Download the patches and it becomes the game it should have been.
With patches installed the game runs smooth as silk, no crashes, freezes, or disappearing saves. I discovered I'd never actually seen half the cutscenes in the game thanks to the skipping. The graphics come up a treat too, 'top of the range' two years ago is 'time you replaced it' nowadays so its easy on the eye to be sure.
It still lacks realism, its no Microsoft Combat Flight Simulator but it's not quite arcade either, a great balance for a serious gamer who's not especially a flight sim nut. Crimson Skies is fun, you're a womanising sky pirate in the alternate thirtys where the states ain't united, the whole game plays with its tongue nicely in it's cheek. Take the voice acting for example, all the characters are over the top and you can imagine the actors had great fun hamming it up considerably for this game.
Gameplay itself is yet more fun, flight control is greatly enhanced by a joystick as always but you can throw your craft around pretty erratically without worrying too much about the laws of physics. Just as well, seeing as there are loads of tunnels, bridges, hollywood signs to fly through in the name of filling your scrap book. I've noticed that some other player reviews claim this game is too hard, granted the level difficulty is a bit erratic, but flying is easy, with a little care I guarentee you'll hit more mountains in 10 minutes of Flight Simulator than you ever will in CS, there are one or two occasions when the odds seem ridiculous and you die severally before realising your going about it in totally the wrong way (though you can skip missions after multiple failures). What CS really does is let you forget about staying in the air and concentrate on shooting people down, which you do plenty of. There's never a shortage of targets, but you have plenty of guns, cannons and rockets to choose from too. While the campaign is linear, there is often more than one way to skin a zepplin in the individual missions, objectives are dropped on you literally 'on the fly' too, which all adds to the interest.
It's not a great flight simulator but its not trying to be, I'd define it as a 'light simulator' out to make you grin at the game rather than frown at the manual. Which it does excellently.