This is not a "review" since there are still 4 whole branching paths through the game that I have not seen (though I accidentally saw some spoilers). It's pretty story-heavy, so I'd consider that a significant gap in my experience. I've found this game pretty disappointing from what I did play, so for the time being, I am just sharing some thoughts and moving on instead of forcing my way through more playthroughs. May return later.

The non-Japanese versions of this game strip out most of the story and a bunch of missions, so I played the fan-patched Japanese version, which was recently updated and was recommended to me. Honestly, I did not find the story in the "A" route all that interesting, even if it is working with some potentially interesting ideas. The way it's all delivered between missions felt pretty dull, and I just kinda wanted to get on with playing the game at some point.

Unfortunately it also kinda let me down from a gameplay perspective. Most of the missions are not particularly exciting or memorable, and the way the planes handle in this doesn't feel great to me either. It's possible that other paths through the game have more interesting missions, but most of those I played were just okay at best.

Visually, the game looks nice when you're actually playing it, though I think the HUD is a step back. The whole game's UI has this Y2K-era future digital aesthetic that is kinda ugly to me—I do like that sometimes in other cases, just not the execution here—and I find the HUD unnecessarily harder to read than what's in the other games.

I wouldn't tell people not to try this game, since it seems like most people like it and it has some interesting ideas, but I would say that this is not an ideal game to start with in my opinion if you want to play this series. You may love it, and if you want a game that you can really sink into with a lot of story and content, sure, it could be fine. But I think if you want to start with just one PSX game to get a quick feel for the early Ace Combats, go with #2 which I'd say has a more immediate and wide appeal.

Beat on Hard. I was immediately impressed with the graphics; it looked way too advanced to be a playstation game, and ran butter smooth. The controls defaulted to left and right turning the plane on its side rather than the simple horizontal turning of the previous games. I switched to the simple controls until near the end of the game. The simple controls were better for not crashing, while the advanced controls were better for dogfighting, allowing me to fairly easily do loops, fly upside down and approach from weird angles. The simple controls went haywire if I did anything other than simple movements. I found the early and middle levels to be very easy, due to how brain dead the enemies were, but I got mostly D ratings because I played it like the previous games; methodically killing threats as they were found rather than the rushing time limit bullshit in this game. I ended up with a grand total of: 9 D, 7 C, 6 B and 7 A, not counting the final series of missions where I got a mix of A, B and C. I tended to get As when there was not a time limit involved. I thought the nanobomb, stratosphere, and space missions, and the landing and refueling parts were pointless. The 2 stratosphere and 1 space missions were novel but too simple to be worth including. There could have been an entire campaign around space fighting. I did appreciate the ability to skip the take off, landing and refueling, but it would have been better to incorporate those into the game mechanics rather than being pointless 1 off things. Like if refueling could increase time limits, or at least if it was placed in the final series of missions where it would have made more sense. And if landing could restore health and ammo. The mission design in general was worse than the previous games. The most annoying mission was probably the one where I had to strafe a moving train before it left the map, but without hitting the innocent cars. Good luck with that. The escort missions took several tries, and the difficulty skyrocketed towards the end game when every enemy was difficult to hit and missiles were coming at me from all directions. This was when I switched to advanced controls, which was needed to properly exploit openings and defeat these enemies. This was some sweaty gameplay, but it got much worse during the ending, which was several levels back to back without any save in between. Good thing there were checkpoints to restart each level. It took a couple tries to get through the tunnel level. Then the boss aircraft were absurdly difficult. The first was like a god damn UFO, pulling off crazy maneuvers and dodging most missiles. I failed several times due to time limit. I figured out the way to get him was to speed away, then line up for a head on collision while going as slow as possible without stalling. Shove a missile in his face, then pull up and shoot the gun to maybe get a hit there too. It needed perfect alignment to actually hit, and I had to be careful not to crash into the ceiling. Simple controls would make this level and the tunnel easier, but there was no way to change that during the final stretch. The next level was fighting the boss in open sky with a bunch of enemy aces, who needed to be thinned out to even try to hit the boss. He was at least possible to hit from behind this time. It was about setting up the same frontal collision trap while chasing after any plane foolish enough to show it's back to me. Then the next boss was easier to hit, but far more dangerous because the first guy had no missiles. I found it was better to stay at close range and spin around in ridiculous circles trying to get behind him so he would make the mistake of fleeing with that sweet juicy back shown to me. It was slightly more annoying at the final phase with the electronic interference making it harder to see. I did not unlock the final mission, and my plan was to go back and get better ranks in the mission select, only mission select was not unlocked. At first I thought I messed up the post game save, so I did the final stretch again. The battles were easier this time, but I crashed in the tunnel a few times due to impatience. This time I took short range missiles instead of regular, thinking they would be more useful. The regular missiles were good at shooting down planes, but only from about 1000 or so away. They always missed if I was close enough to get the gun reticule. The short range ones could be fired in larger volleys, and did seem to increase the odds of hitting the bosses. They seemed to do a little less damage rather than having reduced range. I hated not being able to hit with missiles at close range; you would think that would be the best time to shoot. The MIRV seemed far worse, doing less damage than normal missiles because some mini warheads always missed. Again mission simulator was not unlocked. The guide I read said it was unlocked by beating the game in Normal or Hard. Others said it was only Normal.

So I started a new game on Normal using a guide to make sure I got B on every mission. The enemies were much easier, including the boss UFOs. I actually got A on the train mission, using the gun instead of cannon to strafe the train. I switched to simple controls for that level and any other that had little dogfighting. I even used simple for the final mission stretch, which made the tunnel and 2 underground levels easier. The final secret level allowed me to pilot a UFO, and it was sweet; excellent performance and the laser was actually decent at close range. I got C for taking too long, then went back in the mission simulator on Easy to get A and unlock this plane. It might be fun to use that to get As in the levels where I got Bs, but not now.

Overall I did not like this game as much as the previous 2. The graphics, aircraft control, and enemy AI were better, making the core gameplay very enjoyable. But I absolutely hated the time limits, whether they were hard mission failures, or softer for lower score. There was nothing wrong was dynamic changes to the mission for taking too long (especially the level where you had to destroy grounded aircraft and taking too long forced you to fight them in the air), but don't force the player to rush. I just wanted to relax and take out enemies, but every time a missile missed or an enemy pilot was slippery, I found myself swearing at the lost time rather than reveling in the challenge. I also missed buying planes with score, and making trade offs in the missions around killing extra targets; like risking getting shot down or running out of missiles or fuel. But this game had no fuel, huge missile counts, and enemies that were very little actual threat as dodging missiles was simple. Really it felt like the real enemy was often time. I did like how planes were classed as air superiority, ground attack or multirole, though there did not seem as much point to choose anything other than the best, and no ironman mode. I did like the extra gun and missile options, but you should have been able to take every missile type allowed by that plane, and switch between them on the fly tactically: normal missiles for long range, short for short, ground for ground, MIRV for.... I don't know, something. The story was also simple and the mission briefings were not as well done as the previous games. I especially disliked how the text progressed without player input. Give me enough time to read it leisurely!

7.6/10