Take To The Skies - The Ace Combat Series Thread

One of the planes has a skin I recognize from Zero. Red paint along the right half of the front wing. Don't remember the exact plane, but that was what the main characters had on their wings. A red and blue paint scheme.

So Ace Combat is quickly becoming my latest 'have a rough day at work, go blow the hell out of some Euruseans' type of game. Even though I intended to do some HZD afterwards I started up Ace Combat, because of my rough day and well....

I am really glad I did. I was on Fleet Destruction and man that mission is by far the best in the entire game...at least so far. Which was a treat because I loved the mission that did the same thing from Ace Combat 4. And speaking of awesome music that track that was playing throughout it was the perfect musical acompaniment. Just so peaceful and triumphant as you go blowing the hell out of some Euruseans and given what was happening during the rest of the mission.

I was also really impressed with the mission because for the first time in AC to my knowledge it actually showed ship CIWS systems intercepting my missiles far from the target which forced me to adapt new tactics and was another welcome dash of realism. For cinematic moments I: dive bombed a carrier with it firing up at me, I flew in between some stacks of a ship...or the supports of one of the bases, and then I died rather embarrsingly when I was strafing a Frigate and was slowing down enough to where I stalled...bounced off the ocean and then plowed into the rear of the Frigate.

Anyways from a gameplay perspective I am not really liking the Domination missions because of the preassure it adds but I am enjoying it from a story/ lore perspective. If I do a full review I will expand on it but I really do like these missions.

So for spoilers:

Speaking of things from previous games that I miss, one thing is actually from Assault Horizon and that is gunship and bomber missions. Those were my favorite missions in that game. I understand why they didn't, since we're just Trigger in this game while in that game we played as a few different characters with Janice doing those ones, but still I loved being an AC-130 and B-1. 

So i beat AC 7... Would anyone like to read my thoughts/ review?

I loved how we had to defend Stonehenge. I've always like the Ace Combat superweapons so it was great to see it so detailed with modern graphics and like you said it was such a fun twist that after years of taking these things down the tables had turned and now you are the people defending these as they get ready to fire.

So as promised my review

Ace Combat 7: Did it redeem the Franchise?

Introduction: That was the biggest question facing me when I was going to get this game originally. See with AC 4 and AC 5 I was a huge fan of the franchise but then after that dissapointing game after dissapointing game came out. AC AH was a shell of its former self and Infinity was the worse of the whole concept of a Freemium game. This once proud franchise was in tatters and a game that I should have been really excited for...and was despite myself...was being met with a lot of trepidation. But the chance to play Ace Combat 5 again on modern consoles was just too good to pass up, and I just hoped the game was worth it.

Speaking of AC 5 though another worry of mine was that the two stories would be too similar, now I really liked 5s story so not sure I would've minded a rehash, but rehashes can also annoy.

Now this review will have a lot of spoilers in it, which I will tag, just giving everyone a heads up.

The good:

Trigger: While it is weird to rank and judge a silent protagonist that is literally a player avatar, if you know me I am very opinionated and like ranking things. And Trigger may be the best Ace Combat protagonist since Mobius 1. I loved being him. And I loved being him for various reasons but the two main ones were that he had an actual character arc. He went from being a normal pilot to a convict to a war hero and it was magnificent, especially for a character that didn't actually have screen time (more on that in a bit). And the second one was that he, at least to me, felt like just a regular pilot, at least for most of the game. The writers designed many of the missions, I noticed, except for the last like 3, where Trigger was just doing normal military missions. He wasn't single handedly taking on Yellow Squadron all by himself, or single handedly sinking an enemy fleet, or single handedly turning the tides of wars. He was just *a* pilot.

The Music: Seems redundant to praise the music in an Ace Combat game but here it is. The soundtrack is awesome. Maybe not quite as good as the soundtrack of AC 5, but then again the Unsung War is a better piece of music then most entire soundtracks. Still, it did its job and set the atmopsphere they were trying to go for, for many missions. 'Faceless Soldier' 'Daredevil' 'Siren Song' were probably among my most favorites.

Race Against the Enemy: The music combined with the story combined with the design of Trigger made it where mission after mission, set piece after set piece, duel after duel it just became this race against the enemy. Maybe this is something that I have not remembered right from the previous games but this game did do it. Either through the technology or the fights but the game often kept me on the edge of my seat, racing to get to one end of the map or complete an objective. It did get a bit stale in the 444 part of the story up through Naval Destruction but it picked up in time for Stonehenge Defensive.

The Story: This game is so...well...written. Especially for this type of game it really hit all the right notes. I love a story that A. has a wonderful sense of internal continuity, Ace Combat 7 did, as it constantly set up events and ideas then paid them off later...making everything feel earned. B. AC 7 set up a situation which things got so bad that you wondered how it was going to fix itself before the end, and then things did and not did so cheaply. C. It may have escaped my notice in my youth but most past AC games didn't really use their story space well. It only made the main part of the stories in the between mission cutscenes. AC 7 put story pretty much everywhere in the radio chatter and briefings. One of my favorite instances were when our squadron was off doing one thing and they mentioned in the briefing that other groups had a different mission objective which then you experienced the consquences of that mission in yours, again making everything nice and tight.



The Philosophy/ Theme:



The Best Anti War game: While my philosophy does tend to lean more towards pacifist these days most anti war stories are just...bad. Games like Spec Ops the Line which was all 'ha ha gotcha' about it. Or very arrogant and heavy handed like in our very own Ace Combat 0 with Solo Wing Pixy's constant prattle about not seeing any boarders up above and all that nonsense. But AC 7 felt earned with the constantly degrading situation and just the sense of desperation.



The bad:

No News stories later on: I loved in the beginning after the first mission that you got a news report from a news agency in both nations. But you didn't get to continue that in the rest of the story. Which was dissapointing. It would've been interesting to see most missions end with such reports, it could've easily gotten cliche but if they did it right it could have provided context for the entire war and also as things went to shit that could've been reflected in those reports. As they too could've been dealing in scattered rumors able to reach a limited audience and then that could've fed back into the plot because it could've been the only way that Strider Squadron was getting its intel.

Mihaly A. Shilage: Because of the events of Mission 19 and 20 this has been removed from Sol Squadron in general...but Mihaly just annoyed me. Mostly because of that one stupid line he uttered 'Each generation has had its aces, I've shot them all down'. Umm what? I know its not but of course I thought of Mobius 1 and Blaze but then what, does he date back to the age of propeller driven aircraft and was running around in the Battle of North Point or something. Just such a stupid line that is made to sound epic but then falls on its face.

No Squadron Integration: Again because of events later on they really should've reintroduced the squadron command mechanics from AC 5 and 0. So you could command your people and like have them give you some cover. Also I've heard that the ally AI is pretty good in this game and actually helps, and I've seen it myself, but it doesen't help because there is no way to keep track of whose shooting down what like in previous AC games.

No Visual Protagonist: The one thing I liked from AC AH was how William Bishop was his own character. We saw him, he had dialogue, he reacted and even though the story stunk in AH it was a breath of fresh air, one I was hoping they'd carry over in Skies Unknown, wasn't expecting anything but it would've been nice. But sadly it did not happen.

Random musings:

Belka's involvement: The only thing I didn't like was the involvement of Belka in the story or their...non involvement lets just say. It was basically the same set up from AC 5 but it didn't go anywhere. Was Belka trying to get revenge on Osea once more? Was there involvement just fan service? Was Dr. Shroeder just being a mercenary doing his own thing? If that's the case then what was up with Grunder's Industry being named dropped over again? Remember they are an OSEAN company which was being used to wage war against OSEA. All the Eurusean drones came in trucks labeled 'grunder'.

Is this ACs last game?: I don't know about you but that final cut scene had a huge sense of finality to it. And since a lot of the early AC games were set in the future its possible the series could be bumping into its own continuity. Just a thought.

Final Verdict: Tier 1 game. This game was amazing guys. Very glad I got it.

The ADF-11F Raven is such a fun plane to play. It's absolutely insane how good it is. Especially with the UAV special weapon that basically gives you three planes. I played the campaign with it and they made the boss missions go by so fast since nobody could escape your drones.