real plane, more like landing a streamlined jet than an old WW2 wooden crate.

I know about the framerate probs in this game but am not too bothered as I know this will get addressed eventually and I have a decent system to play it on when they are sorted.

I like the idea of playing the English vs Germans and the BOB but am a bit worried about whether I will like the canned missions.

So what will I like about this game, what is it that makes the IL2 games so enjoyable for lots of people (becuase I feel I am missing out on something obvious), and finally should I buy it???? Thanks for your input.

It's a good question. I have no idea about the crewing of bombers.

Hopefully someone will be able to answer your specific question.

well from a huge fan of old EF2000 (toum toum ... what can i say, if you don't like il2 there is no reason to buy the sequel because this one is even more hardcore and raw at that stage, it's definitely not a instant action game, no big war theater feeling like in rowan bob, maybe in two years, but atm you should wait playing birds of prey as a aperitif

As you aren't being overly optimistic about FPS etc then I would say YES! Expect to have to play on a lower resolution so if you ahve a large monitor it might look a bit ugly. There are many really fun things to discover and lots of lovely moments however the game does need some work on it so you might be taking a chance for a while, worst case scenario you have to hold on to it for a week or two while they patch.

I'm playing on a gaming laptop on lower resolution and it looks good to me but then the monitor is only small "17. I get good FPS because I am turning down the ground eye candy....I dont look at the ground when shooting down bombers. Game play is much nicer over the sea, when over land there is something that causes the occasional stutter. As I turned down settings I have reduced these a lot and get 30-40 fps over land, still getting stutters occasionally though.

If you aare lucky with your system and willing to fiddle about for a bit and then further willing to wait for patches which will be coming soon then I would go for it. It's only 30 quid.

Good luck

I think he didn't like IL2 because he couldn't relate to the Eastern theatre of war.

The game obviously is working thru some opening issues, but everything I've seen and read does nothing but tell me that we have just started another nice long run of IL2 (or IL3) enjoyment.

Yeh trust me on this once you get it working even with reduced settings it's really loads of fun. I've been smiling all day and can't stay off it....this is bad as I am supposed to be working

If you like your history and fancy either upholding it or rewriting it, then this even in it's current state is a good sim. I think that everyone by and large is ok flying over the water with 10+ planes, i.e. most of the quick missions.

Over land is a different matter atm but given time this will get fixed and I for one are looking forward to defending London from the horde and chasing stragglers through the hills of Kent at tree top level as they try and make for the Channel...but I digress.
Simply put, if you have a reasonable computer and are content to do your fighting out over the channel for the moment, then this is the sim you've been waiting for.
If however you want to cold-start it and take off/land, fly over cities etc. then I would hold off for a couple of weeks and see how the patches pan out.

Personally, I'm having a lot of fun in this 'unplayable' sim; last night I spent hours just running bomber intercept missions over Dover & Calais.
My dinner went cold on the table, the wife went to bed in disgust; I finally snapped out of the 'zone' at 3am when my bladder threatened to burst after 9 hours straight playing - now that's immersion...

IL-2 Cliffs of Dover is definitely having performance issues, but these WILL be ironed out. If your a fan of the genre and would like to see it survive, its a must buy. Call it a sound investment into the air combat flight sim genre. The new IL-2 series will become the next benchmark.

You could also pick up IL-2 1946 for under 10 dollars, that includes all of the IL-2 addons, with all the fantastic aircraft and maps you missed after the original IL-2 was released.

This is a good reason to buy it.

I am not into buying sims with my very limited (at the present time) cash to keep developers in business or the sim market 'alive'. If I buy a game I want to get my money's worth out of it and that has happened precious little lately - Civ 5 and Empire Total War got me very bored very quickly. I am concerned about paying for a beta release as I dont like encouraging that kind of thing, but these developers are worth more respect than most, despite what I think about Ubisoft (less said the better). I will probably buy it and take a punt trusting it will only get better. It's either that or get Rise of Flight, as I did really enjoy Red Baron. Maybe this could be the start of my getting back into flight sims after a long hiatus (since Falcon 4).

Not much to lose in terms of cash when buying the D/L version. Having said that, if you have been following the threads on these forums, you will have to set your expectations accordingly. Having worked in the software industry, it warms the cockles of my heart to hear the rants of some. You would think they have purchased a million buck ERP system and are having trouble printing their months end reports rather than a 50 buck piece of entertainment software. But as a flight simmer, IL2 "fanboi", I can understand.....

Loved IL-2 Sturmovik despite not being a history buff or huge sim fan - I tend to set everything up very arcadey - I just love planes and guns!

At the risk of incurring the wrath of some people here who believe that full realism is the only way to fly, may I suggest you give wings of prey a look as well; a bit arcadey but performs well on low range computers, looks and sounds fantastic and is just what you need for a quick 'blat' before breakfast.....