Microsoft Flight Simulator (2020) 40th Anniversary Edition

A critic's perfect score, and a regular player's coin toss

To understand this game, start with an apparent contradiction. To the press it is a near-flawless masterpiece — 138 reviews on OpenCritic averaging 92 with a 98% recommend rate, and on release a Metacritic 91, the third-highest-scoring PC game of 2020. On Steam, the player positive rate is only 78%.

That gap is an honest portrait of its character. The professional press rewards ambition and engineering wonder — it did what nobody else could, so it gets the top mark. The players leaving negative reviews mostly snag on the learning curve, the hardware demands, and the missing sense of "I flew for ages, now what." It won Best Sim/Strategy Game at The Game Awards 2020, Strategy/Simulation Game of the Year at the 24th D.I.C.E. Awards, and a BAFTA technical achievement nomination — decorated all over. But reading the chasm between that 92 and that 78 is the real key to whether you should buy it.

Put another way, neither score is lying; they answer two different questions. The press answers "how high did this game reach in tech and ambition," and the answer is the ceiling. Players answer "is it fun, is it for me," and that answer varies by person. This is not a game built to please everyone, and it never set out to — it knows exactly who it was made for.

Who should buy it, and who should walk away

So which side are you on?

If this is you, the game is practically tailored to fit: you savor immersion and exploration over instant payoff; you can sit still, willing to run a full takeoff procedure and watch a cloud drift by; you carry curiosity about aviation, geography, the real world itself — maybe you are exactly the sort who flies one trip and then goes looking up the history of some old aircraft. For you, it is close to perfect.

Flip it. If you play for clear objectives, level rewards, dense feedback, and a fast pulse, or your PC is only mid-tier, its friction and barriers will likely bounce you first. There is no boss to beat, no loot to chase, no score climbing in the corner — strip those away and some players find nothing left to hold onto. Not its fault, not yours — just a mismatch, and spotting it early saves you a disappointment.

A quick self-test settles most cases. That slow, goal-light, immersion-driven loop of Euro Truck Simulator 2 — does it relax you, or bore you stiff? If the former, you will probably fall for this sky and forgive its quirks. If the latter, no amount of technical brilliance will make the hours feel worth it, and it may simply not be for you.

If you want in, start with this edition

If the description above hooked you, the how is simple: start with the 40th Anniversary Edition complete package.

It bundles the base game with the latest content, the thickest, most mature, least error-prone way in right now. The standard edition holds more than enough for an ordinary player to fly for a very long time, and you can always reach for paid add-ons later if a particular aircraft or region pulls you deeper. Only the truly hardcore, chasing region-level fidelity and study-grade airliners, need to weigh those extras up front.

As for whether it gets replaced — its most direct rival is its own 2024 sequel, and that one slid back to a 76 on unstable performance and missing key airports. Which says it plainly: cramming the entire real Earth into a cockpit is something even its own sequel has yet to cleanly surpass. For the foreseeable future, it stays the hardest-to-copy benchmark in the flight-sim lane, and the easiest one to recommend to anyone who has ever pressed their face to a plane window and wondered.