The launch was messy, but I do think the game has A LOT of potential if they can iron out the obvious quality issues. Personally I've had no issues with data downloads but it might not be the same for everyone, I've also had no issues logging in but the game absolutely has issues.

Career Mode

As I said, there's so much potential to make something really cool here that you would otherwise have to make do with mods like FSEconomy for any kind of progression based gameplay. But my first couple of hours have been marred with issues.

• Bugs have hampered my efforts at progressing with the first flight missions, I've yet to be able to do any others besides the first one after passing the exam. Several times it's given me the wrong directions to the taxi way, even sent me across a runway and penalised me for crossing it. It spawned my plane in an idiotic location causing it to crash and fail my mission before my character even loaded in, loosing me a HUGE chunk of rep. Didn't let me contact atc to land so I got done for that, in the same mission it also didn't give directions to parking and failed me. Loosing more rep. It's a real pain and a blight on what is at it's core, a gameplay loop with a lot to offer.

• The AI Voices are probably the most disappointing aspect of the game so far for me, they're so utterly soul crushing to have to listen to during missions, getting tones, context and connotations completely wrong. I know why they were used, that it saves time and money etc but they're entirely immersion breaking I'd rather just have text except for the first Instructor/ATC. Seriously, who thought this would be palatable?

• There's also numerous bugs with the planes themselves, lighting not working properly, parking brake bugs that cause your plane to rotate in circles. Silly things like that which should have been caught by Q&A.

Overall I think FS 2024 needed another couple of months in the oven for polishing, whilst there's definitely enjoyment to be had and improvements in overall performance compared to 2021 certain parts of the sim feel lazy, generally rushed and lacks care. So TLDR avoid buying it outright for a few months whilst they work on issues and try it out on gamepass instead to see if it's something you might like.