Nothing like skimming along the water in your fighter jet before going into a controlled stall and shooting up at some joker you're about to kill. I know the game is made for controllers, but using a flight stick felt great, and once I got the hang of the movement/high-G maneuvers it really felt like there wasn't anything I couldn't pull off with the right plane. The story and dialogue and cutscene animations can be a bit silly, but who cares, that's part of the fun. My main gripes are that, for a game where 90% of the fun is coming up with and executing wild flight tricks and dogfight scenarios, the free-flight/custom-encounter system is extremely rudimentary (how hard would it be to tell the game to spawn X enemies in Y map and let me just jump in?) and the replay/recording system is nowhere near adequate to capture all the cool stuff you do (there are some mods you can use to get around this, but so far it's been a pain in the ass). Haven't tried the multiplayer, I'm guessing at this point I'd just get creamed by people who have been playing for years.

I can't quite comment how this compares to games between AC1&2 and this - since I haven't played them yet. But one thing I can say is that the game is little bad at communicating what it wants to the player to do. The part I probably got stuck the longest was when (SPOILERS)the game wants you to shoot at the direction of Harling(/SPOILER).

I'd say the middle of the game is easier than the beggining and then it starts to ramp up near the end.

Also, if you have a bad monitor, atleast on PS4 version, some of the graphics can get awfully bright. I pretty much had to do Mission 13 (Bunker Buster) half-blind. I had to fiddle with TV settings (which work fine for other PS4 games) almost like every second mission to diminish the most distracting visual elements.

Having played AC1&2 - and I know this is many people's first - I have feel like this game is not the best choice for beginner's first Ace Combat. Otherwise its decent enough flier.

Excelente como todos os outros. O gameplay é excelente com várias armas criativas e balanceadas. A história é muito boa, com missões com o esquadrão da prisão, que muda completamente a dinâmica, até missão de stealth, porém, não tem missões tão malucas quanto algumas do Ace Combat 3, na qual vc lutava na estratosfera e também numa cidade subterrânea.

Algo que pode ser chato na campanha é o excesso de elogios para o jogador, mas até isso tem um motivo nas ultimas missões que faz valer a pena.

Joguei até as missões extras (que seriam DLC), e ainda tem opção de jogar online, mas não cheguei a testar. Acredito ser o melhor jogo do gênero.

A great game that’s unfortunately held back by a lacking story and some steps back in mechanics.

By main issues can be summed up with the story having a pretty bad narrator, the narrative itself relying too much on callbacks, and it just not having the depth and weight that all the PS2 games had. The presentation of it is good, but that’s the most I can give it.

The characters are very hit or miss. Some were fun (especially AWACS Long Caster my beloved) but others were pretty uninteresting. It’s not quite as bad as what 6 was, and even Assault Horizon, but it’s still a ways from the peak of the series.

But, other than that, the gameplay stands out as some of the best in the series! It’s super smooth and true to the best of the series, having all the mechanics you expect, but with the addition of the Aircraft Tree as a shop replacement. It’s hard to say if I prefer it, but it works well enough and I got a pretty great plane by the end of my first playthrough.

Other than that, the visuals are breathtaking and are obviously the one biggest focus which I do think paid off. It looks amazing, and made flying around feel even cooler at many points!

Overall, it’s still a great game, but not at the point of the classics in terms of its quality.

…but given how much the DLC missions improved on everything, story, characters, writing, pacing, and even gameplay…I feel confident we’ll be getting something stellar in the near future.

I think I will be replaying this game until I die

It's just such a perfect game to replay. It's not long, it's very high on Adeline, its mission structured and it's about jetssss.

When I have 20 mins to spare Ik what I can play and enjoy

الجنس ٢




(مالعبت الجنس ١)

This is obviously not on the level of earlier titles in the series (coming from someone who has only played Electrosphere and 4), but it accomplishes too much on an aesthetic and gameplay level for me to truly dislike it. They don't make AAA games like this anymore! We have to savour the few we get! Ace Combat 7 has compelling arcade gameplay that never falls into repetition through a huge variety of mission objectives, an incredible soundtrack that, while weaker than the rest of the series, hasn't declined to nearly the drastic degree of something like modern Fromsoft scores, and it's all tied together with great visuals and real use of colour that goes far beyond the muddy grey palettes of most modern AAA slop. I'm about to go on a bit of a tangent here, so bear in mind I do really enjoy this game. I think it's great, and absolutely worth playing. But still...

You'll notice I didn't mention the story. That's the major aspect that pushes me to reconsider giving this four stars. Again, I think it more than makes up for the messy narrative with all the other aspects (which are, of course, far more important to a videogame), but it's worth mentioning just how confused this game's story is. It almost feels unfair to criticize because it's clearly not all there, and what is feels tied together from multiple unfinished drafts. There are at least three stories here that alone could and probably should carry their own games. If you ask me, the penal unit should have been the entire game. In the final game it only lasts like five missions, but it's the most fun and fleshed out section and the side characters you fly with there are more interesting than any of their later replacements. You could argue about how "realistic" it is, but that would be silly both within the context of the game and frankly art in general. Who cares, The Dirty Dozen with planes is a fun idea. There's so much potential to take that idea further that it kind of astounds me how quick the game drops it. Have Spare Squadron defect to the Eruseans, or have them go rogue coinciding with the satellite stuff (I guess this kind of happens but Trigger should still be with them). Hell, expand Shilage Castle into a full final mission to get that real war adventure movie vibe.

As is, everything past the halfway point is a complete mess. Wiseman is like the only likeable character in the new squadron you join and he goes out way to early for the player to ever get invested in the rest of the new side characters. The IFF failures should have led to more serious examination of the political landscape of the war but the game mostly just tries to distract you from the fact that it really doesn't care to take an even remotely nuanced approach to the war. It's hard to tell where the story went wrong, or even which of the numerous ideas here was the original concept for the game, but the biggest letdown for me is the role of the space elevator. The ending of the game positions it as a sort of ultimate representation of humanity that rises above the ultimately purposeless war (see the Yggdrasil connection with the names of the two final bosses), which is a cool, if melodramatic idea. It even fits with the whole drone thing, which also seems to boil down to "Humans are cool so they should pilot planes instead of AI" ( I don't think the game should be pro-drone or anything, it's just weird that the main theme of the game is barely fleshed out at all. Besides, Top Gun Maverick executes this exact same idea way better lol). But none of that works when the game also implies that the war was intentional and directly instigated by the evil Belkans who I guess are just conspiratorial sleeper agents waiting to start wars across the globe in the name of revenge now? It's such an awful moment made more annoying by the fact that you could fix it so easily, just make it so Schroeder was acting alone, and his drone project combined with existing tensions between Osea and Urusea led to the war. It wouldn't magically fix the game, but it fits with the otherwise entirely pro-humanity ending a lot better than randomly implying that all Belkans are actually evil villains.

Ultimately it feels like the game is constantly in conflict between wanting to do the everyone gets along happy ending and this awful political intrigue Belkan conspiracy angle. There are so many loose ends and unfinished storylines that feel out of place, a moment that comes to mind is when Osean fighters fire on the Space Elevator early on and everyone briefly reacts to how weird it was before never mentioning it again. They mention "Babel", in fact the mission is called Babel, which is like the exact polar opposite of the later comparison between the Elevator and Yggdrasil. Weirder still, the later satellite destruction actually IS a tower of babel moment, and no one comments on it! Was the communications breakdown initially going to be caused by the destruction of the Space Elevator before that plot point was changed? Did the Belkan conspiracy initially expand to include rogue Oseans as well? There are, as far as I can tell, no answers.

I'm not invested enough to do real research on this, but maybe someone smarter than me knows what went wrong with this games story. All the ideas are there, too many ideas, to be honest, and the presentation is really stellar. The cutscenes are effective enough on an audio-visual level that you can almost ignore the fact that they have nothing to do with the player character. I'd even say the story has enough thrilling moments and interesting ideas that it managed to be completely palatable, even pretty compelling at it's best. Mihaly is a great rival character, the first dogfight with him in the valleys with lighting flying around you like something out of a Wuxia film is one of those great gaming moments that's stuck with me since the first time I played it. The radio chatter is always fun, in fact all the character interactions are fun, and there's no shortage of memorable lines. All the big moments they put into the missions like Spare Squadron forming up around you in 9 or taking down the Arsenal Bird in 19 are great. And again, the gameplay is really incredible. It's nothing new, but having Ace Combat with this level of polish and variety in the mission design finally available on PC has got to be worth something. I went through the DLC missions for the first time as well and they're some of the best the game has to offer. Torres is a great villain and maybe one of my favourite characters in the game. (don't like the implication that the two secondary villains in the DLC are working for General Resource from AC3 though... maybe that's a topic for a different review). I'm not sure if it's worth the full 33$ for the season pass, but still.

The story is never great, and maybe I was just more lenient with it this time coming from the abysmal Project Wingman, but that absolutely shouldn't distract you from how fun this game is.

Ace combat is one of those rare franchises that manages to deliver good to amazing games even more than 2 decades after its beginning. Ace combat 7 is no exception. It is a flight sim that presents flight in a very unrealistic manner. You are able to do impossible stunts, carry hundreds of missiles and other physics defying stuff. If you are a diehard player of realistic flight sims like DSC then I don't recommend AC 7, but if your knowledge of fighter jets is “they are cool” then I highly recommend you give it a try.
Story
Unlike a lot of other modern flight sims, this one has an actual story, and a fairly engaging one at that. The shortest way I can describe it is Metal Gear Solid, but worse. The storyline is set in a war between two countries in an alternate universe. It isn't your regular cookie cutter war story. By this I mean that it has some weird elements and a deeper moral message if you're willing to look for it, but it can also be very campy at times and that weirdness can go both ways. The worst part is the way they handle the characters. Some get replaced too quickly, while others seem useless.
Gameplay
It is an arcade flight sim, whereas I said before you can do impossible maneuvers and can carry dozens of missiles. This applies to all the planes in the game, of which there is a wide variety. They range from popular ones (F-22, F-15, SU 27) experimental (YF-23, SU 47, FB-22) to completely fictional (ADFX-01, X-02, Darkstar). You acquire them with points you earn during the missions. Grinding will be required if you want all the planes. In addition to aircraft, you can also get special weapons, like missiles with very long range, extra guns and more. Gameplay pacing is fantastic, as the mission you are playing is rarely similar to the previous. Bosses are okay, although they are rare. Returning players will notice one big addition to the mobility - PSM (post stall maneuver). They turn the previously improbable mobility to downright silly. Overall, I would describe the gameplay as fun. There is also multiplayer, but I couldn't be bothered with it.
Graphics and artstyle
Since you won't be looking at the ground at a very close range, it can get away with lower quality textures while still maintaining AAA levels of graphics. Other than that, everything else – plane models, weather, cutscenes make the game look very beautiful.
Atmosphere
It did make me feel like an unstoppable ace pilot at times.
Soundtrack
Probably the best in the franchise thus far. The Latin adds a level of mysticism that is just right for AC 7. Favorite part is “Archange”.
Final Thoughts
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