This was a gem to revisit as I hadn't played in quite some time but had many, many fond memories of it. The game was really emblematic of the seventh generation of consoles were visuals made a substantial jump and the sense of scale fully embraced a sense of "bigger is better" to great effect. The ground would be littered with targets, so many it might obscure the mission objectives, and the skies would be full of planes, flak, and missile contrails. Even from a distance, you could see where the dogfighting was just by the contrails circling in the skies. It both is and was amazing. We had a full battlefield as a playground at last.
However, where this game gets some rightful flak (pun not intended) was its story. Even on release, it felt rather weak especially coming off the red hot 4/5/0. One thought you might get something like that but instead it was mostly focusing on a mother trying to reunite with her daughter who was in occupied territory. This was mostly at odds with the storytelling of the PS2 games. In Ace Combat 4, you were the nemesis to the Yellow Squadron the narrator looked up to. In Ace Combat 5, you were center stage as the main character instead of being ancillary to the story's presentation. In Ace Combat 0, you were the legend the journalist sought out. However, in this, your story happens almost entirely in gameplay while Melissa's story and Voychek's story takes place during the cutscenes with little intersection of the three until the end of the game. It was strange at the time and it's still strange now but I gave it some thought and suppose I finally get what was attempted.
While execution was lacking, it's very interesting that in a game where so much happens concurrently whether you're involved or not, the story was reflection of just this. The conflict was bigger than you so Talisman's story was just one of many going on at the same time. This is even reflected in the final mission. Whereas in 4/5/0, the final mission was the immediate personal thing, 6 made it a point to include a lot of radio chatter regarding how not reacting properly to the final threat led to issues miles away, back home in the city you'd spent 14 missions to retake and make safe once again. I can respect the attempt made in this game's story presentation even if I do find it of lesser quality than the other games.
However, where this game gets some rightful flak (pun not intended) was its story. Even on release, it felt rather weak especially coming off the red hot 4/5/0. One thought you might get something like that but instead it was mostly focusing on a mother trying to reunite with her daughter who was in occupied territory. This was mostly at odds with the storytelling of the PS2 games. In Ace Combat 4, you were the nemesis to the Yellow Squadron the narrator looked up to. In Ace Combat 5, you were center stage as the main character instead of being ancillary to the story's presentation. In Ace Combat 0, you were the legend the journalist sought out. However, in this, your story happens almost entirely in gameplay while Melissa's story and Voychek's story takes place during the cutscenes with little intersection of the three until the end of the game. It was strange at the time and it's still strange now but I gave it some thought and suppose I finally get what was attempted.
While execution was lacking, it's very interesting that in a game where so much happens concurrently whether you're involved or not, the story was reflection of just this. The conflict was bigger than you so Talisman's story was just one of many going on at the same time. This is even reflected in the final mission. Whereas in 4/5/0, the final mission was the immediate personal thing, 6 made it a point to include a lot of radio chatter regarding how not reacting properly to the final threat led to issues miles away, back home in the city you'd spent 14 missions to retake and make safe once again. I can respect the attempt made in this game's story presentation even if I do find it of lesser quality than the other games.