the I225 is one of the easiest planes to deal with. Unless you’re a nerd who uses manual joystick trimming to pull up past 500ias or a tryhard that plays passively and leaves when getting outnumbered you’re not going to do very well with it. It’s flight model gets gimped a lil bit more every new update, from maxing 7g’s at 600IAS to having no over G callout at all and pulling less than 5g’s maximum according to WTRTI to being unable to stallfight due to the monstruous torque of it’s Ilyushin Il2 engine which makes it enter a flatspin, and the poor cooling system as well as it’s rather mediocre flap workaround with too slow fold-back which causes them to rip off despite how necessary they are to not become one of the widest turning single prop planes in game. You can see how the flight model changes across updates in all the times Defyn visited it. From being able to reverse a TA152H at 550IAS and turn inside it in a blink of an eye with the instant flap action (flaps that used to be fine up to 400kmh), to be more of a run and climb aircraft. It also turns a lot worse at the speeds it used to shine and having just a yellow wingtip is bad enough to put you out of battle cause you will flat spin the moment you try to dogfight. I literally had this plane as my favorite vehicle in game when i started playing it at 6.3, i got my first good reversal against an F4U-4B of all planes and loved to bait griffon spitfires and N1Ks into vertical one circle dogfights where this thing absolutely rawdogged them back then but over the updates it has become worse and worse. It has gone down to 5.0 for a reason, the historical nerfs didn’t do justice to this thing. Honestly, I would take the ki83 over the i225 because at least with the ki83 you die in one hit while this thing becomes a flying AOG the moment they scratch your paint so you’re going to fly helplessly without any chances to engage in combat. Your chances of engaging in full health are minimum already so…
I agree, the I225 is painfully mediocre, kind of like a MiG15 vanilla. Good climb, good low speed turn but horrible compression at a BR where being fast while being able to lead your guns staying fast is paramount.