Yeah it needs pedals. It has a gameport connection in the back of the stick that allows you to plug your gameport rudders in. When you use that plug, the computer will see the stick/throttle/rudders as one unit. You can use usb pedals fine as well, but some games don't support more than one controller.
I bought an old gameport version of ch pro pedals I found on Ebay that work just fine.
