The Republic of Sotoa has launched a devastating attack on the Federation of Central Usea using satellite-launched kinetic harpoons, the so-called Tonitrus Spears. With the Federation's military in shambles, Sotoa quickly advances with ground and air forces spearheaded by two enormous land-battleships, capturing the Usean capital city of Theve. The aircraft carrier FCU Endurance and its supporting forces launch a counter-attack headed by Joker Squadron and the legendary "Wings of Theve" air combat ace. A newly-recruited pilot learns there is no such person, with different pilots inheriting the mantle every time the previous holder dies. As the new Wings of Theve, they have to rally the Federation's scattered forces and show the Sotoans can be beaten before the global superpowers intervene and carve up what's left between them.
Ace Combat 8 is, as per linear causality (not always a given in video game series), the successor to 2019's Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown, itself a resurrection of the venerable Japanese air combat series after many years of inaction. It is not a sequel since, as with most games in the series, it depicts a self-contained conflict unrelated to previous ones, aside from some brief mentions of prior events and a couple of character cameos. The only thing you really need to know going into this is that, despite the presence of real-world aircraft like the F-22 Raptor, F-35 Lightning, Su-57 and Eurofighter Typhoon (I'm guessing Namco still can't get the Chinese Air Force on board with licensing), the setting is actually a completely fictional, alternate-universe version of Earth, "Strangereal," with its own geography and political situation. This allows people to fly aircraft against one another without getting caught up in real-world political controversies, which is a creative solution to the problem.
Ace Combat 7 was very good but a bit odd, in that you played a member of a penal battalion that had its own aircraft, another reflection that in Strangereal both fuel and parts to make aircraft are so plentiful that running your own F-15 Strike Eagle is only marginally more expensive than buying a used Fiat Uno in our world. Ace Combat 8 immediately makes its premise more believable by having you as a legit military pilot, initially in a situation akin to classic SF show Battlestar Galactica. Your homeland has been lost and you have to lead the fightback from a convoy of surviving military and civilian vessels. Of course, things aren't quite as apocalyptic as in that franchise, and quickly the game has you linking up scattered-but-still-extant military forces and launching a more credible counter-offensive.
The setting may reflect our real world - there are civilian airliners, drones, smartphones, social media and fast food - but there is also a strong pulp SF influence. This world took a direct hit from a series of asteroid fragments a few decades back, leaving huge impact craters across the surface, whilst one nation has built a space elevator to lift cargo into orbit. The space elevator was a major flashpoint for battles in the previous game and it shows up again here, though now controlled by an independent city-state which holds the elevator in a state of almost religious awe.
The setting and worldbuilding is excellent, if a bit crazy, and the game's actual story is very solid, though it probably needs a bit more setup. Namco has created three live-action short films setting up the start of the war, but the story does start more or less in media res and you have to pick up what's going on as the early missions chaotically unfold. This includes you having to work out that your squadron is hardly the best-of-the-best, and has even been forced to rely on a teenage circus stunt flyer because military pilots are in such short supply (potentially a nod to Macross's Hikaru, aka Robotech's Rick Hunter). Morale is horrendous, but can be turned around as they realise the latest "Wings of Theve" - your good self, naturally - is actually a real ace pilot who can help turn the tide of the war. Watching not just your single squadron but every military unit you fight alongside through the whole game (ranging from local partisans and insurgents to marines, infantry and armoured units) regain their fire and belief after seeing your example is very impressive, if a little corny.
In fact, Ace Combat 8 has relatively little truck with cynicism. There is some in the world, with every mega-corporation turning out to be corrupt and shady, but this is a game that likes to wear its heart on its sleeve. You guys are heroes, and you may have doubts about killing or blind patriotism, but your job is to save innocent lives. The game's positive attitude is endearing, though the near-constant praise (especially in the game's back half) about how amazing you are can get a little over-the-top.
Gameplay is pretty much unchanged from Ace Combat 7, down to controls and UI, though visuals are obviously superior. The big new feature in this game is dynamic cloud formation and how your aircraft can be impacted by clouds, including icing up, getting rained on or losing almost all visibility right down to the deck (though the game tries to at least be fair about that and not kill you with fog). There are multiple flight modes, with a basic arcade one for those using controllers or a more advanced one for those with stick-with-HOTAS setups like the Thrustmaster series. The latter requires much finer control of speed, allowing you to dynamically slow to turn and then blast out of turns with afterburners to shake an enemy missile lock or gain the advantage over a pursuing enemy. It's dynamic and exhilarating. However, the limitations from Ace Combat 7 remain, such as not being able to remap controls on the joystick and some standard features (like using the hat button to look around) not being present.
The sometimes-harsh difficulty spikes from Ace Combat 7 are not really present this time around, and if I had to restart a mission it was generally down to my own mistakes, with clear ways of how to do the mission differently. Moreso than Ace Combat 7, AC8 relies heavily on orders to your wingmen. Knowing when to gang up on an enemy plane or disperse your wing to engage multiple targets to hit the objective counter in the mission time limit is key. During target-rich missions, like covering a D-Day-sized invasion of a major city, knowing when to focus on enemy fighters and when to provide air cover to ground forces is vital for victory. Blowing all the enemy fighters out of the sky isn't much use when enemy howitzers have hammered your landing forces on the beaches from a dozen kilometres away. You're a squadron commander and sometimes have to hang back a little to orchestrate the battle rather than get caught up in personal dogfights.
Mission variety and quality here is much better than the previous game (which was already decent), with some absolutely gargantuan battles putting anything in the series to shame. Advancing quickly to reach cover before an orbital bombardment starts is genuinely tense, and the multiple assaults on large cities are epic, as is the now-contractually-mandated defend-the-space-elevator mission. One mission, where you simply have to defend an island garrison against an approaching enemy wall of around a thousand planes, is simply glorious.
There is also more content here, with 30 missions compared to the previous game's 20. However, this does not necessarily translate to a longer game, with my counters showing Ace Combat 7 clocking in at 24 hours and Ace Combat 8 at 22 (neither with invoking multiplayer), so the focus here is on some quite short, sharp missions alongside the epic setpiece ones. But the scale and scope of the battlefields, especially the huge cities, goes far beyond what the previous game attempted.
Some of my main problems with the previous game has also been fixed. Your wingmen are better-characterised and now much more useful. In the previous game they did minimal damage to the enemy, apparently needing you to sweep in and finish them off, whilst here they can shoot down enemy planes without your involvement. Characterisation is much better, helped by between-mission cutscenes where you can get to know your wingmen and crewmates on the carrier better, and dialogue choices in missions which can actually impact later events (choose to relieve an allied squadron and that squadron will be available to help in a later mission, let them be destroyed, and they won't be). The story is more layered, with more interesting subplots revolving around the mixed loyalties of Federation member-states that want to declare independence but also don't want to be crushed by Sotoa, and a shady super-corportation that has declared itself neutral but also clearly isn't. Obviously there are also charismatic villains prone to grandstanding and speechifying, but fortunately not on the scale of whatshisname-with-fourteen-surnames from the previous title.
Some very minor negatives remain. Not being able to remap controls is irritating, and only giving you 5 flares whilst allowing you to carry 150 missiles remains deeply weird. There's also a lack of targeting options, such as being able to immediately target mission-critical enemies or the nearest enemy, with you instead usually just targeting the enemy under your reticule regardless of if they are 50 metres away or 15 kilometres. These are options that were available in games like TIE Fighter over thirty years ago, so not having them here is unusual.
Still, these are far from major problems. Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve (*****) is outrageously entertaining, allowing you to fulfil your Top Gun fantasies through a pulpy story replete with interesting characters, boo-hiss villains, cheerable heroes, absurdly-scaled battles and possibly the best video game soundtrack this side of Clair Obscur. The game is available now on PC, Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5.
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