My review

[Dermax1]

In June of last year - on a whim - I picked up the F/A-18 Hornet module in the Steam Summer sale and made my entrance to DCS. The trailer for the A-10C II upgrade was so badass that I wound up buying it too. In the less than a year that I've been in the DCS community, I've read thousands of pages, watched hundreds of hours, and built myself an at-home sim pit, but I've never yet finished a campaign. Yesterday that changed.

I've dabbled in probably a half-dozen campaigns and - with no offense intended - they all made me nervous. I wake up at night hearing "You missed a checklist item. You left the pitot tube on." Checklist campaigns were great training tools - and I never leave the pitot tube on any more - but Iron Flag was not only a fun campaign, it was a big confidence booster. Rather than beat you over the head with what you did wrong, it graded you - fairly in my opinion - on the ground "after the mission", rather than going Steven He's dad and yelling "FAILURE" over the headset. I kind of suck at formation flying and AAR, but rather than saying "You ruined the 4th of July for all those kids. America weeps for your shame", LOTUS still said, "Good job", we got home, and I happily accepted my 75 out of 100.

The voice acting was amazing. I like BIFF more than I like most of my real life friends. The missions were educational and fun. I especially found the TAD mission to be exceptionally helpful to an intermediate pilot like myself. I was a passenger in a airplane in 1991, but the missions "felt" realistic. And the routine was oddly comforting.  By the end I knew exactly when to switch from Approach to Tower to Ground, I knew exactly where "Alpha to Golf to Thunder" was. I feel like I could get around Nellis, if I could get the clearance. I'm sure it's not 100% accurate, but it felt good to me and it felt fun.

I don't really have any constructive criticism to add - maybe I was lucky, maybe the bugs were squashed, but everything went off without a hitch. 

I can only hope that - along with Iron Flag Part 2 - Baltic Dragon will consider similar training campaigns for the Hornet, Viper, and others. He's truly a master at his craft.

To summarize, I highly recommend this campaign. I feel an intermediate DCS simmer will probably get the most out of it, but it'd be a solid refresher for a veteran and a low-stakes introduction to a new guy. The voice acting is top notch - I want BIFF to be my BFF. I swear if he gets killed off in Hormuz I'm going rogue! Above all, this campaign was a great confidence builder. I plan on starting "The Enemy Within" this afternoon.