Ace Combat 7 Review
A breath of fresh air, as challenging as it is unique.
In a market where many of the biggest games fit neatly into one of a handful of broad genres, Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown doesn’t have to do much to stand out. It won’t be competing against any other pseudo-realistic aerial dogfighting games this year — or likely for several more years to come. There is almost nothing left for the Ace Combat series to pull inspiration from except itself. This makes for a game wholly unlike anything else on modern consoles, packed with the best elements from throughout the franchise and very little else. Ace Combat 7 writes a love letter to fans of the series and puts its best foot forward for curious new comers who may be stopping by for their first flight.
Whether you end up loving Ace Combat 7 or not will end up relying upon your willingness to enjoy the actual process of learning to play — which may take you as long as the entire (rather meaty) campaign. The controls may seem straightforward, and the basics of both air-to-air and air-to-ground combat seem easy enough to understand, but you will absolutely need time to grow into your wings. That’s not a bad thing, though, as much of the experience of the game comes from that feeling of discovering the right trick to a given situation for the first time and thinking “holy cats, I didn’t know I could do that!”
The game offers both a simplified and more realistic “expert” control method, and frankly, it’s probably best you jump straight to learning the more difficult expert method. While the simplified controls are easier to grasp, I found them to both limit the possible movement of your aircraft and rob you of the joy of learning to execute more advanced maneuvers. In practice, the expert controls are still far more arcadey and less realistic than any traditional flight simulator; it just offers much more freedom at the cost of a steeper learning curve.
This sense of learning extends past the controls and combat mechanics and into the scenario design of the campaign itself. Set in the fictional Ace Combat world of Strangereal, against a very melodramatic and ever-so-slightly incomprehensible political narrative driven largely by the advancement of drone technology, the campaign itself is basically an excuse to feel like the best damn pilot the world has ever seen while taking on a long and varied series of combat engagements. At 20 missions long, and with each mission taking anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour depending on your own skill, the campaign definitely provides you plenty to do.
While the first few missions are fairly straightforward, the campaign quickly changes gears into a series of more highly specialized missions with multiple changing objectives and remarkably little overlap. For a game that can be boiled down to “drop into a large map in your jet and destroy the necessary targets” it is impressive how varied the missions themselves are. The relative complexity of Ace Combat 7’s scenario design, along its large sandbox-like maps, means that players need to pay close attention to mission briefings and radio chatter if they want to keep on top of ever-changing mission objectives.
Excluding early tutorials, most of the missions are extremely memorable, with some unique twist make each feel unique. One mission may start as a bombing run on a series of massive oil refineries, before transitioning into a chase after several escaping fuel truck convoys directly into a raging sandstorm (which of course limits your visibility and obscures radar functionality). Another may have you flying through a dark and extremely narrow ravine at night so you can launch a sneak attack on an enemy air base on the other side. Each mission is also visually very unique and identifiable. Pairing all this with the game’s superb soundtrack elevates the emotional tone of each major engagement.
This results in the general flow of the game relying more on your ability to react and adapt to some new element you haven’t encountered before, such as flying in active thunderstorms or escorting a vulnerable carrier. If you can’t complete a mission (and these missions are not easy), it’s up to you to figure out how to adjust your strategy. If you ran out of time marking a series of missile launch silos, is it because you spent too much time trying to fight off pursuers when you should have been avoiding them? Should you switch to a plane more suited to dogfighting so that you can thin those herds more quickly and get onto your objective, or pick something a faster craft to try and just outrun them between objectives?
It’s that element of player choice in how you tackle objectives that lends the game actual replay value. Each mission can be replayed in pursuit of faster times and higher scores, and there is an abundance of aircraft, special weapons, and upgrades that can be purchased towards this goal. Thanks to the variety of the game’s mission objectives, players who may be inclined to such post-game content will have a lot of reason to return to completed missions and experiment with new loadouts. It is worth remembering, however, that this is effectively post-game content on a campaign that is far from anemic, and players who aren’t enticed by the idea of score chasing will still find plenty to love here. The game also offers an online multiplayer mode that I don’t believe will hold many players’ attention, and a VR mode that is currently exclusive to the Playstation VR platform (and will be addressed shortly).
On the subject of the VR missions, I do not have access to a PSVR in order to actually give any impressions or review. Thankfully, fellow SDGC member Jeff Meier provided some words on the VR missions for our review.
Impressions on Ace Combat 7’s VR Missions
By Jeff Meier
Ace Combat 7’s VR mode is something that has been near the top of the most wanted list for VR since it was announced in 2015 — nearly a full year before PSVR even launched. Originally announced as an exclusive game for the virtual reality platform, it has since become a multi-platform title with a dedicated VR mode and separate campaign, a common trend these days. This will be disappointing for many, not only because I can think of few games better suited for a full VR campaign than Ace Combat, but because the VR mode itself is likely too brief to satisfy anyone who’s waited these past three years for it.
The VR mode has three different options — mission play, free flight, and an airshow. The missions are the main attraction here, with three unique maps to engage in all the glory of Ace Combat’s frantic dogfighting. The first mission opens with a jaw dropping immersive cutscene, as your plane is raised onto the deck of an aircraft carrier. Looking around you can see the crew scrambling to prepare the runway for departures, other fighters departing as your ears reel from the punch of the engines. It all feels convincingly alive and chaotic, and soon enough it’s your turn to throttle up and experience the rush of screaming off a ship in the middle of the ocean, feeling the air lift you up to the heavens.
Before too long before you’ll be thrust into combat, and VR works fantastic to aid you in tracking your opponents, your allies, and the danger of the ground below you. High-G turns combined with the ability to crane your neck around and keep a line on your target even if the nose hasn’t come around yet is incredibly engaging and helpful. The audiovisual experience is also enhanced tenfold by the addition of VR, as little details like water droplets formed from diving through clouds feel like they’re mere inches from your face. The sight of water rapidly approaching as you plummet towards it, the creaks of the plane, the roar of a near miss, it all feels like this is the reason VR exists. The thrills continue on the second mission, a combination of aerial and ground assaults that have you defending a base, and the the third mission which takes place in the clouds above a gorgeous mountain range.
Unfortunately, these engagements are short, don’t have much narrative value, and finishing all three of them felt like not much more than an appetizer for a main course that just isn’t there. In addition to the main missions, Free Flight lets you replay any completed mission and just cruise around at your leisure, while Airshow (which unlocks after completing the VR campaign) puts you on the deck of the carrier commanding other pilots to perform stunts. Both are nice distractions, but without any set objectives the novelty is bound to wear off shortly, and the VR mode’s visual concessions are far more apparent when your attention isn’t focused on downing enemy craft. This makes these kind of sightseeing affairs far less appealing than they might seem.
Additionally, for all the great ways that VR compliments the game, it’s a shame there doesn’t appear to be anything in the way of additional accessibility or customization for the VR experience, something most games these days offer. Things like vignetting or field-of-view adjustments that might help those experiencing sickness or discomfort are absent, as there’s simply no settings menu for the mode at all. This doesn’t hurt the core experience but it does mean there will be people unable to enjoy this experience. Overall, the VR mode of Ace Combat 7 is a great side bonus for anyone buying the game already, but it’s hard to recommend it as a major selling point for the full priced title.
The Verdict
Ace Combat 7 is, ultimately, a very good game for fans of the series and new players looking for something fresh. Those who approach the game with the patience to learn will find a challenging-but-engaging experience that empowers the player to feel like they’ve earned their ace pilot status. The story is a bit silly and nonsensical, the multiplayer feels tacked on, and the VR missions feel like the demo for a larger (fantastic) game. Still, the lengthy, varied campaign offers plenty to do even for players who only like to play through games once. There’s a good chance you’ve never played an Ace Combat game before, and 7 is an awful good place to start.
