Vincemus – Air Combat

Well, so this is a "neutral" situation, in my opinion. First off, War Thunder desperately needs some competent competition. I was hoping this would be it, and who knows it may be some day. But today is not that day. That said War Thunder has had 15 years of development, so it's fair that this one doesn't come close. Also this one seems to have a small, or solo dev team.
The game does a lot of things correct in my opinion, and others need work. So, for the things it does well. First the game is low in cost, and was even cheaper during the recent sale. Second, the game isn't terribly grindy. There definitely is SOME grind here, because stock aircraft aren't completing many missions. To me that's great as it's one of my biggest qualms with War Thunder. Further I'd say the tutorial in this game is pretty good, and I think it's cool that it rewards you with a free P-51C. The sound in this game is also very good in my opinion. From the explosions, to the different weapons, and aircraft engines, all were done well. I also like that the aircraft upgrades act as a sense of progression along with the multiple theaters with multiple missions. All very well done, and quite cool.
Now for the bad. So, in different missions you will have wingmen, though they're not actually wingman because they're usually in inferior aircraft, and don't particularly care what you do. They are decently effective though. However, there are different missions where I felt very alone despite having other aircraft around because the enemy aircraft mostly seemed to go after me. So much so that they will alter their course if I get close enough when they were moments before heading into a head-on pass with a friendly aircraft. Additionally, on these missions I'm expected to be both CAP, and CAS. That doesn't make much sense to me. My aircraft would typically be configured to fulfill one, but not both of those roles. Further, having to dive to the deck to deal with AA, and then back up to 5000 ft to deal with 4 bad guys isn't ideal and again a situation where having wingmen, or even "a" wingman would be helpful. So I guess the AI, is my issue, or perhaps even design choices by the dev if these choices are intentional. Also, enemy pilots are flying their 109s like they're bi-planes.
Second, the flight model needs some work. There's zero energy modeled in this game. In a P-51D if I'm at 10,000 ft, and I take it to the deck at a 30 degree angle, I do gain *SOME* speed, but nearly as much as one would expect. Further when I pull up, I don't lose energy. Almost none is lost. So, to this point I get that the game is listed as "semi-realistic", but regardless of that fact energy and energy retention should be modeled if possible. Different point, I'd love to see the game include more aircraft, and SOME day maybe even include Korea, or later conflicts. Maybe Vincemus II?
In conclusion, the game IS worth $14.88, and is absolutely worth it on sale. But as it is, I wouldn't expect too much overall, and it's certainly no War Thunder killer - at least not yet. Maybe it will be some day, or maybe that's not the devs intention. It'd be a recommend from me if some of these issues were addressed. Otherwise it's a neutral rating from me due to the frustrations the issues I listed bring about.

Exactly What I Was Looking For!
I loved playing IL2 Sturmovik, but I wanted a single player arcade control version of it, like War Thunder. And this is it!
It’s such a fun sandbox. And the dev even put in an invincibility cheat like an old school console game, I love it!

controls were jank at first, but i managed to figure it out, however the game has poor optimization, the dev shouldd stop focusing on new features and instead focusing on getting rid of the stuttering issues. other than that the game is good, but i cant currently recommend anyone buy it until the game is properly optimized

This plays like War Thunder arcade, combined with Ace Combat (with ridiculous ammo counts and enemy numbers to match). Looks pretty good for the price and the fact that 1 guy made it.
Don't buy it expecting realism. Do buy it if you expect to be able to skim along at head height past exploding tanks.

Pleasant game. It's most similar to - I'd say - War Thunder, but single player, indie, and more fun!

It's War Thunder without the grind being made CBT due to sweats and gaijin's greed. While not the highest fidelity game out there it offers a very nice flight model and a decent selection of planes to mess around with and means to make them utter memes to fly. Give it your time and money if you have any interest in air combat games.

To be fair, this game is quite solid, although I am probably mostly saying this because I am a huge fan of games where you get to destroy stuff in a military aircraft. Keep in mind that this game feels like it's in a VERY early alpha phase. There's plenty of bugs, aircraft control feels solid overall but is still finnicky at times, flight physics are odd sometimes, lots of weird UI & UX with text clipping out of boxes or UNTRANSLATED_LOCALIZATION_KEYS being shown here and there, enemy ground targets have near aimbot-level aim, the graphics are in a very strange place between low detail programmer art and semi-realistic, pretty much no QOL features, and the missions are quite repetitive. So unless you're a huge fan of this genre, expect this game to feel like a very rough, bumpy rollercoaster ride.
Overall, this game is not bad at all, just very unpolished. It clearly shows that it still needs plenty of work, and is several leagues away from being a War Thunder competitor, let alone a killer.