Surprisingly great for a fanmade Ace Combat. If I didn't know the title and someone told me it was an actual Ace Combat game I'd believe it right away. The gameplay and visuals are practically the same as Ace Combat 7, but with some minor differences like guns being a tad more effective in Wingman. The soundtrack is weaker than the average AC OST but there's still some standout tracks and it's fitting across the board. The story and dialogue do a solid job of emulating AC's endearingly cheesy writing and ability to make the player feel like a bigshot. The indie scope of the project caused it to not have any actual cutscenes but there are still plenty of cool moments that happen mid-mission, particularly with the final boss fight. I do have some small gripes with the presentation, namely the screen getting way too cluttered in certain missions and bossfights because of all the explosions, post-processing effects and railguns going on as well as several typos in the subtitles and voice lines that don't match said subtitles either. I have mixed feelings on the developer's decision to not include checkpoints because while it does make the missions more intense and promote more careful play, the game crashed multiple times for me and I had to restart missions from scratch which was really annoying. My final thought on it would be that while the game was clearly made with a lot of love for AC and it does a fantastic job of emulating the series, it ends up not really having much of it's own identity. It's certainly enjoyable as an Ace Combat game, it's just a shame they didn't use its nature as a distinct IP to try more original ideas.

Reviewed on Sep 08, 2021


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