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Did you know the F-16 first took flight 50 years ago a few months back? It is currently enjoying its Block 70 revision in case you were fearing that air forces around the world are still flying half-century-old technology. Meanwhile, Ace Combat is turning 30 next year and, much like an airplane block revision, it evolves with every new entry. Sadly Nintendo owners might have missed this evolution entirely, with only a Game Boy Advance entry and two slightly different 3DS versions of an Ace Combat 2 remake successfully navigating to Nintendo skies. Sadly, the 3DS game carries in the West the title of Assault Horizon Legacy (+), which ended up confusing potential young nuggets to take the plunge since the home console Assault Horizon remains the most devise entry in the series, with developer Project Aces attempting to inject some Call of Duty-ism into the formula with disastrous results.
The pressure was on. The Xbox 360-exclusive Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation had raised the bar for the series (which was already extremely high after the PlayStation 2 trilogy), so Project Aces needed to ensure that the next numbered game in the series was their shiniest, slickest F-16 equivalent yet. In January 2019, Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown launched on previous-generation consoles and soon after on PC to warm reviews. Five years later, this very same Unreal Engine-powered opus now lands on Nintendo Switch, which is something none of us at Nintendo Life ever expected to write. Surely, there has to be a catch… right?
The year is 2019 and we are in Strangereal, the fictitious yet quite believable alternate-reality Earth where most of the Ace Combat canon takes place. Here, different land masses, different nations, different historical events lead to different wars. For this single-player campaign, we assume the role of a faceless and silent rookie Osean Air Defense Force pilot under the call sign “Trigger”. Peace is shattered by the invading military forces from the Kingdom of Erusea, precipitating a conflict that will be known as the “Lighthouse War”, a reference to the plot-critical International Space Elevator installation.
The epic 20-mission campaign details the journey of Trigger from nugget pilot to disgraced convict, and their eventual rise to legendary war hero. While it certainly isn’t original, the presentation is extremely well done with high-quality cutscenes that could very well pass for a standalone CGI movie, with characters narrating their own experiences from both sides of the conflict and interactions with the player, either as ally or foe. Regardless of whether this is your first Ace Combat or not, you are in for one epic ride. Don’t worry about being overwhelmed by controls, the first few missions do a terrific job masquerading as a built-in tutorial with detailed instructions on basic flight and fire manoeuvrers.
The biggest new feature in this entry is the weather. While attempted at a more subtle approach in previous entries, the weather is a full-fledged presence here. For the first time in the series volumetric clouds are spread across the self-contained map of each mission, all of them with hundreds of square miles of detailed terrain, cityscapes, oceans, mountain ranges, and so forth. Flying your impressively modelled aircraft into said clouds will cause condensation represented by water droplets and even ice to form on your cockpit glass, as well as contrails from your wingtips.
More than visual feedback, this is also an important gameplay element since cloud cover will now disrupt missile lock for friends and foes alike, becoming an important strategic element to keep in mind at all times. Rising hot air currents, desert storms, lightning strikes, and other meteorological phenomena will humble your multi-million dollar war bird, turning a majestic piece of aeronautical technology into a helpless piece of paper while you tighten your grip on the controller as if that will keep you from slamming into the ground or the side of a mountain. Add a dozen or so ground and aerial enemies trying to shoot you down and it is quite easy to overlook an obvious fact: This game is astonishingly beautiful!
Every environment is crafted with such care and mastery it is easy to miss the finer details. You can fly above roads straight into cityscapes, fly through underground hangars carved into mountains, and even inside highway tunnels if your skill allows it. Every skybox is a mural painting, every explosion a choir of debris. The fact that all of this survived the 1:1 content transition in this Switch port explains why development took over two years.
Fear not for lack of content, either. Once you complete the single-player campaign there are still dozens of hours to enjoy thanks to the Aircraft Tree. Each mission earns you MRP, the currency that unlocks new planes from European, Japanese, American, and Russian manufacturers along with sets of special weapons for each. Your personal favourites almost certainly made it into the playable roster.
Each route also unlocks parts that can help you customise each plane to your liking, so it will take quite a while to fully unlock and test every combination on offer. Hidden ace pilots lurk on every single-player mission and hunting them down (and claiming their unique liveries for your skin list) extends the replayability factor further. All of this for the solo pilot, but surprisingly surviving the transition to the Switch is the online multiplayer, too.
While it remains bare-bones compared to the long-defunct Ace Combat Infinity‘s squad-based missions, the eight-player online multiplayer functions the same as it did five years ago. There are only two modes (eight-player free-for-all and 4v4 team battle) played over some of the single-player campaign maps. Matches can either quickly degenerate into endless dances of circles among players with no one successfully gaining the upper hand, or someone has such a superior fighter/special weapon/parts equipped that it becomes a one-sided slaughter. Either way the online multiplayer is the fastest way to earn MRPs that you can spend on the aircraft tree since the rounds are short and even the bottom of the scoreboard will earn you enough MRP to make the pain worthwhile.
However, much like five years ago, the experience is very unbalanced thanks to the hundreds of possible airplane combinations on offer. At the time of writing just post-launch, we have been unable to find more than one or two active rooms, but at least all the matches we took part in were free of cheaters, something that utterly ruined the experience on PC.
Time to address the proverbial elephant in the room: Can the ageing Switch hardware handle such an ambitious game under Unreal Engine 4? We certainly had our doubts. This conversion targets 30fps (unlocked) which translates into occasional slowdown when the entire sky is filled with explosions, the resulting debris, missiles, enemy airplanes, gigantic aerial weapon platforms that spew out dozens of drones, thunderclouds, rain, etc. There is also noticeable geometry pop-in for trees and buildings if you’re flying at a low level, most noticeable in dense forested maps or huge cityscapes.
Some compromises, then, but there’s a sense that it shouldn’t be possible for this to run at all, yet somehow it does. None of the issues truly affect gameplay, either in docked or portable mode (in which the later Switch OLED models really showcase this game’s beauty). Having spent over one hundred hours with the original PC version, we were able to really get in deep on several key missions of the single-player campaign to see how much the Switch would need to concede to its ageing mobile chipset, and we came away positively surprised how it all just works.
If you’re still thirsty after experiencing all the base game has on offer, time to fly to the eShop. The Deluxe Edition moniker translates into a generous offering of three extra DLC missions along with previous pre-order-exclusive airplanes and even a three-concept plane pack from previous Ace Combat games thrown in. However, this is where the generosity ends. Every single piece of DLC is also available on the Switch version, which means that something that took months to be drip-fed to players previously is now available day one on the eShop, with the total cost for every commemorative and concept airplane pack ending up costing the same as the base game. Most of these planes offer some truly unfair advantages in both single and multiplayer modes, further evidencing the unbalanced and unfairness of the multiplayer experience.
Still, we can’t deny the Top Gun: Maverick crossover pack offers great value thanks to adding iconic planes from the movie along with emblems, plane skins, and even a cover by Namco’s in-house composer of Kenny Loggin’s Danger Zone. We did feel the need for speed, but the 2022 movie’s fictional Darkstar airplane is such a beast in that department that it breaks some of the single-player missions while becoming an absolute nuisance in multiplayer mode. You simply can’t catch one if the pilot decides to turn tail and leg it! We know all of this is optional, but we must admit having the full package is the only way to scratch an itch we can’t otherwise.
We save one last paragraph to point out something that can often get overlooked in reviews: The sound design. Skies Unknown’s soundtrack merges both electronic and orchestral genres with ease. It is, however, in the sound effects department that Project Aces went the extra mile. Jet engines, missiles, and bullets zing by, the delay between distant explosions and the resulting boom, the crack of lightning striking your plane – everything is just pristine. It rounds out the presentation very nicely, the cherry on top of the cake that helps immeasurably to immerse you into the world of Strangereal.