Ace Combat 2 (1997)

It’s genuinely impressive how much this sequel improves over the first installment. The draw distance is now comfortable, so I no longer have to rely on the radar just to see what’s ahead. Speed and altitude indicators are also available in third-person view, meaning there’s far less reason to switch to cockpit mode. The afterburners are now visible, too, making it easy to tell when you’re really pushing the throttle.

The visuals are more colorful overall—odd to say, considering the first game let you fly purple jets.

Naturally, there’s a ravine mission. Visually, it’s an upgrade from Ace Combat 1, but strangely, it plays worse. In the original, the low-res “potato” graphics actually made it easier to spot the path; here, it’s not always obvious whether you’re about to slam into a wall.

The standout mission for me was one where you chase experimental bombers above the clouds. At those altitudes, many aircraft will stall, so something like a MiG-29 becomes essential.

In some missions, you’ll encounter named enemy pilots—callsigns like Goose or Razorback. Taking them down earns you special rewards for your collection.

There’s also a base infiltration mission where you must fly through a tunnel to destroy a reactor. The twist? The tunnel only opens after three minutes of real time and shuts again after one minute, so your timing has to be precise.

The hardest mission, in my view, tasks you with destroying radars using only your machine gun. It’s not the gun part that makes it tricky, even though some radars are on buoys at sea or hidden in inlets. The real problem is the way enemy planes spawn directly behind you as soon as you make an attack run. They seem to have infinite numbers, unlike your finite missile supply.

Unfortunately, I didn’t enjoy the final mission at all. You’re forced to chase a tiny cruise missile with just your machine gun, which is as frustrating as it sounds. The constant motion and small target size make it easy to get motion sickness—at least when playing on an emulator. I doubt real hardware would improve the experience much.

And yes, there’s another tunnel reactor finale, but this time you only need to hit the reactor—you’re spared the task of flying back out.

One odd note: I never unlocked the F-22, which meant I had to tackle the last missions in the YF-23. There are more aircraft to unlock on a second playthrough, but after that cruise missile mission… I think I’ll pass.

The sequel to Air Combat is a noticeable improvement in many ways. While the foundation is basically the same, upgraded mission design and presentation take it from decent arcadey fun to something that's a lot more exciting and memorable.

While many missions have a lot that I felt like I could just ignore with no problem, and the game is relatively easy on Normal difficulty as a result, overall it's still pretty engaging. It's particularly fun when they make you do something unusual, like destroy targets in narrow areas without use of your lock-on missiles, hit targets that can only be approached from a specific direction close to the ground, or quickly take down enemies above the clouds before your plane destabilizes. But even just plain old battles against groups of enemy planes feel solid.

Visuals and sound are also relative strong points. Like in the first game, I think the nighttime levels look the best, but there are others too that I thought had relatively interesting designs and layouts. The soundtrack is pretty fun here, the kind of video game music where I'm not going to listen to it on its own, but where it fits perfectly in the moment.

I do think there's definitely still room to improve little details in this one, but there's nothing particularly glaringly wrong with it that brought the experience down. It doesn't quite have as much going on as later games, but the focused scope is not a bad thing, and you can definitely feel with this one that it's a budding franchise moving in the right direction.

I finished the first title (Air Combat) and then started this one. Now I am already done with this second title. Well, I can only describe firstly how I was shocked with the great technological jump from the entry title! Everything is improved in this title when I think about the first game!

So, let me order the main aspects of this game...

Story:

The story stills simple, so it means that there is just a simple background information about a coup d'etat and then we, fighters, need to fulfill some missions to restore the order. It is very similar with the first game's story (if not the same).

Gameplay:

There was a HUGE improvement! In the first title, it was terrible to control properly the fighters, although the late game planes were better. However, now, the planes maneuver pretty better! It was much more pleasant to play the whole game when we compare with the first title. The HUD was nice too, with improved design and the controls, while simple, were very comfortable. I just did not enjoy the STALL system (sometimes, the plane would stall just 10.000 ft and with good speed in knots!) and, sometimes, the landing system. However, I need to give the credit for basic ILS system for the approach, very nice!

Graphics:

The graphics improved a lot too and the game became even more beautiful. Well, we are here in 2021, however, we need to remember that it is a game from 1997, hehe. So, I consider the graphics very beautiful.

Aircraft diversity:

Hum, I was not able to get my hands on the F-22 Raptor, one of my favorites, however, there is a good list of planes to use and they are much better than the ones from the first title (although I guess there were more planes in the first title).

Missions:

The missions are simple tasks, but very pleasant. As I told in my other review, it is possible to fulfill the tasks just targeting the main targets. However, for score's sake, the player can just try to destroy all optional enemy planes or ground units. There is also some special squadrons that the player may combat and, after defeating some pilots, get some special badges. By the way, speaking of badges, the player now can go up through the military rank, receiving new positions inside the Air Force. It is curious and funny how the fellow wingmen can also raise their ranks as the player progresses, hehe. The AI is improved too and it was easier to give specific orders (the first title had this option, but with less in-game options and strategies). It is also interesting to note how the wingmen may change their aircraft according to the sub-mission given to them. I just selected one wingman, I don't know if there was a way to fly with two allies.

Resume:

Pros:

• Great improvement in all aspects when considering the first title!
• Nice gameplay with good controls of the airplanes;
• Good variety of airplanes to fly;
• Funny missions to give good hours of gameplay;
• Good AI to aid during the missions.

Cons:

• The variety of planes stills good, but previous title seemed to have more;
• The landing system may be tricky;
• Terrible STALL system with no physical or logical sense;
• Hard to aim machine gun system, what makes the player willing to remain only with missiles!

Finally, again I need to alert that English is not my native tongue, neither I use it daily (at least not speaking it, but I usually read it). So, sorry for any problems with grammar, words, etc..

Thank you~ Obrigado~