Ace Combat: Final Thoughts (BONUS)

And that’s another Love/Hate series wrapped here on on IC2S! First of all I have to say: holy fucking shit, I did not realize just how many games I was signing up to play when I started this Love/Hate series. Around the time I started Ace Combat X (already eight games in), I was looking back on the string of articles I’d written, and for the first time I asked myself “…wait, how many games are in this series???” I counted and had five games to play still, so that was thirteen… already a pretty big number, but then I remembered that I had played two versions of Ace Combat 3, so I was actually playing fourteen games for this series… except that doesn’t really capture the entire picture either, because I also played Combat Ace for shits and giggles. And, of course, Ace Combat 8 is coming very soon, so that will be one more Ace Combat game before the year ends (expect to see my thoughts on it sometime after launch).

Building off that last point… I didn’t even play every Ace Combat game that’s been released. The total could have been even higher, because there are several games which I was not able to cover, or which I decided not to include:

• First of all, there are three mobile phone games which have been delisted and don’t run on modern hardware: Ace Combat Xi: Skies of Incursion, Ace Combat: Assault Horizon Trigger Finger, and Ace Combat: Northern Wings. Of these, you could maybe get Northern Wings to run by utilizing Java ME emulation. I’m unfamiliar with this scene and could not be arsed to attempt to learn it… like, for what? All so I could try to play a 2011 phone game that looks suspiciously similar to Ace Combat Advance…? It just doesn’t seem worth the effort.
• Then there’s Ace Combat Infinity, a free-to-play single-and-multiplayer Ace Combat experience which was released on the PS3. It actually sounds like it was a pretty interesting title in its own right, with lots of nods to the series’ history. Unfortunately, the servers shut down for it in 2018 and no fan servers have been made, so it’s currently lost media.
• There’s also the original arcade version of Air Combat. While it could arguably be included, I consider it separate to Ace Combat as a whole: the console version of Air Combat shares the same title as its arcade counterpart, but it wasn’t meant to be a straight port, and then Ace Combat as we know it spun off of that game. As a result, I think it’s fair to set it aside as its own thing, but even if I did include it, I doubt my thoughts would be much different than they were for the console version.
• Another game that is often associated with Ace Combat is The Sky Crawlers: Innocent Aces. This 2008 Wii game was an anime movie tie-in (and the movie itself was based on a novel series). Despite multiple layers of separation from Ace Combat, the game is often associated with the franchise due to being developed by Project Aces, Bandai Namco’s in-house studio which developed most of the Ace Combat games. Suffice to say, The Sky Crawlers didn’t meet my criteria to be considered for this series, but it’s worth a mention at least. Maybe if I check out other arcadey flight combat games of the 2000s for a “That Time When” article in the future I will give it a look, but for now… I played fifteen games for these articles, give me a goddamn break.

With all that said, man, what a joy it was to get to play Ace Combat 04: Shattered Skies again! Going in, I was worried that the game may not play quite as well as I remembered, or that it may feel clunky in 2026, but that was absolutely not the case: this game is still absolute perfection. I’ll probably be doing a new game plus run in the near future so I can shoot down all the ace pilots and get all the special colour schemes for my planes again! In retrospect, Shattered Skies might be my second most-played game of all-time (after Ape Escape); after this most recent playthrough, I believe I’ve played this game in full at least three or four times now.

Also, I really missed out by not playing more of these games back in their heyday. At the very least, I really wish I had gotten Ace Combat Zero and Ace Combat X back in the mid-to-late 2000s. I know that I would have played the shit out of Ace Combat X on my PSP, unlocking all the planes, going through every route, and seeing how everything can play out differently. Granted, both of these games would have come out a year before I had a job and the disposable income necessary to splurge on video games, so maybe the stars just didn’t align properly for me. If nothing else, I’m very happy to have finally experienced them all for myself.

Flight, Family, and Ace Combat

I’ve mentioned this many times already, but my family has a long history with aviation. My grandfather was a pilot instructor for his entire life. One of my earliest memories was getting to go up with him in his two-seater airplane and see the world from above (I distinctly remember being excited about seeing all the trains down below). He even let me hold the controls, which was pretty surreal… of course, it was all under control: he had his own instructor’s set, so I couldn’t roll us over and crash into the ground. My mother wasn’t too happy about this trip though, so I never got to fly with him again. Still, one of my uncles also took up the pilot’s mantle and had his own two-seater airplane, which he would fly over our house on occasion as a way of saying “hi”.

Unfortunately, none of the next generation got our own pilot’s licenses, but I’ve always been very interested in aviation. My daughter has started showing a strong interest in planes. She’ll excitedly look to the skies and say “Airplane!” when she sees one. I love to take her by the airport to see planes coming in to take off and land, and she watches in transfixed awe. Throughout play sessions for this series, she would see me playing my “airplane games” and snuggle up to see what the planes would be doing. Suffice to say, I’m thrilled that some of this interest is carrying on to her and I hope that she takes up the torch. If she got a job in aviation someday, I’d be overjoyed.

As I was finishing up the last couple games in the series, my family and I went to the Canadian Aviation Museum. Ostensibly, this was to encourage my daughter’s love of planes, but I also viewed it as a great little denouement for the last several months I spent immersed with Ace Combat. These games are great in their own right and can be appreciated by pretty much anybody, but they’re also special for me in how they make me feel connected to my family’s history. Maybe I’ll never get a pilot’s license to carry that torch myself (who knows, I’m still young), but if nothing else I can remember my grandfather whenever I soar over the skies of Strangereal… and that’s just kinda neat.

Ace Combat Collection

As is becoming standard for modern Love/Hate series, I acquired physical copies of a few of these games and I want to show them off! The only one I actually had prior to starting this was Ace Combat 7, and I needed to get copies of Ace Combat 6 and Assault Horizon in order to play them for their respective articles. And then, around halfway through this process, I decided that I wanted to get a copy of Ace Combat 04 to replace the copy that got destroyed in a flood years ago. My local retro game store had a copy at a great price, so I snagged it and now it happily sits on a shelf with the rest of my game collection! I don’t think I’ll be expanding the collection too much more (maybe Zero if I can find a copy for a decent price… which is unlikely, because it jumped to like $50 a copy since Ace Combat 8 was announced), but I’m happy to have a few entries proudly adorning my shelf.

Ace Combat Games Ranked

Here is how I would rank all of the Ace Combat games that I played:

• S-tier: Ace Combat 04: Shattered Skies, Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War
  • In case you didn’t catch it from all my glowing praise throughout this entire Love/Hate series, Ace Combat 04 is my GOAT. I love this game, and replaying it here for these articles has only increased my estimation of it. A masterpiece with basically zero flaws.
  • Like I said in its Love/Hate article, Zero is really good, but it’s up against perfection. An annoying finale and slightly weak story are very small flaws in the grand scheme of things, but still enough for me to consider it the second-best Ace Combat game without hesitation. Even then, it’s still easily an S-tier game.
• A-tier: Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown, Air Combat
  • Ace Combat 7 gets this high by basically just copying the formula from the PS2 games that had been abandoned for the better part of a decade. That said, the game’s still bringing some cool innovations of its own, particularly the wildly diverse mission types, a stronger emphasis on narrative, and new weather effects, which make it easily one of the best games in the entire franchise.
  • I was kind of shocked by just how much I enjoyed Air Combat. You’d expect the first game in a long-running franchise to be pretty rough, especially when it released so early in the PlayStation’s lifecycle, but Air Combat is pure, distilled fun. The game’s designed to inject adrenaline into your veins without any frills. I was even more surprised when I found myself enjoying it much more than most of its successors. This might be my most unpopular opinion on the series, but I think that Air Combat is a massively underrated game.
• B-tier: Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War, Ace Combat X: Skies of Deception, Ace Combat: Assault Horizon Legacy, Ace Combat 2
  • I found Ace Combat 5 to be pretty disappointing overall, but even with that rough first half, the back-end makes it well worth playing. Plus it still runs on basically the same engine as Ace Combat 04, so your only real barriers to entry are an inconsistent story and some questionable mission designs for the first half of the game.
  • Ace Combat X really surprised me. I was expecting, at most, a lite-version of the PS2 trilogy… and, well, that’s kind of what we got. What really makes Ace Combat X great though is that it has the best branching paths system in the entire franchise, and more than makes up for its fairly obvious weaknesses.
  • Assault Horizon Legacy is basically just Ace Combat 2, but somewhat more refined and with a somewhat-superfluous maneuvers system. I consider it a marginal improvement overall, mainly due to its stronger controls and added features.
  • Ace Combat 2 was a step down from Air Combat, simply because of its changes to air-to-ground combat. Still a very worthy sequel, but if not for this one annoying gameplay change, it would have easily been A-tier!
• C-tier: Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation, Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere (Japanese version)
  • Ace Combat 6 is kind of a tragic case: a game that’s overflowing with ambition, but barely able to hold itself together. No other Ace Combat game has even tried to be this “extra” since, and while that’s probably for the best, it allows Ace Combat 6 to feel unique nearly twenty years later, and smooths over most of its glaring flaws.
  • This might also be an unpopular opinion, but I’m not really a fan of Ace Combat 3. I hate how they changed plane handling to be less-responsive, which makes the moment-to-moment gameplay feel bad. The branching narratives are really cool and ambitious, but the mission quality has clearly been compromised to facilitate all the branching paths. Making matters worse, the story it’s telling isn’t even particularly good to compensate for the weaker missions. All those people who claim that it’s an under-appreciated gem and one of the best in the franchise… yeah, I just don’t see it. Ace Combat 3 is an important game in its own right, and it’s a real shame it took so long for this version to become available worldwide, but there are far better games in this franchise.
• D-tier: Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere (International version), Ace Combat: Assault Horizon
  • The international version of Ace Combat 3 nearly broke me. I was struggling to muster the motivation to finish this game after slogging through dull mission after dull mission, which nearly derailed this entire Love/Hate series only three games in. It took me nearly two months, but I did eventually complete it and was so happy to never have to play this game again (y’know… until I played the Japanese version immediately thereafter, but at least that version has the good grace to make its individual routes fairly short).
  • Assault Horizon is one of those games that’s objectively kind of mediocre overall, but which constantly annoys you with all the dumb decisions that were made which ruin the game at every turn. I can complain about it endlessly, but it’s competent and certainly playable. It’s generally considered the whipping boy of the franchise, but I have honestly played worse.
• F-tier: Ace Combat: Joint Assault, Ace Combat Advance
  • Joint Assault is a fucking tragedy. This would easily be a tier or two higher if the game just fucking played slightly better. As-is, the game is fucking miserable due to the awful controls.
  • Ace Combat Advance is clearly the worst game in this entire franchise. It’s stupidly easy once you get the hang of its systems, but it’s never fun. I do not understand how the hell anyone thought that it was acceptable to release a game like this.

Which Ace Combat Protagonist is the “Ace of Aces”?

The Ace Combat franchise brings with it several legendary pilots, so of course we need to figure out which one is the best! Rankings here are entirely subjective, and based on the characters’ accomplishments in-game.

• S-tier: Cipher (Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War)
  • Cipher is clearly the greatest pilot in these games. The Belkan War is a bloodbath, with an entire airspace being known as “the Round Table”, because that’s where the aces go to battle one another and chew up unprepared rookies. Cipher cements his reputation here, shooting down tons of pilots and earning himself the nickname of “Demon Lord”. Cipher nearly-single-handedly tears through everyone, including multiple ace squadrons sent to specifically take him down, destroys multiple enemy superweapons, comes out on top in multiple large-scale dogfights, and basically wins the war without breaking a sweat. I’ve got my biases, but I don’t think there’s any question that Cipher’s the most accomplished pilot in the franchise.
• A-tier: Gryphus 1 (Ace Combat X: Skies of Deception)
  • Despite Ace Combat X being a pretty stripped down game, protagonist Gryphus 1 manages to accomplish some insane feats, earning himself the nicknames “The Southern Cross” and “Nemesis”. He destroys the Gleipnir (a giant, flying fortress), the Atmos Ring (basically a city-sized super weapon which fires tracking lasers), and an entire squadron of Fenrir aircraft (extremely mobile aircraft with a directed microwave weapon that can instantly explode a plane’s fuel tanks). Enemies in this game have considerable technological superiority over you, which just makes Gryphus 1’s accomplishments all the more impressive. Easily one of the most impressive pilots in the franchise, and the only one I would even consider anywhere close to Cipher in terms of dominance.
• B-tier: Mobius 1 (Ace Combat 04: Shattered Skies, Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War arcade mode, Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown VR missions), Phoenix/Scarface 1 (Ace Combat, Ace Combat 2, Ace Combat: Assault Horizon Legacy), Trigger (Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown)
  • It pains me to put Mobius 1 in B-tier, but I think that it’s honestly a fair assessment. Mobius 1 is a fucking badass who gets a lot of hype due to being the protagonist of the fan-favourite game, which has allowed him to appear in multiple subsequent games (one of only two Ace Combat protagonists to do so).
    While he’s not really soloing entire battles, he is definitely a hero and a major reason why ISAF were able to turn the tide of the war. Mobius 1’s biggest issue is that Ace Combat 04 is pretty grounded game by this series’ standards, so he doesn’t fight much in the way of super weapons (aside from Stonehenge, which is far less fantastical than many subsequent weapons in the franchise). As a result, in terms of power-scaling, he’s got less-impressive feats (although flying through the Megalith structure to destroy its internal systems demonstrates some insanely good piloting skills, and he takes on the elite Yellow squadron multiple times). Given his return appearances, it does show that he has consistency, and that he is kind of the “unofficial Ace-of-Aces”, so I think he can justifiably sit on top of B-tier.
  • So here’s a fun fact about Phoenix: they are the lead character of Air Combat and Ace Combat 2 (and, by extension, its remake, Assault Horizon Legacy), meaning that they are the only protagonist in franchise history to lead more than one game. While those games aren’t particularly story-heavy and they predate some of the craziest developments of latter entries, the fact that Phoenix is kicking ass across two games means they have demonstrable consistency. It’s not like they have no feats either: they take down a sky fortress superweapon, fly inside Fortress Intolerance to blow it up from the inside, and shoot down a high-speed cruise missile. Assault Horizon Legacy also nets them several ace squadron take-downs, which is good enough to give him a pretty impressive ranking in B-tier.
  • Trigger is pretty typical by Ace Combat standards: he’s a crazy-good pilot with some really impressive feats under his belt. Most notably, he takes on two Arsenal Birds (upgraded flying fortresses with an energy shield and a fleet of escort drones) and shoots one of them down himself. Arguably more impressive is that he goes toe-to-toe with Mihaly, who the game hypes up as Erusea’s top pilot from two wars prior… however, Mihaly’s old as fuck, so in spite of his physics-breaking piloting skills, he’s not on the top of his game anymore. I’ve also got to question what the fuck he was doing during Ace Combat 04… I dunno, I think that the game over-hypes him to make Trigger seem more impressive. Honestly, what really cemented Trigger’s place in B-tier for me is all the additional crap he has to deal with during the course of the game. Getting thrown into the penal Spare Squadron, causing him to fight with inferior equipment and survive in spite of commanding officers who don’t give a shit about him is impressive enough. Perhaps more impressively, Trigger ends up leading the charge when all logistics and supply lines get knocked down after the destruction of most of Strangereal’s satellites, allowing his unit to reconnect with the rest of the chain of command and bring the war to an end.
• C-tier: Nemo (Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere, international version), Blaze (Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War)
  • So here’s an opinion that’s sure to piss some Ace Combat fans off: Nemo is Chadlier in the international version of Ace Combat 3. For one thing, this version of Nemo is completing more missions sequentially in a single playthrough… not to mention that he’s actually performing these feats in this version of the game. In addition, while you will have to fight a boss once or twice in an individual route in the Japanese version, the international version just throws you into all of the boss fights sequentially, meaning you’re just fighting the same bosses who just refuse to die over and over again. This version of Nemo just seems like a parent who’s annoyed that the kids keep fighting, so he steps in and slaps some sense into everyone whenever they step out of line. I imagine him like Josh Brolin in Weapons absent-mindedly tossing the drug addict around the room every time he comes at him.
  • While Blaze has some impressive feats under his belt and is a great pilot in his own right, but he’s kind of let down by the fact that all of his accomplishments come off the back of being supported by three other pilots of comparable skill. So, while he takes down a bunch of Yuktobanian and Belkan aces, shoots down the Arkbird and the SOLG satellite, these accomplishments really have to be shared across the entire squadron, because I don’t believe that he could do it alone. Note: while Chopper says that he thinks that Blaze could single-handedly win the war, we have no real reason to believe this to be true from what we see in-game.
• D-tier: Garuda 1 (Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation), Nemo (Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere, Japanese version), Antares 1 (Ace Combat: Joint Assault)
  • Like Blaze, Garuda 1 (aka Talisman) gets a lot of support. Due to the way the games are designed, Ace Combat protagonists traditionally win entire battles by themselves, but missions in Ace Combat 6 are so large that it’s basically impossible to do this. As a result, Garuda 1 ends up having to retreat in the face of overwhelming odds (which he has to do on multiple occasions), and needs to get bailed out by his allies. He’s got accomplishments, sure, and is a pretty great squadron leader, but he’s getting way more support than any other protagonist, and faces easier odds than most in my opinion.
  • Spoilers for this ranking: the big reason why Nemo ranks so lowly is because the events of Ace Combat 3 are revealed to be a simulation after completing all available routes. In theory, he could remotely operate these planes and win in pretty much any scenario… however, that’s assuming that the simulation is accurate, and I’m not convinced that it is. Like, I get that the point of the game is that you’re proving that Nemo is so good that he will defeat Abyssal Dission when they eventually meet… but that’s putting a lot of faith into your unwitting and unwilling protagonist. He also isn’t really facing off against anything particularly impressive or dangerous, just some ace pilots, airships, and an agile enemy plane with a laser. “But he did it all in the simulations, he’s proven he can win in any scenario!” Cool, I don’t really care: even in the world of Ace Combat, I am not convinced that a simulation can accurately recreate reality so well that you can be certain of an outcome. Did I mention that the narrative of Ace Combat 3 is kind of dumb when you apply any thought to it?
  • So Joint Assault was the one game that I only got about halfway through, so this ranking can only really be based on what I played. While Antares One does fight lots of flying fortresses and shoots down an entire squadron of rival aces… this is standard “Ace Combat protagonist” stuff. Impressive by any objective measurements, but this is very basic stuff by this series’ standards.
• E-tier: Warwolf 1 (Ace Combat: Assault Horizon)
  • Warwolf 1 suffers due to one very obvious issue: Assault Horizon takes place in the real-world and has a very grounded tone, so as a result, you don’t really get to do anything crazy. The big climax of the game is that you get to shoot down two ace pilots! That’s cool enough, but by this series’ insane standards, that makes Warworlf 1 seem like an utter chump.
• F-tier: Ace (Ace Combat Advance)
  • Look, as much as I hate Ace Combat Advance, the game’s quality isn’t really why I ranked Ace so low (and, yes, your protagonist in this game is literally named “Ace”). The reason he ranks so lowly is because the dude is getting wrecked in extremely basic Ace Combat scenarios: basic SAMs and enemy planes are lethal threats to Ace, necessitating you to call in mobile support every thirty seconds to keep you in the air. He doesn’t even fight any super weapons or anything. Look, every other Ace Combat protagonist can at least be considered a great pilot by any objective measure… I’m not even sure Ace can be considered a “good” pilot.

Who’s the Best Wingman?

While Ace Combat isn’t really known for having great characters, it does have a pretty interesting array of wingmen who accompany you into battle. There are some that annoy you, some where you’re just happy to have a familiar voice to listen to, and some who you’d trust to fly into hell with you. Here’s my ranking of these individuals, based on how much you can rely on them (from an in-game, characterization, and competency-perspective).

• S-tier: Kei Nagase (Ace Combat 2, Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War, Ace Combat: Assault Horizon Legacy)
  • It’s not very clear if Kei Nagase is the same character in Ace Combat 2 and 5, but as far as I’m concerned they are. In any case, she is really only in S-tier due to her part in Ace Combat 5, where she’s easily your most-competent wingman, almost rivaling the player character in terms of skill and impact on the battle. Hell, even when she gets shot down, she evades the Yuktobanians pursuing her, and ends up taking some as POWs! There’s a reason why Project Aces never made a wingman this good again: it may be impressive when your squadmates shoot down enemy planes, but it’s less fun than if you did it yourself.
• A-tier: Chopper (Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War), PJ (Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War)
  • Look, I consider myself a fair man. I may despise Chopper’s characterization, but I will not deny that he’s a fantastic wingman by all other metrics. He’s about as skilled a pilot as Kei Nagase is, so you can trust him to accomplish whatever you want him to. His big, heroic death scene also shows that he’s got a heart of gold and is willing to sacrifice himself for the greater good. If he could just learn to shut up, he could easily be SSS-tier.
  • PJ, your replacement wingman in Zero, is just supremely competent overall. Honestly, there isn’t much more I can say that that, you couldn’t ask for much more from someone watching your back.
• B-tier: Swordsman (Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War), Grim (Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War), Slash (Ace Combat 2, Ace Combat: Assault Horizon Legacy)
  • Swordsman is pretty similar to PJ: an experienced pilot who’s just really competent. Honestly, his character isn’t very well-defined, but he fills Chopper’s shoes admirably; I just didn’t find him to quite good enough to make A-tier.
  • Poor Grimm. He ends up in Wardog squadron basically by accident, flying up to join you while your base is being raided. He is clearly in way over his head at all times, as he’s audibly panicking on several occasions. That said: the dude survives the entire war and all the crazy escapades you go on over the course of the game, so he clearly is an exceptional pilot, whether he believes it or not. In-game, he’s also really helpful due to Ace Combat 5‘s wingman mechanics, so I really cannot justify a placement any lower than B-tier.
  • However, it’s those aforementioned “in-game mechanics” which hurt Slash’s ranking. While he is actually kind of helpful in Assault Horizon Legacy (I saw him shoot down planes, on occasion!), wingmen don’t really do a whole lot in this game – I honestly take them just to have someone to hang out with during the mission and do not expect them to have a material impact on the mission outcome. That said, Slash is actually a pretty interesting guy to have around, so the fact that he might blow something up for you too is just a bonus.
• C-tier: Shamrock (Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation), Count (Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown)
  • After a couple entries with stellar wingmen, Shamrock ended up being a real come-down. While he’s pretty chatty in Ace Combat 6, I don’t recall ever seeing him do anything. Like, obviously he has his big suicide-run in the finale so you can destroy the enemy superweapon, but I mean, I don’t recall ever seeing him destroy a target… and this is a game with a lot of targets, so I should be seeing it all the time! You’d think that, with Ace Combat 6‘s maximalist design philosophy, they would have made their wingman’s abilities even more destructive.
  • Count’s a fine pilot, but like Shamrock you can’t count on him to actually do anything in-game. He even has a similar sort of “heroic sacrifice” scene in the finale, which makes me even more confident that he belongs in the same tier.
• D-tier: Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere‘s cast of characters
  • While I arguably should rank each of Ace Combat 3‘s wingmen separately, I just feel like it’s unnecessary: while some are more cool than others, they all end up being pretty worthless support units in-game. What makes them end up in D-tier though is that you can (and will) end up being betrayed by and/or betraying and shooting down all of them over the course of multiple playthroughs. Can you really trust such a duplicitous bunch to watch your back?
• E-tier: Guts (Ace Combat: Assault Horizon)
  • Guts does absolutely nothing in Assault Horizon… in fact, he’s an active detriment. He gets himself into trouble on multiple occasions, forcing you to bail his ass out. Assault Horizon doesn’t even have any crazy superweapons or anything, so the fact that he couldn’t even make it to the finale makes his performance even more embarrassing. I was originally going to put him into D-tier, but when I started thinking about what a burden Guts was throughout this game, I had no choice but to give him a tier for himself.
• F-tier: Pixy (Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War)
  • This may be a contentious ranking, because I’d consider Pixy to easily be the most competent wingman in the entire franchise. Unfortunately for his tier placement, he betrays you, fires several missiles at you with zero warning and while you’re still ostensibly allied, kills PJ, and then tries to kill you on multiple occasions. Unfortunately, despite being a fantastic asset when you have him, the fact that he straight-up tries to murder you makes him an easy F-tier wingman. Like, Guts may be fucking worthless, but at least he’s not going to try to kill you!

What Would My Ideal Ace Combat Sequel Look Like?

So, as much as I said that Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation was too chaotic for its own good… I think that it really is a template for the future of this franchise. Skies Unknown did a good job of synthesizing the PS2 trilogy’s game design, but Fires of Liberation was an actual evolution of that formula. The much larger battles and insane spectacle are just so cool, it makes me wish the game had sold better so Bandai Namco wouldn’t have pivoted away from it so heavily. We’d just need to figure out how to make it less chaotic to take in… which may be easier said than done. Cutting down on some of the power fantasy would probably help: as cool as it is to see dozens of missiles streaking towards enemies during an allied attack, making the player a bit more capable and empowering allies to deal with enemies on their own would probably be sufficient.

Speaking of which… if we were to take another stab at Fires of Liberation, then that would require a rethink of its mission structure. Its design made nearly every mission have to fit into its operation structure: complete a bunch of smaller objectives to move on in the level, usually to some sort of finale boss fight. If we tried to evolve Fires of Liberation, do you retain this structure, or do you attempt to shake-up this approach? Personally, I like the general approach Skies Unknown, with lots of twists and mission variety. I’m not sure if you could make this work coherently within the scope of Fires of Liberation‘s mission design, but it would be awesome if you could. Failing that, I’ve always found Shattered Skies‘ points-threshold structure to be incredibly fun: just farming points across an enormous battlefield with lots of juicy targets sounds tantalizing in its own right.

My favourite narrative in this franchise is Shattered Skies‘ (obviously), but I honestly do not want anyone to try to replicate it. Instead, I’d be happy if all future Ace Combat games took a cue from Skies Unknown‘s approach, with cinematic, professional cutscenes and well-written twists and turns. Suffice to say, I’d also definitely set any future games in Strangereal: like I’ve said elsewhere, it’s a well-developed setting and you can’t get it anywhere else, so leverage that!

What Does the Future Hold For Ace Combat?

Funnily enough, I started this Ace Combat Love/Hate series before Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve was announced. I was playing through Ace Combat 3 when the news came out, which only made me more excited to dive into the rest of the series!

So, yeah, we know for a fact that things are looking good for Ace Combat fans. We’ve got a great-looking new game releasing imminently, and the franchise seems like it’s going in the right direction. While it may take a long time for a new game to come out, we can be reasonably happy about where the series is at and that it will be worth the wait for a new game!

And that’s it for another Love/Hate series! I had a lot of fun playing and writing this one. I’m not sure what will be next for Love/Hate, but I think I’ll be doing a new “That Time When” next. It’s a fun format that I’d like to explore a bit more!

About the Author

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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