PS4 Ace Combat 7 Skies Unknown (PS4)

Regarding the AC5 code; I didn’t get mine in the mail, either. I contacted Amazon and they got one sent to me within the day. Even if they hadn’t though, at some point reviews are supposed to be about the product, not the seller…

People talk about Kingdom Hearts 3’s long awaited release, but us Ace Combat fans have been waiting for this game to come out for almost as long. The last mainline Strangereal game that we got, Ace Combat 6 on 360, came out almost 12 years ago. And now that it’s here, I can say that Project Aces has, for the most part, delivered.

First, the good. We’re back in Strangereal, and it feels great. You’re once again flying for Osea (mostly), this time against an invasion by Erusia. One of the big themes of this game is information access, and how disrupting it can cause chaos. While you are principally an Osean soldier, that matters less and less as the game continues, information gives way to rumors, and lines are blurred. While this is the next entry in a very long-running franchise, newcomers shouldn’t worry about jumping in. Aside from a few exciting callbacks to previous games (particularly 5), 7’s story stands on its own. If you do get your digital copy of Ace Combat 5, I might recommend playing through it before you play 7, just so you’ll get some of the references they put out there.

The game looks really good. I remember early on the developers discussed that one of their goals with 7 was to make the sky itself more of an element in gameplay. That felt like fluff at the time, but playing through the game, it really does feel like special attention was paid to the natural elements. Clouds, for example, cause your canopy to fog and eventually ice up, and will screw with missile tracking, such that it’s a viable tactic to escape enemies by flying into them. Turbulence can throw you off course, and lightning strikes can scramble your electronics. These things don’t dominate the gameplay, but they are a meaningful addition and collectively make the game more immersive.

The music is, as always, excellent. Keiki Kobayashi returns to add his signature touch to the score, and it shows. It still doesn’t quite top what he did for AC5 in my opinion, but it’s a great work all the same.

There’s a general feeling like the technology has progressed since the previous entries. The prevalence of drones in the story are maybe the biggest indication of this, but you can see it here and there across the board. For example, whereas railguns and laser weapons used to be limited to futuristic superplanes in past games, now they’ve spread to a wider variety of more basic planes. The final boss in the game made me feel like we were gradually approaching Macross levels of dogfighting.

As a smaller note, the game is fully multilingual, with options for English and Japanese voiceovers and subtitles, as well as other languages.

Now, for the stuff I was a little disappointed by.

The first thing you’ll likely notice is that the plane selection is a little weak. There’s a noticeably large number of F-15 variants and Sukhois, and the selection is dominated by Fighters, with only TWO Attacker craft. Mainstays like the F-22, A-10, F/A-18, F-14, Su-47 and Typhoon are present, but for example we didn’t get the Nighthawk this time around, and the F-4 Phantom is preorder only. The superplane in this game is also not very interesting, at least in my opinion.

The wingmen in this game also feel a little less… there. It’s fun to listen to radio chatter like always, and most of characters have reasonably endearing personalities (I liked Huxian and Wiseman in particular), but while I do occasionally notice them getting kills, for the most part your wingmen are just kinda there to fill out the scene and provide dialogue. There’s also no wingman support mechanic like in 5, 6 and Zero.

A quick note on the multiplayer. I haven’t played a whole lot of it, but while it’s a little basic it seems fine. It has two modes: Battle Royale (basically Free For All) and Team Deathmatch. In order to prevent every match from being a throwdown between F-22s, Su-57s and YF-23s each aircraft has a “cost” associated with it, with the better planes being more expensive. You can set your matchmaking criteria to only pull up matches with a certain maximum cost, which forces everyone to use lower tiers of planes. There’s no voice chat from what I can see, but you can set a bunch of preset messages to broadcast while in-game.

Overall, this unmistakably the game that Ace Combat fans have been waiting for. It’s been a long wait, but Ace Combat is back.

El mejor título que pudo ofrecer la franquicia

Es mi primer contacto con la franquicia y me pareció un titulo increible, la campaña es adictiva, jamas repetitiva, tiene una jugabilidad de primera y una música que acompaña perfectamente la epica aventura.

So far it’s good but bit overpriced as it is a 11gb game and missions are okay and really fun to play overall it’s a good game .

Ótimo gráfico boa jogabilidade

nice entertaining game…took sometime to figure out what is to be done as never played its earlier versions but once figured out, its an interesting and addictive game …worth a buy but at the same time too expensive…was available cheaper at other websites…