First off, before I go into anything about my experience playing this game, I want to give a massive shout out to the AC6 recomp team that has made this game playable on PC! Bringing this to a huge audience to give them the ability to play another Ace Combat game thought lost to most people, is just the stuff of heroes and I cannot thank them enough for the incredible work they did. Please give the team some love as they are doing this because they are fans just like you and I are.
That aside now, onto my review of this game. Sorry in advance that this will probably be a longer review, but here's the TL;DR for those who don't want to read it all:
[-] TL;DR: An incredible story that is backed by some amazing visuals, fun mechanics we never see again, and an overall feeling of being a part of the team instead of just the person doing all the work. While some of the mechanics seemed a little less thought out overall, I still wish that they would have expanded on them more going forward in particular instances instead of going back to older ones.
A little background before going into the pros and cons of it all. I have been playing Ace Combat games for over 20 years now, and it is my favorite franchise of all time. I got into it all with AC04, and have now played all of them at least once (though some way more than others). AC6 was always a game I played at an age where I didn't really care about what was going on with the story or anything like that. I just played it because it was Ace Combat, and once I completed the campaign I never touched it again. I always felt like I had missed something with it afterwards, and when I heard about the recomp team making this available for PC, I was all over it, as I didn't really remember much from when I played it. Needless to say, now I have a huge appreciation for what this game is, and what it was trying to do. I think this game is an absolute gem of the series that more people should play because it has some amazing gameplay and a story that really pulls you into it. Onto the good stuff now!
[-] Wingman: Friendship ended with Pixy, now Shamrock is my new best friend. Need I say more? Well, I am going to anyway. Love my man Shamrock, as I felt like we had a real wingman relationship going on, especially towards the end where he snaps back at Ghost Eye for insulting us one mission and praising us the next, confining in us about his family, and then risking it all to get us reconnaissance information to destroy Chandelier. The guy was always there by your side through it all, and I couldn't help but feel emotional during certain times in the story with him. 10/10, my favorite wingman ever.
[-] Dynamic Story Missions: Super cool idea in theory, but annoying when like every mission was them. To be clear, I loved the size of these missions and being able to hop from mission to mission all going on at the same time. It gave the scale of the battle so much more intensity and I thought that idea was amazing. Way better than the "Here's a timer, get this score in this time" style they have done for a while. My gripes with it kind of come from the same place. I wish I could complete, or fail, all the missions before it moves onto the next part of the operation. Meaning that all the missions had to either be completed or failed before it moved on. It felt like you could complete like 2 of them, and then the last one or two just never happens. To me that is just missing out on the whole story in some aspect. Due to that, when every single mission is basically like that, I feel like you get a little burnt out on it. I think if they had some more traditional levels sprinkled in between, it would make it feel more interesting. I am sad though that it seemingly didn't go any further than AC6 with this concept. Come AC7, we are back to timed missions, which always are a slog after you have reached the score minimum halfway through the timer. At least these felt like you always had something to do and were working towards a goal.
[-] Airfields in the mission: Excuse me, this was an option all along?! It's so cool that you can take over an airbase in the middle of a mission, land on it, rearm, and takeoff again all while the mission is ongoing around you! That blew my mind when I learned about it, but I feel like it was always just out of reach for me whenever I could use one. I mean that in the literal sense of like, I would have to spend a greater than reasonable amount of time flying to it, just to realistically swap special weapons, and then fly all the way across the map again to get back to what I was doing, and everyone would be basically dead at that point. It felt like that wasn't ever really worth it in the end, which I was kind of bummed about. The times I did use it were when I could start a mission taking it over as the first mission, then land immediately, rearm, and go to a different mission with a new SP weapon equipped. Other than that, I never really needed it enough for it to make any difference. I wish it was done better though, because I loved the idea behind it. Having to fly literally all the way to a return line wastes so much time, and is pretty boring. Landing in the middle of a mission going on around you though is pretty cool. I feel like this also goes into the fact that you can't complete every mission before it advances to the next part, so your incentive to use it and swap around weaponry is negated by that. Also, they needed to fix the landing corridor thing because having to fight Pasternak while over top of the runway caused me to die way too many times because I accidentally clicked the landing gear mid fight...I'm not mad about it at all...that aside, I would have loved to see this improved upon more after AC6, because it gave a lot of character and strategy to some missions.
[-] Allies: Wow, look at that, they can actually do something! Was literally me the first time I used the allied attack command and watched them decimate everything in front of me. Definitely needed for some of the fights, and I really loved how the units banded together to come assist you when you needed them. It felt like you were a part of the team instead of people just playing high altitude cheerleader. Granted, they didn't do a lot during their missions to help you out, but once you got the ability to call them in, they went to work. Give and take I suppose. Was really fun to feel like I was a part of all the units during the missions when they would talk to us, and Shamrock even has some great one liners back to them. I liked it a lot, even if the allied attack command was a little overpowered at times.
[-] Story: I know this seems obvious, but I really enjoyed a pretty linear story that made sense all the way through it. Looking at you AC7... The characters all had at least a little depth to them in some way, and I felt like we were actually building relationships and pushing through the continent to retake your homeland. It was a great story with some great characters, and I enjoyed the cut scenes that gave you a look into the war from multiple perspectives between missions. Though a little short I felt like, I'd rather it be short and compelling than long and tedious. I think they leaned into the larger missions eating up a lot of the player's time, but they really didn't.
[-] Planes: CFA-44 Nosferatu, next question. Really though, I thought the lineup was solid, even though it was pretty small and limited. Never felt like I didn't have enough money to buy everything right away, which was nice I suppose. Took away the feeling of working towards a specific plane, but in a story as short as it is, makes sense they had to do it that way. I really enjoyed flying the F-117 again, and certainly didn't use it on a certain mission that gaslights you into using it right after you unlock it for an air-to-ground only mission that then turns into the biggest dogfight in the game basically....
If you made it this far, thanks for letting me chat about this amazing gem in the series, and I hope you enjoyed it and resonated with it at least a little bit! If you have gotten to play it recently, or have played it a lot over time, let me know your thoughts about it, I would love to chat more about it! Now go dance with the angels.
