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.

Beat on Hard entirely in first person view. I would have used expert controls except the PSP does not have L2 and R2 buttons. I started with the F4 and died on the first mission as I learned how to play. The next attempt was flawless. I then tried out the A4 but did not like it at all because of how easily it stalled. I stuck to the F4 and skipped buying new planes until the F16 came along, which ended up being my most used plane. I preferred a focus on air to air combat rather than bombing, so that was probably why I dominated enemy planes and struggled with taking hits from ground targets. I took the girl wingman on the first mission that I could and was not impressed with her performance. So I went solo from then on unless I failed a mission and decided I needed help. The later missions were difficult enough to need the help, and I took her after failing both missions that had ally units to protect. I crashed during the first canyon run mission; I hate flying a plane in tight quarters like that. A helicopter would make more tactical sense in that situation. I managed to beat the 2nd canyon run in the A10, which was too cool of a plane not to buy. I upgraded from the F16 to F14, then to the SU35, and finally the F22, skipping every other plane even though the F117 is super cool. I even skipped the F18 because the F14 was better at air to air. I had a difficult time telling whether the SU35 or F22 was better and alternated using them. Until I realized the F22 had 8 more missiles, making it the best. I missed a lot of bonus levels even though I went out of my way to shoot down every enemy plane and most ground targets. I did not get any kills in the high altitude chase mission because I kept stalling trying to get those X29s, and by the time I decided to ignore them and go for the targets, they had left the map. Then at the 2nd last mission to destroy a sub, I finally seen another opportunity to use the A10. It dominated, but was completely unable to catch up to the cruise missile so I seen the bad ending. So I did it again with the SU35 and it was too fast, overshooting the missile but I managed to shoot it down after more careful speed control. I did not like landing. I did land on the carrier but did not slow down enough and plopped into the ocean. The next time I decided to follow the instructions, but it had me fly in circles and I ran out of time. The 3rd landing I ignored the instructions and did it by intuition, successfully landing on the nice big runway.

Then I played through the game again on Hard extra plane mode, using a walkthrough to make sure I unlocked all the missions. I used the Mig21 early on, and bought the A6 for the mission to bomb the carrier; it did much better against ground targets. I soon upgraded to the F16, then TNDF3, then F15, and finally the ultimate XFA27. I used the F117 for the same canyon mission where I used the A10 last time. I missed 1 bonus mission on the B path from my first playthrough. Perhaps in the future I will play through again to unlock that. I did try to I lock it in free mode but that apparently does not work. I still failed to land on the carrier, twice. This game was excellent and immensely fun. The enemies were somewhat easy but if they were more difficult the game would be too tedious. Sometimes the enemy pilots did evasive maneuvers, loops and air breaking to fool me up. I found little point in doing loops or fancy maneuvers thus my strategy was to brake while making tight turns to get behind, then fire my missiles when they were not banking. I usually sped up to shove the missiles up their ass, and even got quite a few with my guns. I had the most trouble when they air braked due to the confusion of being so close to the enemy; I braked also making myself a sitting duck as I turned to try to find the guy. My overall strategy of methodically shooting down every enemy plane helped keep things from getting too hectic. Probably the best feature of this game was a lack of game over for stupid reasons, like crashing after finishing the mission, failing at landing and destroying non targets. Instead the game just gave money penalties. This game was a pure treat to play.

9.0/10

Update Dec 31 2022: Just found the disc for this game inside my playstation, so I must have played it long ago. The case is nowhere to be found so I stuck it in with Air Combat.

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~