World of Tanks

I'm not saying the game is P2W.
but you can pretty much equip your wallet as main weapon.

I've been around this game since 2012.
Spent unhealthy amount of hours playing as a kid. I'm 24 now and the nostalgia is killing me.
The game evolved visually a lot, but the core gameplay is still the same.
Artillery is still annoying, RNG makes you slam your desk and the chat is still toxic as I remembered.
The 2.0 rewards are nice and generous so if you want to make a little nostalgia trip like me, now it's a perfect time to do so.

Turn off chat and the game will be much better. If you leave chat on, this review would be a negative one. Too many people are too wrapped up in talking trash to others rather than working on improving themselves (in and out of game).

This game is particularly strong in making Central and East European people angry and poor.

World of Tanks
✅ Fun and satisfying tank combat.
❌ Massive grind to unlock higher tiers.
❌ The Ultimate PAY-TO-WIN game. (premium tanks, gold ammo, faster progression).
Verdict: Worth trying if you just want a casual time-filler, but don’t expect fairness or fast progress without opening your wallet.

This game defines my childhood. I remember coming back home from school 12 years ago just to to play this game for hours and it were some of the best times of my life. I have not played this game for years because I thought it has gone to shit, but to be honest I just didn't really understand it. It's still a great game, probably even better the last time I've played it.
Yes, there are tons of microtransactions, but what did you expect? It's free to play and they have to make money somehow. Some of the bundles and tanks are honestly worth it and premium account for a month is only 10 euros, giving you insane value, especially if you play a lot.
Big disadvantage of this game being on Steam is you need to create a new account, even if you've played the game for years. I personally don't mind, since I wanted to start from the scratch either way. This is no longer a thing after update 1.28, you can now play with old WG accounts on Steam.
Achievement-wise, most of them are fairly easy. I've only played for 45 hours and already have more than 60% of the achievements. Can't wait for 100% on this one.

This game is immensely difficult to describe, succintly or in words in general. But here's my attempt.
This is the highest skill ceiling "shooter" I've ever played. I say "shooter" in air quotes because, if you play it like a traditional shooter, you will get your ass handed to you in a mess tin. Twitch shooting is not a useful skill in this game, because the tank defines how quickly and accurately you can shoot, not your reflexes. It is a game where success is not so much defined by raw mechanical skill, but how you apply those mechanical skills with your specific team lineup against the specific team lineup your opponents have to win.
As a direct result of that, no tank in a team (apart from maybe artillery) is dispensable. Subsequently, the pressure to perform to or above your potential is immense. I have sat down in front of traditional twitch shooters after playing this game and it has felt like relaxing holiday compared to the absolute forehead-vein-bulging pressure to perform in World of Tanks. There are no respawns and no healing in this game - damage and death is permanent in match, so there is no way to patch up for your mistakes after the fact, or try again if you fail. The community in this game has a ridiculously low tolerance for people trying to learn how a tank works, and pretty much expect you to perform at or above potential straight out of the garage. Play a tank wrong or make a dumb mistake and your team will make sure you remember it for the rest of your life.
Many times, this game is an exercise in futility and frustration as a battle feels more like 1v29 instead of the 15v15 format it has. You're sometimes battling not only the enemy, but also the tidal wave of absurdity from your own team. In its default incarnation, this game has no skill-based matchmaking (SBMM), which means that not infrequently you will end up on teams that look like they're trying to actively figure out the controls as they roll out of base - doubly so now that signing in or up after the 2.0 update granted you 1-2 tech trees, up until tier 10, sight unseen. This, when combined with no SBMM, can have you left on teams where you feel like you're the only one who's even figured out what end the bullets come out of.
The advantages that can be gained by paying in this game are also not-insignificant. I would estimate that it is possible to gain about a 25-30% performance advantage by paying, and more than that, you also opt out of the most frustrating aspects of the tech tree and economy grind by doing so. This is not something that everyone appreciates and the monetisation in this game has been getting worse and worse over the years. The premium tank spam is relentless and power creep is reaching Destiny 2 levels of problematic.
The learning curve in this game isn't a curve, it's a flat wall that you will bang your head against for hundreds of hours until you learn to scale it and then start to do well. I have taught a friend to play this game, in addition to learning myself. Provided your friend(s) even have the patience and/or masochism to last past tier 6, it's all uphill from there. The only game with more rigorous mandatory map knowledge requirements in order to not cock up and die in the first minute is probably Rainbow 6 Siege. And that's before we get into the fact that all tanks must be approached slightly differently, which adds even more height to the Great Wall of China the path to suck less.
Based on this text so far, it may sound like I'm down on the game. But I'm not. I'm just listing out all the aspects that will frustrate you to no end when you play it.
If you can bear with and/or buy you way around these aspects - if you can put up with all of this game's absurdities, conditions, baseline expectations and pressures, and play it on its ridiculous, sometimes utterly unpalatable terms - it hits like no other. When you clutch an unfortunate situation by applying your tank better than the other person, or you know your tank's strengths and weaknesses in and out and apply that gained skill to make mince meat of the enemy team, or you team up with a friend and leave the enemy resembling large tin colanders in your wake; that still gives me an adrenaline rush like no other game I've ever played has been able to. I've stepped away from this game physically shaken and thinking "what the hell was that, how did I even pull that off, I need to take a lap".
Summa summarum: Not for the faint of heart. But if you can bear it, it's unlike anything else.