If you’re a PC gamer, you’ve likely heard of Wargaming’s World of Warplanes and Gaijin’s War Thunder, both juggernaut titles that go head-to-head in the gaming industry. Given their top-notch quality though, we can safely say there’s enough room for them in the free-to-play gaming world. Although there were warplane games that were released in the past, none can compare to both WoWP and WT - probably except Ace Combat, of course. With that aside, both games might appear similar at first, but they have numerous contrasting features the closer you look at them.

For one, the gameplay is different. You might say that “hey, they’re games that focus in airplanes! How in the world can they be different?”. Depending on the play style you want though, their contrasting approach to gameplay can weigh heavily, if you take your preferences into consideration.

War Thunder’s online battles are pretty cool - you’re put on a map alongside 30 other players and your goal is to destroy as many enemy fighters and ground targets as possible. The latter is also present, albeit always ignored, facet of World of Warplanes whose battles are basically 15 vs 15 deathmatches. This is because most of the WoWP community blatantly ignores ground targets. We can assume that they do so because it’s quite boring to bomb immobile targets and more exciting to attack other planes.

In fairness to WoWP, the games are fast-paced. As soon as your plane is up and running, you will get in contact with enemy fighters within 30 seconds. Considering that each game lasts 10 minutes, this is pretty quick. In War Thunder meanwhile, you can bide your time, and patiently take out ground targets while or without engaging other planes. The only way you’ll die early is if you decide to kamikaze into the surface, or if one particular player from the opposing team makes it their life’s goal to go all out and shoot you down for unknown reasons.

Additionally, War Thunder lets you choose five planes to bring into battle, while in WoWP, you’re only allowed to bring one. This makes sense, considering that things last a little longer on War Thunder. Even if WoWP prides itself with exhilarating battles, the feeling that you’ll only be able to pilot one plane throughout the matches feels like a damper.

War Thunder puts realism first in the game and puts easy gameplay in the backseat, whereas World of Warplanes does the opposite. The latter feels more like an arcade game, instead of being a true flight sim. This isn’t inherently bad, but we should definitely state that piloting some of the biplanes feels like driving a heavy tank in a speed course.

In terms of user interface and general experience, War Thunder suffers drastically. It isn’t user-friendly at all, and the menu system feels clunky and unintuitive. Upgrading your planes feels like a pain, unlike in WoWP where the developers have streamlined the whole process. In both games, a heavy deal of grinding needs to be performed in order to progress into the next tiers, but it feels as if War Thunder gives better rewards and more opportunities to grow.

Overall, which game should you be playing? Though both can give you countless hours of fun and straight-up aerial battle entertainment, your gameplay preferences ultimately decide. If you want a more realistic and patient take, go for War Thunder. If you want entertaining, arcade-like, and instant gratification, go for World of Warplanes.