GAME CLEAR No. 310 -- Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown

Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown (2019, Multiplatform)

Developer: Bandai Namco Studios
Publisher: Bandai Namco Entertainment
Clear Version: PS4
Clear Platform: PS4 Pro, PS5
Clear Date: 8/13/26

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Why should I care?
Goofy ass aerial combat simulator. You interested in that?

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Spreadin’ out her wings tonight

Ace Combat is not a series that attracted me naturally. Instead, it was my beloved MAGFest that got me to give it a go. The Tiberian Sons, who do covers and arrangements of Ace Combat tunes, played a set there, of which I caught maybe one song (the story of MAGFest is constantly running around between delightful but conflicting events). A dose of their “symphonic cheese metal” sparked the smallest ember of interest in this series that I had otherwise hardly given a second thought. When I saw they’d be returning for San José’s MAGWest, I decided I’d better read up on my source material. Although I typically desire to start from the start with a series like this, Ace Combat 7 is in fact the only game in the series available on modern platforms. Of course, I have all the past platforms the series has appeared on as well, but I was also given some assurance by reddit randos that the story of Ace Combat 7 is reasonably self-contained. Although I’ve more recently read contrary evidence, I nevertheless think Ace Combat 7 did give me a decent sampling of the series’s over-the-top world, characters, story, and soundtrack as well as its tight, wAnell-tuned gameplay.

For the uninitiated, Ace Combat takes place in a fictional world called Strangereal (lol). In this seventh game, at least, the primary nations are Erusea and Osea. It’s my understanding that these are often warring nations. One breaks out in this game, in any case.

The plot of Skies Unknown is one I’m quite sure I failed to follow entirely. First of all, a not insignificant portion of it is told through radio chatter while you’re actively blowing up bad guys and trying not to get blown up yourself. Secondly, it’s all rather inane and cheesy anyway, so I wasn’t especially tuned in at the best of times. Anyway, the belligerents are Osea and Erusea, and the former has an early upper hand thanks a combination of their surprise attack and their mastery of drone warfare. The drone bit is harped on in particular, and although I wouldn’t say the game has a ton of substance to say about drones (or much of anything), it does comment a bit on the ethics of training them on human flight and combat patterns, which feels a bit prescient.

The series is called Ace Combat, though, not Ace Global Warfare Commentary, so that’s what I came for. In that regard, the game is quite sharp. Flying around feels just how it should, and it supports a variety of control types that are well suited to absolute novices and flight sim diehards alike. I took advantage of the controls for babies and am quite glad I did — this game is pretty tough for a first-timer! Despite playing on easy difficulty with the easiest control scheme, I still had to retry a number of missions. Once I got the hang of how to properly tail my enemies and wait for just the right time to fire my guns or missiles, it became quite a satisfying game loop. Firing off a pair and then doing a high-G turn to pursue your next enemy while receiving a “DESTROYED” notification confirming your no-look kill seconds later is just undeniably sick.

While strong minute-to-minute piloting is required, something that tripped me up early as well was planning. You gotta pay attention to your briefing and load your plane out in a manner appropriate to the mission. If you’re blowing up enemy facilities, you probably want a decent surface-to-ground loadout. If you’re dealing with a big boss aircraft, you probably want solid air-to-air. If you’re doing a low-altitude run through a canyon, you probably want something fairly nimble. You get the idea.

All this adds up to a score-chaser’s dream. Each of the game’s 20 missions can be min-maxed to hell if you so choose. You could squeeze tons of hours out of this game just hunting down the S-ranks alone. Fortunately, none of this gets in the way of just completing the story to a satisfactory level.

That’s a good thing because the game just didn’t quite do it for me. The problem isn’t that the game is bad. Like I said, I think the gameplay is well-tuned, and the soundtrack is exactly the type of symphonic cheese Tiberian Sons claims to love. The story may be pretty stupid, but the characters are charming, and their silly and dramatic radio chatter throughout the game is rather enjoyable. The problem is simply that I do not yearn to engage in realistically simulated warfare! In some of the same way that I have no interest in Call of Duty (although I think Ace Combat is a higher-integrity product), I just don’t feel good about blowing stuff and people up in a Lockheed Martin-licensed airplane. The story is written in such a way that you are on the obviously morally right side of the war and never have to make an ethically ambiguous decision, which is nice, but it doesn’t help a ton. This is simply not a power fantasy I yearn to fulfill.

If that is the type of shit you want to do, though, it really seems like this is the cream of the crop. And you’ve got Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve to look forward to later this year.

For my part, I’m glad to have at least tried the series. I was also lucky — Tiberian Sons based their MAGWest set almost entirely on Ace Combat 7, and it kicked ass. So I’ll certainly keep listening to them at least. Bully for me.