Love/Hate: Ace Combat X – Skies of Deception (2006)

Welcome back to the Ace Combat Love/Hate series! In this entry, we’ll be going over the series’ second handheld spin-off, Ace Combat X: Skies of Deception! This is a game I knew very little about going in. While Ace Combat Advance was always going to struggle due to the hardware, I’ve had a lot more hope for Skies of Deception. After all, the series started on PS1, the PSP is more powerful than that system was, and this series isn’t really reliant on dual analog controls, so the PSP hardware limitations (which famously knee-capped other console-to-PSP franchises) shouldn’t even be an issue. All that said, would the PSP be a good fit for Ace Combat? Read on to find out…

Love

• Branching Mission Selection – Skies of Deception harkens back to the structure of the first couple Ace Combat games, where you are shown a map and get to select your next mission from there. However, unlike those games, the order in which you select each mission has an actual effect on gameplay. The game is split into a series of loose “acts”, where you have a handful of branching missions to choose from until you reach the grand finale of that act. You can pick between two or three missions at first, and then can either complete the other mission, or move onto the next couple missions down the branch. Depending on what mission you do first, there will be consequences: for example, in one act, you choose between attacking an enemy force that’s gathering to counter-attack allied forces, or you can attack the unit that’s planning on reinforcing them. I chose to attack the gathered force and destroyed them, which caused their reinforcements to retreat and become an issue for me to deal with in a later mission, making that particular mission much more dangerous. In practice, each mission has two or three alternate scenarios, much like Resident Evil 2‘s A and B scenarios, except that you can just choose to skip entire missions if you want to (although you’ll probably have some sort of consequence going into the act finale if you do). It’s a pretty cool system and easily the most notable innovation that Skies of Deception brings to the table.
  • Also, because it kind of needs to be said, this system is somewhat similar to Ace Combat 3‘s branching narrative. However, in my opinion, it’s far superior. While Ace Combat 3‘s system would have more dramatic effects on the narrative, the actual reasoning behind your choices was extremely flimsy: why the hell would I ever choose to defect or kill my friends, I don’t even know you, bro? Here, you’re given pretty realistic intelligence about enemy movements, what you might expect if you engage in the mission, and what the consequences may be if you choose one mission over another. The fact that I actually have to weigh the options behind my choices alone made me far more interested in the idea of replaying Skies of Deception than Ace Combat 3 ever did.
• Authentic Ace Combat Experience on the Go! – As I alluded to in the intro, the PSP was the perfect handheld system for an Ace Combat game (shade very much directed your way, Ace Combat Advance). Skies of Deception has pretty much everything you’d want out of an Ace Combat game with little in the way of compromises. The controls aren’t even particularly troublesome: the only lingering annoyance I felt was the lack of L2/R2, which forces yaw to be mapped to the d-pad. This is annoying when you’re trying to line up a quick, precise strafing run on a ground target. Unfortunately, this also means that the wingman system has been removed, but this didn’t really bother me all that much. I really wish that I had this game when I had my PSP, this would have been up there amongst the most impressive console-to-PSP translations on the system (alongside Resistance: Retribution, Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, and Assassin’s Creed: Bloodlines).
• Hand-painted Cutscenes! – After experimenting with pre-rendered cutscenes in Ace Combat 5 and FMV sequences in Zero, Skies of Deception goes back to 04‘s hand-painted, still image cutscenes for its main story sequences… and I could not be happier! Don’t get me wrong: this game’s story is very dull and it doesn’t come anywhere close to the emotional weight or quality of 04. However, I just could not take the po-faced stories of 5 and Zero seriously, and a lot of that was down to the way that they presented themselves. These painted cutscenes leave more to the imagination, feeling like artful depictions of memories or snapshots of moments in time, which ends up being far more impactful than traditional, 3D rendered cutscenes (at a fraction of the cost, no less). At the time of writing this, I do not know if any subsequent Ace Combat games opt for this storytelling presentation, but I’m willing to bet that they do not… and that just makes me sad, because I’m 100% convinced that this is superior to anything else that this series has attempted to this point.

Mixed

• Feels Very Familiar – Skies of Deception is bringing that authentic Ace Combat experience to PSP, but it’s a bit too authentic: there’s very little here that you have not already seen and done before. Narratively, you’re a rookie pilot fighting for a nation which was suddenly attacked and pushed to the brink of defeat. There’s an enemy super-weapon which not only fires airburst rounds that destroy all aircraft in the vicinity (for the third or fourth time in this series, I’ve legitimately lost count now), but it’s also a flying fortress that you need to blow up several weak points on to defeat (again, for like the fourth or fifth time in this franchise). Missions are all very generic stuff (escort missions, blow up all enemies, etc), occasionally sprinkling in Ace Combat 5‘s more scripted events to spice things up (eg, blow up an iceberg before the damaged submarine you’re escorting crashes into it). Aside from the branching mission system, there really isn’t a lot here that’s particularly original, and even with the limited compromises for the PSP, it’s still clearly a lesser-experience than any of its console-brethren. Skies of Deception is pretty enjoyable, but the lack of originality makes it feel kind of inessential, “also-ran” entry overall.

Hate

• Slow Gameplay – As soon as I started Skies of Deception, I had to check my emulation settings, because it felt like the game was running in molasses. Despite running the game with some very high upscaled graphics settings active, I determined that there were no issues: the game was running at full speed… it’s just that that speed is fucking slow in comparison to other Ace Combat games (well… aside from Ace Combat 3, that one definitely felt worse than this). All planes feel sluggish to control, with turns taking a while to complete (thankfully, this also applies to enemy planes, so it at least feels fair). In addition, the game runs at only 30fps as opposed to 60fps for the PS2 trilogy. Granted, this particular “hate” is largely because I’ve played seven other Ace Combat games in the past four months, so I’m used to a particular gameplay feel by this point; if this was your first Ace Combat, then you might not even notice.
• Voice Acting – Man… I was really spoiled by Ace Combat 04‘s voice acting without realizing it. I love how natural, authentic, and realistic its voice acting and random radio chatter was. Unfortunately, every single Ace Combat game released since then has seen a noticeable drop in voice acting quality, to the point where we’ve reached borderline-PS1 levels of acting here in Skies of Deception. Every line reading is awkward, especially from the guy giving you briefings between missions. Again, like Ace Combat 5, I feel like this is probably on the direction provided by the localization leads considering just how consistent it is, but it’s really reached a new low here. It also doesn’t help that you have characters throwing around jargon and acronyms from the moment the game begins, making the dialogue even more stilted.
• Parts System – Skies of Deception introduces a potentially-interesting system to the franchise, with the ability to purchase parts which you can apply to your planes to customize their performance. This is extremely cool in theory… unfortunately, in practice, this ends up being a complete dud:
  • First of all, this system would be great if you could use it on any purchased plane, but it is unfortunately restricted to only a handful of customizable planes (and some of these are parts aren’t even available on some of these particular planes). If you don’t have or use one of these particular planes, you’re literally wasting your money if you buy any customization parts.
  • Making matters worse, these parts are expensive. Adding onto this, the planes that you have to purchase in order to use them are quite mediocre, but their prices aren’t discounted to account for you having to buy parts for them to get them up to par. As a result, in order to make use of this system, you end up spending more money than you would if you just bought a non-customizable plane that does what you want it to do right out of the box.
  • Worst of all… the parts aren’t all that impactful. Most have fairly insubstantial effects on your plane’s stats, especially considering they amount of money you’re expected to pay for them, and very few have any interesting effects to make you consider engaging with the system. As far as I saw, you’re honestly better off just buying the best planes for particular combat scenarios rather than trying to customize a plane to do it for you.
• “A Diversion” – During the course of my playthrough, mission 9B was very possibly the worst mission I’ve played in the entire franchise thus far.* Basically, this is an escort mission where you have to guide a squadron of helicopters to an enemy base. However, there are around twenty enemies with RPGs hidden in the forest on the way to the base which are only detectable when they fire at the helicopters. They only show up when the helicopters are extremely close to them, and youget only a few seconds to attack before they shoot one of your allies down. You can spend upwards of fifteen seconds waiting for them to spawn in, so you end up having to fly in circles to stay close enough to your allies to be able to respond, because you fly faster than they do and will end up above or ahead of any RPGs if you just fly in a straight line. Combined with the aforementioned slow game feel and sluggish turn speeds and this mission ends up feeling miserable to play, especially if you aren’t save-state scumming. On the plus side, the mission can be avoided entirely depending on your choices, but I can only really speak to my experience… and in that regard “A Diversion” was fucking awful.

*Aside from Ace Combat Advance… and, honestly, “A Diversion” very well might be worse than any mission in that game, it was that bad.

Despite my gripes, Ace Combat X: Skies of Deception was honestly a pretty fun time overall. Its biggest issue is that it just feels very superfluous: it’s not doing much to stand out and can’t help but feel like a lesser-experience than any Ace Combat game since the PS1 era (Advance aside). Still, for what it is, it’s a very competent entry that is more than worth you time. Honestly, I wish that I had played this back in the mid-to-late 2000s: I can’t help but think that the trajectory of my life would have legitimately changed if I had this on UMD. Would I have checked out the other Ace Combat games at the time instead of leaving them until now? Who knows, but I’m sure glad I finally got the chance to play it in 2026.

About the Author

Barloq

Administrator

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

Visit Website View All Posts