Originally Posted by CCIP

To clarify, the frustrating thing about the IL-2 AI isn't so much that it's completely unworkable, it's just that it's stupidly deadly - in equal parts to you and itself. AI planes, unless you dumb them down, are a little too good at shooting, and while they're not terrible at evading you, they aren't very smart about survival either. Their only tactic is to turn or dive violently to shake you off their tail, then try to get on yours. The AI pilots don't "think" much about energy and are often poor at exploiting their planes' advantages. Usually that means that encounters with the enemy end up very deadly for everyone involved. Always irked me a bit.

As for campaigns, it's also worth pointing out that besides the 'dynamic' generator, there are also scripted campaigns, with many made by the community. While the idea of scripted may be sort of archaic, I actually found myself enjoying them a lot. There's a lot of well-designed story-driven campaigns out there that I had much more fun with than the dynamic stuff.

And yes, the game is a multiplayer workhorse. By this point it's very stable for the purpose and you'll always find lots of people to play with.