Love/Hate: Ace Combat 5 – The Unsung War (2004)

Welcome back to the Ace Combat Love/Hate series! In this entry, we’ll be going over Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War. Considering how much I loved Ace Combat 04 on PS2, I honestly do not know why it took me a decade and a half to try out another Ace Combat game. This is even more surprising in retrospect considering that the trio of games released on PS2 (04, 5, and Zero) were all critically acclaimed and have gone on to be known as “the holy trinity” amongst Ace Combat fans. As a result, I’ve been very excited to see what these next couple games in our Love/Hate series would have in store for me. Can they live up to the sterling reputation of Ace Combat 04? Read on to find out…

Unfortunately, Ace Combat 5 is in a pretty similar place to 04 in terms of game preservation: it only released on PS2, and had a limited-run release on PS4 as a pre-order bonus for Ace Combat 7, but this is no longer available for purchase (for whatever reason). Modern emulators struggle to run it without slowdown. My Retroid Pocket 4 Pro ran it like a slideshow, so I resorted to the Steam Deck again. Here it ran decently most of the time, but there were entire levels where I spent significant chunks of them playing in slow motion. I’m not holding any of these performance issues against the game in my assessment, but I really wish that there was a way to play these games properly and accessibly in 2026!

Love

• Squad Commands – The “wingman” concept was really under-developed in earlier Ace Combat games: at best they’d be an AI companion who doesn’t really do anything of substance during a battle (at worst, they weren’t even programmed into the game whatsoever). Ace Combat 5‘s biggest new feature is that it lets you command a squad of three other fighter planes into battle. Commands are mapped to the d-pad, so on the fly you can give orders to your squad to attack at will, cover your tail, or to disperse and pursue their own objectives. You can also give them “weapons free” on any special weapons they may be carrying. You can actually see them perform the requested actions in real-time, and they do feel like they’re contributing in combat: you can see whether a target is being pursued by one or more allies and on plenty of occasions I’d be pursuing a target, only for my squadmates to blow it up first. It’s a pretty cool system that meaningfully expands the way Ace Combat plays.
• You Can Choose Your Squad’s Planes! – In keeping with the emphasis on squad gameplay, Ace Combat 5‘s hangar has also gotten way more exciting: you get the ability to choose what planes each member of your squad will fly in! Any plane you purchase can be flown by your squadmates, so it really incentivizes you to purchase planes for a wide variety of roles. While the planes chosen for your squadmates don’t feel particularly meaningful in-game, outfitting your entire squad with the “perfect” aircraft formation is just really cool and satisfying to set up! The game will also let you know if your formation is too weighted towards air or ground combat for the upcoming mission, which can be helpful if you forgot or misunderstood the mission briefing.
• The Back Half – Spoiler alert: initially, I was really disappointed with Ace Combat 5. I’ll get into why as we go on, but suffice to say, I wasn’t having a great time with the game… that is, until I got to chapter seventeen (of twenty-seven), at which point the story, characters, and world-building finally start to pay off and the missions get far more interesting. Honestly, the game starts to get batshit insane and barely stays on the rails, but it’s entertaining as hell and provides a massive shot in the arm to the whole experience. As someone who was finding Ace Combat 5 pretty mid by the halfway point, this change in the back-half greatly improved my overall estimation of the game. However, if you were enjoying the story and characters up to that point, I can see a world where you might consider Ace Combat 5 to be as good or even better than Ace Combat 04 (or, conversely, if you played Ace Combat 5 first, you might think that 04‘s story is kind of dull or simplistic in comparison, because it gets wild here).
• Mission Mode – So not only is Ace Combat 5‘s campaign one of the longest in the entire franchise with twenty-seven missions (plus a couple alternate paths and extra missions for a grand total of thirty-two), but then the game has a whole alternate “mission mode” where you can play a bunch of bite-sized missions. That’s not to say that they’re not fun or substantial: they’re still plenty of fun, akin to the sorts of missions you’d fly in the first couple Ace Combat games, but they just aren’t as scripted and substantial as the missions in the main campaign. And, as a bonus, you play as Ace Combat 04‘s Mobius 1 for this mode! What’s not to love?
• Puddle of Mudd Exist in the Strangereal Universe – So, if you’re unaware by this point, the Ace Combat games take place in a fictional shared universe called “Strangereal”*. It’s meant to be uncanny (hence the name): countries and continents are different, but the world itself feels very close to ours and has some pretty obvious parallels, lending it this weird authenticity. Anyway, with that said, Ace Combat 5 has a goddamn Puddle of Mudd diegetic needle drop in one of the cutscenes near the start of the game. This is so bewildering to me, like when Imagine Dragons had a cameo in Arcane: it’s so dumb that I kind of have to appreciate it. The implications of this decision are just so funny to think about. Puddle of Mudd are post-grunge… so this means that Strangereal had to have a grunge movement at some point too, right…? Did Kurt Cobain get killed by Courtney Love in Strangereal too? How many “real” bands are in Strangereal, and is it weirder if Puddle of Mudd are the only one…? As someone who grew up in the 90s, the ridiculousness of this one needle drop makes me grin from ear-to-ear for how dumb it was, I love it.

*Fun fact: Strangereal is also commonly cited as the setting of the Ridge Racer franchise… kind of? It’s my understanding that Ridge Racer and Ace Combat were loosely connected during the PS1 era, and even have some crossover familial characters (the Nagase family). However, these games were meant to take place in an alternate version of the “real” world at the time, and so they would reference real-world locations. So when Ace Combat 04 came out and established Strangereal as its own universe, the PS1 Ace Combat games were retconned into taking place within Strangereal, while Ridge Racer remained within its own continuity. You can probably try to twist things to say that all the real-world references are actually places within Strangereal if you want to make it work, but it seems that the shared continuity was dropped decades ago. Despite this, people still often will claim that there’s a connection, but it seems that it’s not really the case anymore.

Mixed

• Mini-map Changes – Ace Combat 5 has dropped its predecessor’s emphasis on getting the highest mission score possible. As a result, Ace Combat 04‘s value-based mini-map icons were rendered somewhat redundant, so the mini-map now visually displays an enemy’s remaining health (grey = full health, yellow = damaged, red = critically damaged). While this is a somewhat useful change, it ultimately doesn’t amount to all that much. This is because enemy targets tend to be beefier than in prior Ace Combat games. In theory, you’d want to know an enemy’s health so you know whether to fire one missile at them or two. It’s really annoying when you’ve got them dead to rights, only fire one missile because the enemy is yellow on the radar, only to see them survive the shot. Even red enemies can be kind of annoying: critically damaged enemies will go down to one or two machine gun rounds, so you generally want to get in and shoot them to preserve your missiles. However, this often is way more time-consuming than just firing a missile at them. It’s a lateral change which is sometimes helpful, but I definitely found Ace Combat 04‘s mini-map to be much more useful on a moment-to-moment basis.
• Heavily-Scripted Levels – Ace Combat 5 really made me appreciate 04‘s simple, free-form, “make your own goals as you go” level structure. Ace Combat 5 has (almost) entirely ditched that approach in favour of linear, scripted levels. This would be fine if the levels were designed well, but too many of Ace Combat 5‘s missions are a slog to get through. The first half of the game is made up of slow-paced levels where: 1) you are given an objective, 2) you travel to said objective and complete it, 3) you then wait around until you get given a new objective, 4) which you head over to and then complete as well. You don’t get much (if any) agency in these missions: every playthrough is going to play out largely the same (which gets particularly annoying and blatant when you die late into a mission and have to replay the entire thing again). This is made all the more painful by the frequent, long-winded dialogues that you have to sit through before you can get your next objective. These happen all the time, but the most agonizing example is in “Reprisal”, where I spent nearly three minutes circling above a city waiting for the characters to shut the fuck up and just move on with the fucking level. This all sounds bad, and it kind of is, but this stays out of “Hate”, because the game’s still building upon the rock-solid game feel of Ace Combat 04: even if the missions can be a drag, you’re never frustrated with how the game’s playing when you’re in the action (unlike, say, Ace Combat 3). In addition, there’s the aforementioned “back half” of the game where the mission variety and quality improves dramatically which heavily mitigates this issue.
• The Story – Another big way Ace Combat 5 deviates from its predecessor is its approach to narrative.
  • Instead of Ace Combat 04‘s depersonalized narrative, Ace Combat 5‘s focus is solely on the four pilots of the Sand Island squadron. You will become very familiar with your squadmates and their characterization over the course of the game. Unfortunately, the characters aren’t particularly interesting or endearing. You can tell that the devs love Kei Nagase, because they make her all cool and philosophical, but she doesn’t leave much of an impression. Then there’s poor Grimm, ostensibly a main character, but he just kind of exists doing nothing for the entirety of the narrative. And then there’s Chopper… I’ll get to him later.
  • Okay, so the characters are bland, how’s the story? It’s… something, alright. Ace Combat 5 is a lot more plot-driven than prior entries, with each level tending to have some sort of story development within it. Unfortunately, as we’ve already gone over multiple times now, the first half of the game is really bland. While it’s cool that your squadron starts getting a reputation as “the Demons of Razgriz”, your superior officers don’t trust you, so they send you out on shitty errands for half the game. As a result, the narrative stalls and has no real momentum for the first half. Then, when the back half hits, the narrative starts getting much more interesting. There are all sorts of plot twists and turns, the mediocre characters start having to deal with some narrative conflict, which makes them all feel just a bit more endearing, and the story just starts getting bonkers. Look, I’m a basic bitch: I preferred Ace Combat 04‘s depersonalized narrative, but if you’re going to make it more personal, at least make it entertaining like the back half of this game!
  • Ace Combat 5 also puts a lot of effort into fleshing out the world of Strangereal, establishing historical events, several rival nations, and all sorts of political tensions. I’m not sure how successfully it goes about this though, because I found myself getting confused about what exactly was going on on multiple occasions.

Hate

• SHUT THE FUCK UP – Ace Combat 5 expands on the radio chatter of Ace Combat 04… and not in a good way. Chatter is now incessant. Ace Combat 04‘s radio chatter system was also scripted to some degree, but the calls activate dynamically, triggering after you have performed some sort of action. As a result, there would often be periods of downtime which kept it from getting annoying or overwhelming. Ace Combat 5, on the other hand, is terrified of downtime: nearly every second of every mission is filled with unceasing radio chatter, to the point where the missions are basically radio dramas. Granted, part of the issue with these radio calls is that the English voice acting sucks. This is probably due to poor vocal direction, because the performances are awful across the board, coming across as super inauthentic and awkward.
  • Making matters worse, Ace Combat 5‘s radio chatter is melodramatic: there was a definite authenticity to the radio chatter in Ace Combat 04 which helped bring the battles to life, but here the radio calls feel so scripted. For example, in one mission the enemy are bombing an aircraft carrier and you’ve got soldiers announcing to the entire fleet that they’re going to disobey orders and abandon ship. Like… my dude, if you’re going to desert, you’re not going to tell everyone first. There’s also a later level where we intercept radio signals from the police and, over the course of the level, get a “feels-good” story of a cop who’s late for his daughter’s birthday party. There’s also a level where you’re trying to find a comrade who was shot down, and they’re just chatting to themselves on a radio while being pursued by enemies trying to find them. Like… holy shit, we have your transponder beacon, shut the fuck up, the enemy are going to hear you.
• Chopper – Piggybacking off the previous point, the absolute worst offender in the lot is fucking Chopper, your “don’t give a shit”-attitude squadmate. He sounds like a fucking dumbass, casually insults people all the time, and is constantly “whatever, man”-ing his superior officers when they give him orders. I think that you’re supposed to like him for being a rebel, but every time I hear his voice coming over the radio, I find myself wishing the game had friendly fire enabled. It’s not a coincidence that, once Chopper stops hogging the airwaves, the game’s quality escalates considerably.
  • This is going to be very much a your mileage may vary situation: some people really appreciate having a squadmate with a more defined personality, but it’s that personality that I find really grating. The “Maverick” character is synonymous with air force pilots, but its a personality type that is completely at odds with what a pilot needs to be, and what I like to see out of these kinds of games. People may whine about Ace Combat 04 having ill-defined characters, but I love how professional and capable everyone is. Chopper’s whining, disobedience, and insubordination just reminds me of the numerous cases of pilots who “know better than everyone else” and then getting themselves and the lives they’re responsible for killed. If this doesn’t bother you then, whatever, enjoy.
• In-Game “Choices” – On multiple occasions in every single mission, your squadmates will ask you some sort of yes/no question, requiring you to press left or right on the d-pad to answer it. While kind of an interesting idea in concept, in execution, this is just fucking annoying. First of all, it stops you from being able to give any squad commands until you answer. Secondly, having to answer them is disrupting whatever you were already doing when the pop-up appears. Thirdly, they’re almost entirely pointless, often extremely inane questions, with only a couple instances triggering anything more than an alternate voice line. I think that the intent is for these to make you feel more “connected” to your squadmates, but I just found it to be a constant fucking annoyance that made me wish they’d just leave me alone.
  • I’ve gotta say too: when the game does give you a choice that will have an effect on how your campaign plays out… it’s kind of insane? Like, there are a couple instances where the game will decide your next mission through a “coin flip”. What’s actually happening here is that, at some point in your previous mission, you were given a yes/no choice, and the mission you go on is based on your answer. This might seem reasonable enough, but in one of these instances, my next mission got decided because Chopper asked me whether it was a good time for some rock music?! Why is this even a campaign-altering decision???
• Target Selection is Busted – In previous Ace Combat games, you’d tap Triangle to cycle between enemies, with priority going to enemies that were on-screen and/or closest to your aiming reticule. However, if there were no enemies on-screen, this was a good way to cycle betweennearby enemies on your mini-map to line yourself up for an attack. In Ace Combat 5, this just doesn’t seem to work as expected. Target selection will only let you cycle between on-screen enemies, only cycling to an off-screen enemy if there are none on-screen at the time. This is so stupid that I’m not convinced that it wasn’t a bug, or an emulation issue, or something like that. This is a game where you can see enemies on your mini-map, but you do not know whether they are above or below you; having to visually identify them first is just annoying as fuck.
• Reduced Weapon Options – One of the coolest new changes in Ace Combat 04 was that you could purchase a variety of alternate weapons for each plane, differentiating them and allowing you to specialize for particular missions. Unfortunately, Ace Combat 5 does away with this system, restricting each plane to one weapon configuration of missiles + a secondary weapon. To be fair, this is still a step up from where things were before Ace Combat 04, but it’s such an unfortunate regression that it feels like a big step back.

Like I said, I was really not getting on well with Ace Combat 5 initially. The changes from Ace Combat 04 were off-putting, and I don’t want to say that “they changed things, therefore it’s bad”, but it just was not as fun to me and really made the game a slog to get through. However, the back half of the game picks up dramatically: I was struggling to push myself through one or two missions at a time before, but as soon as I hit that back half, I churned through like four or five missions in a single sitting and was thoroughly enjoying myself for the first time since I had started playing. The fact that it takes seventeen missions before the game starts getting good is a damning indictment, but it allows you to leave Ace Combat 5 on a considerable high which is hard to hold against the game. If anything, I appreciate that Namco were still willing to experiment with the formula and not just rest on their laurels: it didn’t work for me as well as I would have liked it to, but I can see how some people might consider this a better game than Ace Combat 04 (they’re dead wrong, but I can see how they could think it).

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Barloq

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Writer, blogger, father. Blogging since 2012, writing my whole life. Was blessed by the chupacabra and the guardian shepherd.

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