Honestly, don't make the same mistake I did. I played over 3500 hours to tell you: Don't buy this game.
It's been around 6 years since I first supported this game. After silly management decisions (latest edition fiasco, arena standalone), weird game design choices (PVE mode always online), laggy servers despite constant improvements and rampant ignorance or incompetence regarding cheating, botting, exploiting and RMT leaves me with no choice but to give this 1 star, I do not recommend it: the experience is simply miserable and the game leans too much into being a second day job. Don't give them money unless you absolutely love having your wallet wrung and being ball busted.

Very unfortunate that EFT has some ideas that can really make it a good game on paper and maybe even in reality, but with it leaning heavily on all the negative aspects of MMOs, it simply isn't good currently.

What does make it good is getting SPT & FIKA. Funnily enough, Tarkov with mods (not even many, I've been running only realism and sain I think) is closer to the vision the game had initially. And you can play with friends as well, if you got any. I simply regret not trying this much, much earlier.

The devs have already asked for a lot and barely delivered what they promised: PMC faction karma missng, lockpicking still isn't in, you still can't escape Tarkov, 30% of skills still missing, game is wiping progress constantly and the biggest feature aka open world still out of reach.
Most of the community shelled over 100 bucks for their copy (me included...), asking for more is simply insulting. Don't trust their silver tongued con man; this game will most likely die shortly after release, along with its servers.

In a world where infinite free time exists, I might enjoy this game. As it stands, I don't enjoy the constant running around, spending insane amounts of time in menus/loading screens, more running around, tedious RNG-based quests, and, oh yeah, more running... This is all for insanely quick engagements (that is, if you don't get domed from 1km away) that are often just gear checks. So yeah, I fundamentally hate the basic gameplay loop, but the problem is further exasperated by the fact that time invested is heavily rewarded, which skews balance towards non-stop grinders; casual players are heavily outgeared by the "chads" (the unemployed) with 400+ hours (just this wipe). No thanks man, I've got work on Monday.

Yeah, I can admit when I've been filtered by a game. It's not that I think Escape from Tarkov is a necessarily BAD video game, but it very much is not something I can force myself to play any longer. Having put forth as valiant an effort as could be mustered, I have been found utterly immune to the game's "x-factor" which attracts, so powerfully, my fellow gamers and gamerettes to the "extraction shooter" subgenre. It's tense, sure, but also a bit bland, very one-note, and terribly easy-to-cheese. It feels less "designed" than it does "assembled"—even down to its surface-level appearance, essentially indistinguishable from all manner of current-day asset-flip Unity-based """games""" that clog up online storefronts. It is largely unimpressive in this regard, looking more like a DayZ clone than something genuine. I am unsure how we ended up landing on "abandoned Russia" as the de facto setting for large-scale multiplayer games of all different flavors. There was something weird in the Gamer Fuel...

There may have been a time in my life where I would have been ON SOME SHIT about Tarkov, thrusting myself into intensely hyper-focused, twelve-hour-long sweat sessions. I would have been talking crazy shit on a permanently hot mic, spin-jumping around as a scav like a stupid asshole. What I'm saying is: at one point, I used to have fun playing hyper-competitve, multiplayer-only games—whether seriously or in jest—and it didn't matter how obtuse, obscure, or complex the mechanics/design/experience was.

That time, though, has long since passed by. In my extremely advanced gamer age (30), I no longer have the will to engage with The Sweats. I barely even make time for casual Call of Duty deathmatch lobbies anymore, one of the old, reliable stand-bys. I'm too damn busy, too tired, and too unmotivated to delve into games which center on providing a complicated, arduous experience for the sake of it.

If I do ever want a specific mix of gunplay, realism, and multiplayer, I am more inclined to boot up "Ready or Not" or "Hell Let Loose"—both of which have more welcoming communities, more compelling game design and gameplay, and less of an emphasis on abject punishment. But, again, I am hardly ever moved to even consider launching one of these games these days.

I am sure there is a comfortable niche audience that will stick with Tarkov for as long as possible, but, to me, it is entirely identifiable as another product of fleeting game design fads. If you've got Call of Duty lifting your core concept wholesale for one of their unfinished modes, Lord knows that mode is going to be universally reviled within a few short years (see: battle royales, hero shooters).

Shelved, with essentially no reason for me to return, so it had may as well be Abandoned. Nice try, weird small Russian developer(s).

Tarkov is a game I like the idea of more than actually playing it. The developers and some of the community like to constantly remind you that Tarkov is a super hardcore game bro where every death is your fault, only for you to die to some of the worst desync ever seen in a shooter and die to players the game literally refused to render.

Imagine that. Imagine if another shooter had a bug where a player model or his sounds didn't render in, so it looked like your character just randomly died. People would be outraged and the game would be quickly fixed, but in Tarkov this shit persisted for weeks, maybe even months unless my memory is terrible.

Tarkov is an ambitious game, and BSG have proven time and time again that they've bitten off more than they can chew. They are terrible developers. For every step forward they take, they also just take multiple steps back whether it's through poorly thought out decisions, terrible implementation or new problems being introduced that don't get fixed for a long time. The fact that Arena launched in the state that it did and was designed the way it did just proves to me that these developers do not play their own games.

All of this for the game to constantly disrespect your time, too. I often forget, but I'm an adult. I don't have time to be constantly navigating poorly designed menus, I don't have time waiting over 4 minutes for most raids to load and I certainly don't have time to play this game every single day so I can actually enjoy a wipe and keep up with people who refuse to turn the game off

Serious milsim shooter on the surface, but it's actually more like gun runescape. Lots of time in this game is spent thinking about your character's obscene amount of stats, exp, leveling, collecting, questing, and sorting your items and equipment. It's super satifying.

There are thousands of little things to learn about and memorize like which locations you can get specific resources, which weapons/ammo types are worth using, and more. A couple of times a year the servers wipe and you get to play all over again and progress even faster with all your nuggets of knowledge and experience.

The visuals are extremely dense with lots of endearing little details, like lovingly animated first person food eating animations, showing your PMC cracking open a can of sardines picking out and eating each fish at a time. Lots of cute scrawlings and grafittis on walls and envrionmental details like that.

The game is pretty torturous a lot of the time, since you lose everything on your character when you die. The community feels a lot more friendly than many other shooter games though, and I think because the game is so complex and difficult that it feels like everyone has more incentive to help each other out and share knowledge. It's a PvPvE game but it's also more like the players are fighting together against the brutal difficulty of the game itself. IMO this captures the lifeblood of many old MMO games.

About the different priced editions of the game:

A considerable % of people who play Tarkov have purchased the Edge of Darkness edition, which is $150, and includes a bunch of starter items + a large secure container (you keep all the items in there if you die). I've always held off, playing the cheapest edition with the smallest secure container/stash size, thinking that maybe I'll upgrade later. I eventually decided this is my favorite way to play. The smallest secure container is so tiny, and it makes the early game much more challenging and exciting. The small stash size forces me to be critical of what I loot, pushing to get valuable containers like the lucky scav junkbox as early as possible. Unlocking the first secure container upgrade (beta) early on feels SO rewarding. If I had the EOD edition it would be fully worthless. Plus I saved literally like $100. If that sounds good to you. I highly recommend at least playing a wipe or two before upgrading to an expensive edition of the game.