I've tried to love this game but AI is hideous and there's more bugs than a week old turd.
Anyway my first step was the tutorials which I found slightly confusing at first mainly because certain bugs made the tutorial text stop working. Be prepared to save and load often I thought. After completing the tutorials you realise how awful the user interface is... in fact I don't just mean awful I mean it's THE worst I've ever seen. Sending simple commands involves using several different keys for several different menus F Keys then number keys then more number keys then enter or space bar followed by ctrl space to get an all new command menu up which gives you even more commands when you press M again.. seriously I know it took me a while to get used to OPF but this was ridiculous. This seriously hinders gameplay because doing a simple task like getting your squad to heal,repair, refuel and jump back into their vehicles can literally take 15-20 minutes when in real life its a 10 second job. Of course now after nearly 100 hours of gameplay I'm just getting the hang of it but it's just too damn awkward.
Next on to the single player campaign which is basically 10 missions of crap. God knows what they were thinking when they made the missions but they've made them so they incorporate everything that is **** about Arma 2. Recon missions are not fun, running around a gigantic map with 3 other recon men having to wait 30-45 minutes between engagements then to not see a single enemy because your men take them all out first is just dull. You get to use a HMV or APC later but even then they're limited.
The best part of these series of games is taking part in mighty battles, dying and respawning as a squad member and seeing big explosions. You don't get that in the SP campaign.
The mission are just too damn long as well. Instead of short intense battle missions they're long winded multple missions where you have to go 'talk' to someone in a village before spending 30 minutes going to the next village to kill someone who isn't there because the mission designers made them drive inbetween villages (for realism) but the car got stuck between some houses because the AI is so bad therefore taking you 1 hour of searching to find them.
One mission I had to restart 5 times because of glitches that made it impossible to complete. This is a quick run down of that mission and why:
**SPOLIERS ALERT**
First: Narration cut off during talking (you learn not to touch anything when theres a cut scene as they tend not to finish if you do) so didn't understand the mission fully. Went and blew up the house without getting some document from it first. Restarted.
Second: Got the document got back to base lost HMV in battle said I had to get back to US base (45 minutes walk) without getting shot or fly by helicopter or speak to bloke who tells you to go speak to rebels as they'll help you but don't use helicopter because of AA. I chose to walk to base and after 45 minutes got shot by an invisible sniper because you HAVE to go to the rebels or by helicopter. Reloaded.
Third: Got to rebel base after about 45 minutes (have to avoid lots of enemy so takes a while) the men wouldn't trigger the cutscene when I got to them. Realised by waypoint marker was still at US base and wondered why. Turns out when I spoke to the bloke about the rebels the cutscene didnt complete properly so had to restart again.
Fourth: After checking walkthrough turns out you can use helicopter but gets shot down half way and you walk from there. Tried it got shot down but glitch kept saying I'd murdered someone in the crash and had to end the mission. This happened during the cut scene of some bloke talking to me saying let's get out of here before the Russians come. Unfortunately after reloading several times it happened everytime.
Fifth: Finally got to the rebel base after another restart and still had my HMV after nursing it through woods to avoid patrols. Base was surrounded by Russians so saved and then floored it through the open fields. It took some damage but nothing major, got to within 200 metres of rebels and hit a rock on the field. The bouncey rock bug made the car shot 200 metres in the air only to land on its back and got mullered by AK stuck in an upside down hummer. I wondered why people on the forums said stay away from rocks...mmnnn.
The other SP missions after that are awful, one is clearly unfinished while the others are multiplayer games made into single player.
So the onto the multiplayer. By this stage I was modding the game trying to improve the awful LOD system, AI and others but nothing seemed to imrpove gameplay hugely.
Online the game is ok but like most the game you'll die by someone or something you won't see. In fact 9/10 deaths are by that man or APC you can't see.
I tried my hand at CPU players on my side and the battles are pretty awesome but there are just too many frustrations when ordering your squad around. One of the games fundamental difference to others are it's total dependency on the AI of an individual. In some aspects they're great but others absolutely dire. This is a list of bugs that are very common to the game:
Squad members can't keep up especially when in vehicles. They drive around like drunk 12 year olds most the time and the helicopter pilots must be all one-eyed or something because they have no sense of depth perception and always crash into the hills even when just trying to land.
Whole squads get taken out by 1 man if they can't see him.
The buy unit menu takes upto 30 seconds to load when opening it.
A big MP game when I bought tanks (that comes with crew) the crew died because the tank spawned on top of them. I had to buy new crew each time and involved waiting 30 secs for the buy unit menu to open each time.
The rock bug that flings vehicles 200ft in the air if yo touch one.
Healing and Drag animations are screwed up and buggy. Sometimes they don't heal or drag even after going through the motions.
Units don't actually find cover but tend to run around like headless chickens and don't ever think for themselves.
1500hp tanks slow to a crawl on even the slightest of inclines.
Evoking the triggers on missions is a nightmare especially when dealing with dead bodies or hostages.
Fast Travel takes almost as long as actually going there normally in the MP games.
Units don't attack certain units even though they may be just a few metres away.
Vehicles and units take 4 times longer to get anywhere when cpu is in control.
Damn there are hundreds I could go on all night
Conclusion:
There's no doubt Arma2 is an amazing concept but I can't see any improvement what so ever to OPF. The game is less fun, too buggy, too unuser friendly, too unfinished and just too damn frustrating. I'm not sure Arma3 is in development (prob not because they're working on add ons) but I really hope instead of concentrating on on new units and graphics they concentrate on gameplay, AI and the bugs.