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.

This game makes me want to jump headfirst into the middle of the autobahn.
10/10 experience never play it

Is this game worth trying? In my opinion, yes, but here's the catch: the game isn't noobs friendly.

You will first play against bots, then, after a few dozen battles, you will be placed against real humans. The issue is that those players have tens of thousands of battle experiences, better equipment, and crews. It will probably take a few hundred battles, but you will improve and contribute more to victory as you progress. Watching a few YouTube videos is also a good idea to learn more about the game's mechanics.

Is the game P2W? Yes and no. A few premium tanks are very good and will help you win more often, and premium days will help you progress faster, but money cannot buy you skill. A good player with a tech tree tank will annihilate any average player with the best premium tank in the game. Out of my 10 most-played tanks, 8 are tech tree tanks, and I have better stats than most players.

Can you play for free without spending money? Yes! Over the year, the game has several events with free premium days, credits, crew members, free XP, and more. It is also possible to trade bonds, a currency you earn when playing, for premium tanks. As a FTP player, you will progress more slowly on the tech tree. Credit will also be an issue, preventing you from always playing in the higher tiers.

Some reviews imply that the game is rigged. Do not listen to them. The whole "game is rigged" is 15 years old, and made by bad players who believe that WarGaming, a billion-dollar company, is rigging their battles, but for some reason, mines aren't. Strange how things work.

Overall, the game is fun, but far from perfect. In the past 2 years, WarGaming has been busier releasing new premium tanks than fixing the game's issues. 2.0 seems to be a new start. Let's hope so =)

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 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 ♥♥♥♥ 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.