#ac5

Exusia is really cool, but also I find the context for the boss fight pretty funny.

I get the impression, even if my lore knowledge isn’t 100% complete, that most AC final bosses have some need or reason to stop or fight you.

Chief doesn’t, everything has gone to shit and his job is pretty much finished, he has no stakes or investment to do anything else. He even has faith you can handle this, but he still chooses to attack you with Exusia because, he can.

Wall, Stain, Flick, Teardrop Drive, Bleed, Yellow, Throw a dice

No feeding by hand Bleed in my hand to closer No feeding by hand Bleed in my hand to closer

No way to know that way to dive I'm nothing in the world Hey, boy No Way

from ARMORED CORE VI: FIRES OF RUBICON (2023)

2024 Game of the Year Countdown #4: Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War Sony PlayStation 2, 2004

AC5 is almost certainly the fan favorite of the franchise. It has a very complex story that focuses on characters and politics more so than just destroying targets. In a lot of ways, it’s a very “anime” story and game. 

The game starts out with a lot of Big Events™, tossing you into the role of squadron leader. You can’t even change the garbage plane you get for the first four levels, which definitely makes getting an S rank more difficult, but also works well with the story since your base and squadron are struggling and being overrun as well. I think three missions occur on the same in-game date!

With the addition of Dolby Pro Logic II, the game also has an option for surround sound and it’s amazing. The music has a depth to it that wasn’t apparent just coming out of the regular TV speakers, or even stereo, and sounds are dynamic. Firing a missile to destroy a jet in front of you, and then flying past the subsequent explosion creates a very real feel that makes me wish I had surround sound years ago. It also makes me wonder what AC7’s VR gameplay would be like on the PS4…. Even if DPLII isn’t true surround sound, as it merely interprets certain music and sound cues, it does a really good job to make the music and sound effects stand out prominently. This is a 10/10 experience in the sound department.

Ace Combat is well known for having great music, and AC5’s soundtrack was so big, it took up 4 CDs. Some favorites include the remixed “Free Flight,” the super chill “Four Horsemen,” the first track performed by an actual orchestra for an Ace Combat game, “Razgriz” by the Warsaw Philharmonic, the grand finale and titular track of “The Unsung War,” and lastly, the licensed rock tune used in the trailer and end credits, “Blurry” by Puddle of Mudd. This would be the best soundtrack by far for an Ace Combat game, had it not been for a little prequel released less than two years later.

After playing dozens of JPRGs since the last time I played AC5, I see heavy influence from the genre. Ace Combat 3, the Japanese version at least, leaned heavily into the sorts of storytelling methods and plot twists that are more common in RPGs or story-focused games, and it’s obvious that they learned what worked there and combined it with what worked from a gameplay standpoint in AC04, combining them perfectly for The Unsung War. My replay has honestly been eye-opening as I was really getting a lot more out of it than I had in the past. While the big twist to the story comes a bit late in the story and makes some of the earlier levels feel a bit like “what’s the point?,” it also really thrusts us into a prominent position within the plot. Once that twist happens, everything we do feels just so much more significant and impactful, whereas stuff before felt like we were just a part of the machinery. 

The only real critique I have of the story, aside from how the twist felt a bit late in the game to be able to enjoy it as much as possible, is that a few levels stand out as really uneventful. AC04 had one objectively boring mission, with another one I’d consider borderline. AC5 has a number of boring missions that feel like filler in both importance to the plot and in actual gameplay. However, the highs are so high, these boring missions are forgiven and nearly forgotten as well.

One small thing that has always bothered me about AC5 involves the superweapons. There were only two superweapons and one superplane in AC04. The superplane there doesn’t have any special weaponry or features; it’s just highly maneuverable and fast. The superweapons also are integral to the story, with Stonehenge being of utmost importance to the politics, timeline of the conflict, and gameplay in numerous levels. Megalith might feel tacked-on to some, but it is at least rumored in debriefings earlier in the story, and serves as a great climax to the game.

The superweapons in AC5, however, often spring out of nowhere. There are two submarines with devastating anti-aircraft weapons that show up out of nowhere with no fanfare and no lead-up, and then are dispatched immediately without causing any significant turning point in the story or the conflict. Then, we get two space-based superweapons. At least one of those has a bit of lore surrounding it, but in the level where we shoot it down, it feels much more like a boss fight from the game 1943 than it does an Ace Combat enemy. It also has magical lasers that one-shot you and an unending stream of UAVs that are unreasonably maneuverable and quick. The superplane also looks like it was made for a space arcade game, with the laser and overall design looking very sci-fi. These don’t exactly follow the general mood of AC games, imho.

One somewhat controversial choice by developers, something that has since been almost lost to time, was the inclusion of novice controls. Normal controls on AC games require you to roll your aircraft before pulling up in order to turn. This is how an aircraft would execute a turn in real life, and AC5 added an option to change the controls to allow for pushing left to make the plane roll to the left AND pull up at the same time. So instead of handling like an aircraft, it handled more like an Arwing in Starfox. A lot of people saw this as the game going soft and being made too easy for people who couldn’t take “real” controls. I was relatively indifferent to the inclusion of such an option, although I would never use it. There was a true downside, though, in that the novice controls wouldn’t roll the aircraft completely upside down. Who doesn’t want to fly upside down?? Anyway, this has been a standard option ever since and I can’t recall anyone being upset about it in years. It’s nice that people can have this barrier to entry removed, so overall, I think it was a good choice.