Used to play this tank a lot back in a day, when it was actually decent and really fun. I have 3 mark of excellence like with rest of the Japanese heavy tank line.

Review is based on patch 1.17.1.

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Pros:

- 2nd highest HP at tier 8, tied with VK 100.01 P, VK 168.01 and KV-4
- Thick frontal armor with lack of true weakspots that's pretty resilient to tier 6s and 7s
- 10 degrees of gun depression over sides
- 10 cm gun has great DPM

Cons:

- Where do I even start
- Really slow and clunky
- Huge, largest tier 8 in the game by a considerable margin
- The stupid miniturrets cripple the gun depression and force the O-Ho to awkwardly angle itself to even get meaningful gun depression
- Armor is rather easily penetrated by even same tier standard ammo, and is completely worthless against premium ammo and higher tiers
- Weak side armor
- Massive ammo rack
- 15 cm derp gun is a humongous joke. With a massive reload nerf and HE rework, this gun is quite literally unusable. It's a tier 6 gun at tier 8. Don't use it.
- 10 cm has atrocious accuracy and aiming time
- Sub-par alpha damage with 10 cm gun, when the alpha damage is supposed one of the redeeming features of Japanese heavies.
- Mediocre penetration. The 10 cm is NOT a good gun, either.
- The Type 4 requires a ton of XP, making the O-Ho a costly tank to free XP through. Save blueprints for this one.
- In a same tier with a huge swarm of busted tier 8 premiums, making the tank even more worthless.

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The best way to equip the O-Ho is not to equip it at all, but to sell it and skip it altogether. If that's not an option, then Hardening or Turbo / Rammer / Vertical Stabilizer for equipment. The gun handling is too bad to justify dropping Vertical Stabilizer, you need it.

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The review itself:

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This hurts so bad. The O-Ho used to be my favorite tank in the game. 13 second reload on a derp gun with fantastic gun handling was so much fun, and the armor actually worked when tier 8s used to have much lower penetration on average. Then, the combination of massive powercreep, huge reload time nerf and HE rework rendered the O-Ho BEYOND useless. Look how they massacred my boy. The O-Ho is so mindbogglingly awful that it makes all the other Japanese heavies look great. The Type 4 Heavy, which is still the worst tier 9 heavy in the game, genuinely feels like a very powerful tank after grounding through this abomination. Guess every line, even a bad line, needs their "black sheep". The O-Ho consistently hovers at around 44-45% winratio on EU server and sometimes goes even below the AMX 65t, another infamously bad vehicle.

There's not much to say about the O-Ho. Even though most other Japanese super-heavies are bad, they at least have a good amount of strengths. The O-Ho? It actually has very few strengths. It really is only good at one thing, and that is bullying lower tiers. Now, to give the O-Ho at least SOME credit, it is actually really, really good at it. You have the typical Japanese heavy armor that completely stomps lower tiers, but unlike every other Japanese heavy, you actually have great DPM. Since your armor works against tier 6-7, the huge downsides of the O-Ho aren't as apparent, and it actually gets to abuse its DPM.

...That is, if you meet tier 6-7. Most of the time, you don't. So what does the O-Ho have against other tier 8s and higher tiers? Not much. Its slow and huge. It has the worst armor tier-for-tier of all the tanks on the Japanese heavy line. Whereas most of the Japanese heavies are at least semi-invincible to same tier standard ammo, the O-Ho can't reliable even bounce that. Something like the IS-3 can pretty easily penetrate the O-Ho through its miniturrets or its flat, 200 mm turret face. And this is obviously ignoring premium ammo - the O-Ho gets obliterated by it.

The O-Ho has all the flaws of Japanese heavies, but it throws two new ones into the mix - alpha damage and extremely wonky gun depression. The O-Ho has pretty mediocre alpha damage for a super-heavy tank at 330, while still retaining awful dispersion/aiming time like rest of the Japanese heavies. The gun really doesn't synergize well with a platform like this. The O-Ho would benefit so much more from a high-alpha gun that'd let it trade hits like other Japanese heavies. The O-Ho is pretty easy to outtrade by many tier 8 heavies due to only having 330 alpha, which is REALLY bad for a super-heavy, especially one that doesn't even have amazing armor. 1700 HP is great, but its not THAT much above the average 1500-1550 HP. Then on top of all that, the O-Ho has extremely wonky gun depression over the miniturrets that handicap an already handicapped tank even further. Ewww. And lastly, the 15 cm derp gun is just...useless. It doesn't even get HESH or AP with decent pen like the Type 4/5, so it really just does nothing.

Slow, huge, surprisingly mediocre armor for its type, terrible gun, awful gun depression issues, can meet tanks two tiers higher than it, and it resides in the premium tank infested, very violent tier. That's the O-Ho. It's really, really awful. Out of a huge list of tier 8 vehicles, it is undoubtedly among the worst ones. And with the AMX 65t and TVP VTU getting buffed...yeah congratulations O-Ho, you'll likely get to hold the candle of being the single worst tier 8 in the entire game. I really hope WG fixes that.

The only optimal way to play the O-Ho is to blueprint past it. That is all. It is amusing how awful the O-Ho is in its current state. And to make it even worse, it used to be my favorite.

Wish I could rate this one 0/5.

Good