Now Playing: Ace Combat 7

This is the first time I’ve played an Ace Combat game so the usual caveats apply – I’m not the best person to say if it’s a good entry in the series or not and I can’t compare it to previous games. All I can do is review what I played. Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown is an arcade-style flight combat game which isn’t a genre I typically play or have much experience with. The game is set within a fantasy world but features real world aircraft – which feels a little weird, but I guess it doesn’t really matter.

The story is a little . . . messy. I don’t know how much it ties into or follows previous games / characters of the series but I don’t think you’d need to play / read up on them to follow what’s going on. I wouldn’t say the story itself is bad, more the way it’s told.

At the beginning of the game you’re introduced to a character called Avril who I initially thought I’d be playing as but instead we start the game as a mute, faceless pilot called Trigger. The story also focuses on an enemy pilot – Mihaly – who I also thought we might switch to at some point in the campaign to see the ‘other side’ of the conflict. But no, you only play as Trigger throughout the entire game.

Like I said, it’s not bad it’s just kind of weird when the game spends so much time on these other characters you’re not actually playing as. Oh, and I need to mention that hilarious moment when one character takes an entirely unnecessary and utterly bizarre parachute jump towards the end of the game. It’s supposed to be dramatic, but it’s so ridiculous and silly I couldn’t stop laughing.

The game also has a lot of dialogue cut in during missions which you can’t always pay the closest attention to because you’re in the middle of a fight so you’re left wondering what was said or what your new orders are.

Frankly though, I’m not going to pretend the story / character aspects of AC7 really matter all that much. They do the job of seeing you from one mission to the next and provide the context you need to understand why you’re blowing shit up.

The campaign of AC7 is fairly substantial with 20 missions to play and lots to unlock. I played through the entire campaign twice in a row which gives you an idea of how much I enjoyed it. I do feel like the campaign could be more guided in terms of unlocking aircraft that perform different roles for different missions.

The game just lets you pick whatever you want to fly (provided you’ve unlocked it) regardless of the mission type and whilst I think that’s good for subsequent plays, it might have been neat if you unlock different aircraft type the first time through.

For example, a bomber type for an air to ground offensive mission. It would just vary up the campaign a little more in the early stages when you’re restricted to only a handful of aircraft because you’ve not yet earned enough credits to unlock new ones.

The missions offer a good variety of environments and objectives. And the game looks and feels great to play. It is very ‘arcade’ in the sense that every aircraft can carry 80 or so missiles and you can perform high speed, break neck U-turns that would probably kill a real pilot, but I can’t say that’s not fun and I never really got tired of shouting ‘Eagle 1, Fox 2!’ every time I fired a missile at an enemy aircraft.

AC7 also has a great soundtrack that really pumps you up during certain moments of the campaign. Even if you don’t really care much about the bigger picture, you’ll still enjoy and be engaged by those individual moments.

There is a multiplayer mode in AC7 but at the time I played it, the mode is entirely dead so I really can’t comment on it. There’s also no VR support which is incredibly disappointing considering the game did have a few VR missions released for PSVR, but these haven’t been included in the PC release. I would love to play through this game again in VR. I know there’s ‘unofficial’ support, but it’s not exactly ideal.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed my time with Ace Combat 7. It’s a solid, fun and engaging game with decent replay value that, with just a few tweaks here and there to the story and to the unlock system, could have scored even higher. Oh, and official VR support would have helped too. If you see it on sale, it’s worth giving a spin.

7/10