YMMV / Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Five in-universe cases:
  • Why did Harling turn his aircraft back to the space elevator, right in the middle of an intense air battle? Princess Cossette believes that he was trying to destroy the space elevator for all the chaos it caused, but Avril and most Oseans believe that he was trying to protect it from an incoming missile — a question known in-universe as "Harling's Mirror". The ending of the game seems to lean towards the latter, as it's revealed that the space elevator is where Captain Kei Nagase is supposed to dock her spacecraft, Pilgrim One, after returning from a seven-year mission into outer space, a mission Harling himself pushed for, as revealed in Aces at War 2019. Harling was trying to help someone who saved his life and he couldn't even publicly thank.
  • Was Full Band's death a genuine accident or was that what AWACS Bandog wanted others to believe? Everyone in Spare Squadron accuses Bandog of intentionally tagging Full Band as an enemy in order to trick someone into shooting him down along with the enemy fighters, which is supported by the fact that throughout the mission, Full Band and Bandog don't see eye-to-eye on a lot of things, Full Band has been bragging about hacking into classified and sensitive information (and seems inclined to spread it around, as he offers to give Bandog a look when they RTB), and Bandog specifically asking for Full Band's location after Spare Squadron forms up around Trigger. Worse, it's implied Full Band sells the intel he gathers for a good price, and what he digs up, judging by his comments in Missions 7-9, is most likely Osea's plans to repair the last functional Stonehenge turret—a strategy that marks a turning point in the war in Osea's favor. With Avril's narration establishing that many members of the penal unit agreed with Cossette's anti-Osea speeches, it's not impossible that Full Band would consider giving away this information to Erusea. Even still, Full Band was flying a F/A-18, which is also what the enemy is flying, and it's suggested Bandog had to manually punch in the new IFF data for each Spare individually, so it still could have been an accident as well.
  • Was Captain Karl an enemy agent? Partway through Mission 16, an Osean AWACS operator identifying himself as "Argus" broadcasts an order to assassinate General Labarthe, claiming that the Osean Army officer with him is an imposter. This then ties into the ending of the mission, when Labarthe and Karl are killed when their helicopter is shot down. It's not even clear who shot down the chopper, as it could have been an Osean pilot following Argus's order, an Erusean radical, or even a rogue drone fighter. Keep in mind that it's already been demonstrated by that point in the story that IFF data can be hacked and spoofed, which raises the possibility that Argus isn't actually Osean but instead an Erusean radical giving a fabricated radio transmission to take out Labarthe during the chaos of the Erusean civil war, or alternatively Argus may also have been deceived by false intel from Erusean Radicals. The mission debriefing sheds no light on it, as the only thing that is clear is that Labarthe is dead.
  • The drones' actions after the mass satellite destruction during Battle of Farbanti, especially due to the game only setting us in their POV for 20 seconds or so. It's pretty obvious that Hugin and Munin Grew Beyond Their Programming, given they were able to do things a military drone shouldn't be able to do, like operating the space elevator's mechanisms, but what they had in mind beyond creating more of themselves remains unclear. Did they and other drones go rogue because they stopped understanding their masters' orders but still had "defeat Osea" objective in their minds, or was this a spontaneous, or even pre-planned, robot uprising? And had their plan succeeded, would the new drone army limit itself to attacking military targets or try to Kill All Humans?
  • From the DLC missions, is Howard Clemens actually a traitor and deliberately trying to to assist Torres and his Alicorn crew by sabotaging the LRSSG's efforts? Or was he just played for fools by the false intel provided by one of Torres's agents? Moreover, his goal to remove Trigger from the picture by siccing Mimic Squadron on him. Was it motivated by jealously that Trigger's extraordinary skills outshined the rest of the Osean military? Or was it an attempt to prevent Trigger from potentially turning out to be another dangerous threat like Torres, especially because unlike Torres, who went nuts from PTSD and getting stuck underwater for 2 years, Trigger has a legitimate reason to despise Osea after being falsely convicted of treason (further, since the DLC is taking place between mission 13 and 14, when Trigger was still only really a military inspiration rather than a savior)? Was it even his own idea or was it orchestrated by his superior Lieutenant General Shepherd, who disavowed all of Clemens' actions once things went south to avoid taking any responsibility?
• Aluminum Christmas Trees: The ADF-11F RAVEN can deploy smaller unmanned drones from its underbelly. It may sound like a ridiculous concept, but such UAVs actually exists, with the UTAP-22 being tested in the very year that the game was released in. Manned prototypes were developed during World War II as well.
• Award Snub: The Ace Combat fandom was utterly incensed when it was announced that 7's phenomenal soundtrack wouldn't even be among the nominees for best music for the 2019 edition of The Game Awards, being passed over by less outstanding choices like Death Stranding. Some even declared that they wouldn't watch the show because it's become nothing more than a popularity contest with no quality control on it. The game managed to nab two prizes at the PlayStation Awards 2019, though.
• Awesome Music: Once again, Keiki Kobayashi and his team are given a chance to show off their musical chops. As expected, they do not disappoint.
• Best Level Ever:
  • Mission 11 - Fleet Destruction. It's another Annihilation battle, but unlike the last two you're given more than enough time to both hit the quota, allowing for massive amounts of destruction with the proper loadout, and more than enough airspace to maneuver and dodge. Compared to the last series of missions, even if you haven't been Level Grinding through free missions or multiplayer, this is around when you start unlocking much better planes like the Gripen E and other Multirole planes that make missions like this considerably easier, and the elbow room this mission gives perfectly shows it.
  • Mission 12 - Stonehenge Defensive. As the title says, you're tasked with defending the last operational Stonehenge turret, which the Oseans are attempting to restore in an effort to shoot down one of the Arsenal Birds, from a massive Erusean assault. After fighting off scores of enemies including the Arsenal Bird itself, Stonehenge manages to score a direct hit past the Arsenal Bird's shield, bringing it down and turning the tide of the war in Osea's favor.
  • Mission 19 - Lighthouse. It's the signature large-scale aerial battle stage of the series, where you team up with the Osean and Erusean alliance to deal with the radical faction of the Erusean government and military that instigated the war, culminating in an epic battle against the Airborne Aircraft Carrier Arsenal Bird. All while accompanied by some truly phenomenal and uplifting music.
  • Mission 20 - Dark Blue. The final mission in the game, where you need to take down the two super UCAVs Hugin and Munin that have the abilities of the top ace Mihaly and none of the human restrictions in an attempt to stop them from mass-producing the drone army to take over the entire planet. It culminates in you chasing down the last drone into a long tunnel beneath the ocean, taking it down, and flying upward and escaping through the space elevator itself. This mission is truly the definitive Ace Combat experience.
• Breather Level: The aforementioned Mission 11. You've just broken out of your six missions in Spare Squadron, that Army of Thieves and Whores where nobody likes each other, you can't count on your Lazy Backup, and you often have to One-Man Army your way to victory; plus, every mission has some sort of gimmick that complicates (or, in the case of Mission 7, dominates) your tactics, forcing you to adjust your approach on the fly (or engage in some Forced Level-Grinding to unlock planes you don't have). Mission 11 has you back in a real squadron of True Companions, pardoned of malfeasanse, is when you naturally start hitting your stride re: MRP, and lets you go ham on a target-rich environment.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: Go ahead. Try to find any high-cost multiplayer match without at least one X-02S Strike Wyvern in it. Bonus points if it's equipped with the EML. Or, just like in Ace Combat 6, people spamming QAAM, especially flying the F-22A Raptor.
• Complete Monster: Matias Torres is the Captain of the super-submarine Alicorn, a veteran of the Continental War and a survivor of battleship Tanager's sinking at the hands of Mobius 1, going rogue along with his crew during the events of the three DLC missions in order to seemingly put an end to the Lighthouse War with the nuclear massacre of a million lives, thus terrifying the world into putting down their weapons. That seemingly extreme-but-noble motive is eventually proven false when Torres, at the command of an absurdly powerful boat and a fanatically loyal crew, reveals that for all of his posturing, he actually revels in the "elegance" of hitting a difficult target — in this case, the million lives he's about to butcher from 5,000 kilometers—over 3,100 miles—away—and has an almost fetishistic obsession with death. In fact, he'll even violate wartime conventions by feigning surrender just to gain time to fire his nukes, and if he's successful, he'll keep laughing maniacally and describe the act as "beautiful". On all accounts, Torres is a narcissistic madman who strives to inflate his ego through mass murder, and won't hesitate to sacrifice his crew for it; the devil incarnate, as one character would put it.
• Continuity Lock-Out: If this is someone's first Ace Combat game set in Strangereal,^note unless they're a player coming in from Infinity who was inclined to do their homework due to that game's many nods to Strangereal's lore there are a number of plot points they might not fully grasp.
  • Harling is a major player in the events of both AC5 and AC7, so unless players pre-ordered the PlayStation 4 version of the game, which comes with a download code for The Unsung War, they won’t fully understand why his death in the mission Rescue is so tragic.
  • The significance of the date, June 6, in which the mission "Rescue" takes place on will also be lost on newer players. Veteran players who paid close attention to The Unsung War’s intro cutscene, and played The Belkan War however, will know how important that date is, and will probably realize that the mission will end in failure.
  • The significance of Belkan nationalists and how "they love to stir shit up." To them, Belka is just a random country that was suddenly mentioned in dialogue during a mission and some cutscenes in the late game.
  • Similarly, they might not understand the significance of Stonehenge, one of the most famous superweapons in the series that first appeared in Ace Combat 04: Shattered Skies as an Erusean superweapon, which was mostly destroyed by Mobius One during his assault. They might wonder why there is a random system of broken cannons out in a desert and why are the Oseans so interested in it.
  • In the mission briefing for Homeward, the cursor briefly hovers over Megalith before moving to Tyler Island. Veteran fans would recognize the island from the events of 04, and would know why it would be considered as a possible location to look for supplies or use as a base, while newcomers would be wondering why some random island would be considered to move to.
  • If one were to look very closely at Dr. Schroeder's name badge, the ADFX-10, and the ADF-11 Raven, they would spot the Z.O.E. logo on them. Veterans would know what Z.O.E. means, while newcomers would be scratching their heads over the significance of those letters, including any future implications.
  • The emotional impact of Kei Nagase's cameo in the game's final mission is likely to be lost on newcomers.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • The AD Tank ground unit. Not only do these function as SAMs, but they can also shoot up any missiles, bombs, or rockets launched towards it. Rendering those shots on one useless.
  • Even worse are the Aegis cruisers. They pack a ton of health and are armed to the teeth with SAMs and CIWS that can shoot your missiles down in mid-air and most likely ruin your No-Damage Run.
    • Together with VLS units, the CIWS are out in force in the two platform facilities in Mission 11, making getting close to take out the cores a real pain... Unless you have the PLSL, TLS, or EML, allowing you to snipe out the cores without even having to tangle with the cannons.
  • At least to missiles and rockets, AD Tanks and Aegis Cruisers are demonic spiders, against which your only way to lessen their annoyance is going as low as possible... which, naturally, is only usually an option against Aegis cruisers, since they're universally on flat ocean and not nestled in with a bunch of buildings or hills and mountains. Against cannons (internal and external pods), lasers, and railguns, you would have the best chances of destroying one of those accursed things.
• Difficulty Spike: Your time in Spare Squadron is a marked change from the missions that preceded it. You're a member of an Army of Thieves and Whores who will bug out when the going gets hard, leaving you to Continue Your Mission, Dammit! as a One-Man Army. Because the 444 are officially the Red Shirts in your side's "We Have Reserves" tactics, you're constantly throw into dangerous and absurd situations — and a variety of them too, forcing you to Trial-and-Error Gameplay your way through each mission because you don't have the MRP to buy the fighters that will handle the whole thing (and sometimes mandating Forced Level-Grinding to get something that can). And your Mission Control is out to get you, only complimenting you, once, when you finally pass from his jurisdiction.
  • Mission 6, "Long Day", is the game's first "annihilation" mission where you have a fixed timer and a minimum score to clear. It's the first mission in the game that is not completed by simply eliminating designated targets. Additionally, taking on a map with so many enemies over such a large area for the first time can be overwhelming: you have a fairly generous time limit, but you still need to be efficient with your DPS to reach the necessary total, and there's no in-game guidance to help you decide how to prioritize your targets. And finally, there's Checkpoint Starvation: screw up and start over, period.
  • Mission 7, "First Contact," requires you to destroy five designated radar sites so that allied reconnaisance squadrons can make an escape through Yinshi Valley. There's low cloud cover, so you're always at risk of finding out that the other side of the clouds involves the valley wall. There's Geo Effects in the form of wind gusts that will throw your plane off-target and hamper maneuverability. And once you finish the radar sites, the allied squadrons show up... Pursued by the game's Recurring Boss, whom you have to fight off. To do this, you get out of the valley, but the weather is still going... Including lightning strikes that temporarily stun your plane and disable your HUD.
  • Mission 8, "Pipeline Destruction," starts off easy, with 444 assigned to blow up an oil refinery: a target-rich environment with Stuff Blowing Up in a gratifying fashion. But then there's a Halfway Plot Switch as a sandstorm descends and Erusean workers try to escape with oil tankers. You have to hunt them down in near-zero visibility and an intermittently functioning radar. It isn't too difficult but it is tedious, and there's very little margin for error since you have to fly quite low — in, again, near-zero visibility — so that your radar picks up the targets.
  • Mission 9, "Faceless Soldier," is another "destroy some radar sites in a valley" situation, but now the geography is reversed: the radar sites are at the top of the mountains, and you have to dodge out of the clouds to shoot them. This is a problem because the radar will pick you up and aim un-dodgeable missile attacks at you. Again, the margin of error is quite low. Thankfully, this marks the end of the arc, and the mission ends in triumph: the 444 is ambushed by drones with spoofed IFF transponders, which means a lot of dodging until Bandog manages to get the target designations sorted out, but after that the 444 unite as a genuine squadron, led by Trigger's personal Recurring Riff, and slaughter the attackers. So impressive is their performance that all (surviving) pilots are pardoned, and Trigger gets to return to formal military service.
• Epileptic Trees: Many fans were utterly convinced that the aged Erusean pilot Mihaly is actually Yellow 13 having survived from his fight with Mobius 1, even though the only thing allowing them to theorize that is that Yellow 13's body was never recovered after getting shot down, and the narrative poetically stating that his body "vanished into the blue skies, never to return to earth." Then Aces At War: A History 2019 came along and shot down that theory by revealing that Mihaly and Yellow 13 are two different people, with the former having been the latter's mentor.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Princess Rosa's dog, of all characters, is pretty beloved in the fandom thanks to the Special Effect Failure of the dog's model that allows for people to make memetic pictures starring it, as well as the surprisingly tragic circumstances behind the dog's appearance in the game as detailed below.
  • AWACS Long Caster is shaping up to be a fan favourite among AWACS due to a perfect balance between his professionalism and his tendency to make food-based jokes. He's also a breath of fresh air after having Bandog as your AWACS for the entire second act.
  • Out of all named pilots, Wiseman — the flight lead of Cyclops Squadron — seems to be the most popular for being a cool-headed Reasonable Authority Figure Ace Pilot who is almost as good as Trigger. Wiseman's humorous methods of dealing with Count are also liable to bring a smile to one's face, especially for those who find Count to be insufferable pre-Character Development. His tragic death at the hands of Mihaly during the Battle of Farbanti left many players upset.
  • Brownie, the sole female pilot of Golem Squadron, also gets some love as well because of her surprisingly tragic death at the hands of Mihaly in Mission 3, showcasing how Anyone Can Die in the game. Her voice actresses also do a pretty good job channelling Brownie's fear and resultant Freak Out.
  • Glamrock Squadron in SP Mission 1 are surprisingly popular for their unique, cowboy-themed dialogue and insistence on flying outdated F-4 Phantoms, much like how a player would do an F-4 run for the challenge.
• Fan Nickname:
  • A subset of fans, particularly those on r/acecombat, quickly took to dubbing Tabloid, the then-unnanmed fighter pilot seen raising a cup to toast in the PSX 2016 trailer, as the "Cup Lord."
  • Thanks to Max0r's "An Incorrect Summary of Ace Combat 7" video, Mihaly is either known as "The World's Oldest Incel" or "WomanSlayer69".
• Fountain of Memes: Captain Torres. For starters, his profile picture looks like he's stoned, leading to a never-ending cascade of wacky edits that turn him into a New-Age Retro Hippie. Then there's his deliciously hammy speeches about salvation, the imagination of a million lives gone, and Trigger walking over his crisp white sheets with his dirty boots.
  PICTURE IT! [Cackles maniacally]
• Friendly Fandoms: With the release of SP Mission 2 "Anchorhead Raid" DLC, there has been a surge of crossovers with the Modern Warfare series due to the presence of one Lieutenant General Shepherd - with numerous theories flaring up about which role he would play in the next SP Mission and combining events in the MW series with that of Ace Combat. It helps that not long after the mission was released, Kazutoki Kono has posted on Twitter saying that he intends to play the reboot Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019) as well.
• Game-Breaker: Has its own page.
• Genius Bonus: David North refers to Trigger and Torres as "singularities". In statistical analysis, singularities are points that define the behavior of those around them. This not only references their ability to inspire others to follow them and improve their performance, but also how hard it is to model what will happen if both are on the board at the same time.
• Goddamn Bats:
  • UAVs. Frustratingly agile and never alone, it can be a right pain to get a lock on one while three more are tailing you, and they can easily ruin what was up to that point in the mission, a sure-fire S-Rank. Weapons like Burst Missiles (SASM) are available just to make dealing with them easier.
  • AA guns. They're easy to kill and no real threat to you since they do so little damage, but they shoot much faster and more accurately than in previous games and are absolutely dedicated to making sure you don't manage to get the bonus points for taking no damage or get the medal for doing a No-Damage Run of the entire campaign.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • When being hit by machine gun fire, MQ-101 drones will twitch and spin erratically, which can be a little disconcerting when seen up close. However, with how machine guns work in-game (the game gives you a sphere around the enemy where it will register hits), it very rarely actually affects your aim.
  • During Mission 15, Mihaly needs to shoot down Fencer for the entire sequence leading to Wiseman's death and the end of the mission to happen, but once in a blue moon, Fencer will end up engaging Mihaly in a dogfight, evade the latter's missiles, and even straight up go on the offensive. Since the story progression is tied to that particular trigger, Fencer not getting shot down inevitably leads to the mission being Unintentionally Unwinnable. While it is a legitimate Game-Breaking Bug, it also sparked a hilarious meme which pegs Fencer as the next Ace Combat protagonist.
  • Similarly, if the player returns to resupply in Mission 6 right as the MQ-99s shoot High Roller out of the sky, there's a chance that the game will not properly register his Plotline Death, meaning he'll still be around after most of Spare Squadron deserts Roca Roja, engaging in his usual mid-mission chatter as if nothing happened. This can lead to the incredibly surreal moment of Full Band mocking High Roller's gambling habits post-mortem even though the latter's F-16C is right there.
  • Chaining together PSM's can result in players flying backwards.
• Harsher in Hindsight: That Golden Retriever dog that's a static image in a cutscene with 3D characters, which sparked a mass outbreak of memes? Turns out that's Kono's tribute to a fellow developer's dog who passed away during the game's development. It also probably doesn't help that in the game itself, the dog was gunned down by Erusean radicals while trying to protect Cossette.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: "Matias Torres", you say?
• I Knew It!: Many fans of the series theorized that Belka would play a role in the conflict somehow. And they were absolutely right.
• Iron Woobie: Trigger is an up-and-coming OADF officer who proves himself as a fighter pilot quickly, becoming one of the IUN's choice pilots for high-risk missions. Unfortunately, his career is swiftly cancelled when one of those high-risk missions ends with a stray missile killing former Osean President Vincent Harling, and due to the circumstances of the firefight he's easily accused of firing the killing shot (far later in the game it's revealed he didn't do it, it was part of an Erusean False Flag Operation), which gets him sent by Osean high command to basically die in the 444th Spare Squadron. There, he is treated with contempt by his superiors and his wingmen, told that he (along with his wingmen) are expendables with no rights, mocked for the three "sin lines" on his aircraft that represent the most heinous of criminals especially every time he amasses a decent kill count in one sortie, and sent to solitary confinement repeatedly despite his accomplishments. Nevertheless, as is typical of an Ace Combat silent player character, he never expresses any misery over his situation, and he reliably carries out his duties in Spare, eventually being recognized as a fearless ace and not only being pardoned of his crime but also going on to join one of Osea's most elite air defense units. Several others note that no matter the odds or the predicament he's in, he's never too down to carry out his missions, not even towards the end of the game when everyone else is tired and wants to finally go home.
• It's Hard, So It Sucks!: This is the main complaint about the game among those who are newcomers to the series or flight combat games in general. Some players simply aren't used to the frantic pace of air combat, or pay attention to mission briefings and in-game dialogue to clue them in to what to do next.
• Jerks Are Worse Than Villains: Col. McKinsey, the smarmy and selfish commander of Spare Squadron, is hated by players more than they hate the Eruseans that are at war with Osea or the advanced-AI drones that comprise the Final Bosses, as his animosity with Trigger and his squadmates is a lot closer, whereas the Eruseans and superdrones are merely seen as typical in-the-line-of-duty threats to take out. He constantly berates Spare Squadron, throwing them into solitary confinement repeatedly for asinine reasons, even when their defiance of orders saves him and the rest of the base, and tries to take all the credit for Spare Squadron's hard work, even outright declaring that the squadron deserves no thanks for their efforts during one particular debriefing. So it's refreshing for many players when he gets "promoted" to a dangerous frontline position as a "reward" for taking their credit. During your last mission with him as commander, you have to escort his plane and protect him from Erusean fighters. If his plane is destroyed, the mission is failed, but Bandog remarks that it was not a load worth protecting.
  McKinsey: So it looks like we're getting attention from above. If any credit is due, it should come to me. Prisoners deserve nothing.
• Love to Hate:
  • AWACS Bandog. The guy's a Jerkass who doesn't care at all whether the convicts in Spare Squadron live or die and insult them every chance he gets, and is even implied to be not above killing convicts who pushed it too far. Yet Bandog still has some fans because he has enough memorable lines in his insults and some of his banter with the convicts is genuinely funny to listen to. (For example, his constant threat to put the convicts into SOLITARY!) Plus, as much of a Jerkass that he is, he's at least miles better than the Hate Sink that is Col. McKinsey.
  • Matias Torres. Despite the fact that he plans on killing a million people to save ten million more, fans have found him to be quite endearing, thanks to his profile picture looking like a stoner, the fact that he and a large portion of his men survived being stuck underwater for two years, his ranting about how Trigger stepped over the Crisp! White! Sheets! of the bed he just made with his dirty boots, his shouting of ‘Salvation!’ during "Anchorhead Raid" whenever an air burst bomb hits, and his VA, Armen Taylor, giving a bombastic performance during the "Ten Million Relief Plan".
• Memetic Badass:
  • Crossed with Iron Butt Monkey and Bring My Brown Pants, whoever Trigger's unlucky WSO is when flying a two-seater plane. Given Trigger's fan reputation of seeing a barely plane-sized tunnel as a personal challenge, the fact they're even alive at the end of the mission is incredible.
  • Believe it or not, the triangle that plays during "Daredevil" has gotten this reputation, for remaining distinguishable amidst the storm of vocals and orchestra that plays alongside it. Fans have been known to cheer it on or even relate it to Trigger in some way ("Stick with triangle and you'll make it.", "Can you hear me, instrument with the three sides?", etc.).
• Memetic Mutation: Has its own page.
• Moral Event Horizon: Captain Matias Torres had already demonstrated that he was a few screws loose in the last few missions, claming he wants to kill one million people to "save ten million", but what little redeemability he had goes out the window in SP Mission 03, "Ten Million Relief Plan", when he not only does he fire a nuke at a populated Osean city, he does so by faking a surrender and capitalizing on the LRSSG's quarreling ("We cannot attack those that have surrendered!" "Then I'll happily quit my career!") to prepare the shot, foiled only by OIA agent David North seeing through his ruse and Trigger defying cease-fire orders to knock the railgun out of aim. After the shot misses and the LRSSG is tasked with now blowing the sub to pieces before it can fire another shot, Jaeger encourages his allies not to hesitate anymore, because Torres and his crew "quit being soldiers the moment they faked their surrender", all while Torres drops any pretense of being a Well-Intentioned Extremist and babbles about the "elegance" and "beauty" of murdering one million people from 5,000 kilometers away.
• One-Scene Wonder:
  • Major Deanna McOnie is pretty popular in the fandom despite only appearing in one mission. Probably something to do with her cool attitude, design, and the fact that she's the one who fires the Stonehenge cannon that breaks the first Arsenal Bird in half.
  • Glamrock Squadron only appears in the first DLC mission, "Unexpected Visitor", but they milk the entirety of their screentime, being "cowboy" veteran pilots that stubbornly fly the heavily outdated F-4E Phantom II, believing that their skills make up for their technological disadvantage. Their likeable and gung-ho nature instantly struck a chord with the fandom.
  • Vice-Chairman Edwards so far only appears in the mission debriefing for Anchorhead Raid, but he’s already made a big impression on fans for being a Reasonable Authority Figure, and putting Clemens in his place after its revealed that he’s a traitor.
• Paranoia Fuel: Not a gameplay example, but a lore-based one. In Mission 16, Labarthe reveals that Harling's death in Mission 04 was caused by an Erusuan drone spoofing an Osean IFF and even admits that this caused an actual Osean officer (you, but he doesn't know this) to take the fall, and that the "Osean" fighters encountered in Mission 09 were in fact Erusean drones too. What's to say that there aren't other Erusean drones flying around pretending to be OADF — or the air forces of other countries for that matter — and shooting up fighters who think those drones are their allies, or staging other False Flag Operations?
• Player Punch:
  • The campaign features several moments where a friendly the player probably has at least some affinity for gets downed mid-mission and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. Players usually turn to the very first instance of this as the hardest gut punch: Brownie, a good-natured, friendly rival to Trigger, is hounded by Mister X after retreating from the failed offensive against the Arsenal Bird in Mission 3 and is mercilessly toyed with by the Erusean ace before being gunned down, her final words being a chilling plea for support from Mage 2 (that's you, buddy) or anyone who's available. Several players have actually followed Brownie in an attempt to save her from Mihaly, all to no avail. This makes the player's ability to avert a similar moment in the final mission by splashing both ADF-11F Ravens before one of them gets the jump on Wit/Sol 2 all the more unexpected.
  • For anyone who's a veteran of the Circum-Pacific War, the death of Mr. Harling in Mission 4. At what appears to be your own hands, no less! It's later revealed Harling's death was actually caused by an Erusean drone disguised as an Osean fighter, but that doesn't make the moment any more somber for AC5 players, especially with a mournful rendition of that game's main theme playing in the background. This isn't even getting into Trigger's resulting court martial which kicks off the campaign's second arc.
  • Mission 18: Lost Kingdom is this in mission form, at least the first half of it. You're essentially raiding a small defenceless country for food and supplies. Combined with the enemy soldiers’ cries for help as you bomb them, it will leave you feeling like a complete bastard. The music is fairly appropriate for this reason alone.
• Polished Port: The PC port looks as pretty as the console counterparts and isn't very demanding; it runs very well even in older dual-core configurations.
• Porting Disaster: Downplayed Trope. The game exists on PC in finished form, with excellent graphics and all content available. However, it doesn't support many controllers: it makes use of Xinput configurations, meaning a focus on Xbox 360 and later-style controllers, while some older or converted controllers (both of which include HOTAS) won't work. This includes the DualShock 2^notealthough some DualShock 2 to USB adapters may be able to work. It also supports an extremely small roster of PC flight sticks, all of which are made by Thrustmaster and cost at least as much as the game itself does. While hacks allow you to use your ten-year-old but still-working USB joystick, the PC version still isn't playable conveniently.
• Realism-Induced Horror: Despite the presence of giant unmanned airships, massive railguns, rapid fire laser weapons, and semi-sentient Artificial Intelligence, the most terrifying part is the lack of proper communications across all parties involved in the war. The ablation cascade that occurs near the end when Osea and Eurusea launch a simultaneous A-Sat strike makes it even worse because with communications completely blacked out, no one can tell who's an ally and who's an enemy. It also leads to an escalation of violence between both sides, and some units from both countries even end up fighting each other due to a lack of communications.
• Retroactive Recognition: Full Band is voiced by Joe Zieja, who would later go on to hit it big by voicing main character Claude from Fire Emblem: Three Houses, released in the same year.
• Sequel Difficulty Spike:
  • Significantly so when compared to earlier numbered titles in the series. Enemies are more numerous and more aggressive in taking shots and pursuing the player. Enemy missiles track you more effectively and move at a speed compatible to the player's own, which makes evasion a priority when locked on. Defense systems like the AD Tank and CIWS can shoot down incoming missiles, which forces the usage of guns or bombs to effectively take them down. Missions often throw in tactical wrinkles such as rough weather (which can push your plane around and restrict its movement or top speed) or altitude restrictions along with tight time and score requirements to keep you under pressure. Earning the medals for completing the campaign without taking any damage or by using only machine guns are a challenge unto themselves and will put your mission objectives at risk by running out of time or being unable to protect an ally.
  • The three DLC missions turn all of the above up to eleven. There are significantly more enemies that literally fill the screen, they won't hesitate to gang up on you all at once, and they keep respawning. The missiles are even more accurate than in the vanilla game, and the bosses introduced have gimmicks that prevent you from attacking them easily (Mimic Squadron with jamming, the Alicorn with its barrier drones and CIWS). The first two missions are score-based with pretty high bars to clear under the time limit (most of the low and mid-tier planes do not have a missile stock high enough to reach the score in time without making every shot count, even on easy difficulty), and the final mission's first half is a difficult Escort Mission where the targets you have to protect go down very easily and are spread all over the map. All three missions also have very strict S-rank conditions.
• Ships That Pass in the Night: There’s a number of fans who like to pair up Trigger with Rosa Cossette d’Elise, despite the fact that the closest they ever interact with is through some easily missable dialogue from Cossette in the final mission, if the player chooses to take their time flying up the Lighthouse.
• Signature Scene: Cossette bringing down the Arsenal Bird Justice’s shield at the climax of Mission 19.
• Special Effect Failure: One of the cutscenes from the pre-release included a dog who was clearly just a static image among all the 3D-modeled and animated people. Kono himself later revealed that it was a tribute to his real life friend.
• Stress-Relieving Gameplay:
  • The first half of Pipeline Destruction (Mission 8) has you launching an assault on an enemy oil field. As you destroy one oil tank, the explosion will cause a chain reaction to other nearby targets as well. The sight of enemy oil fields exploding in a massive inferno one after another is pretty cathartic. This also doubles as In-Universe Catharsis for Spare Squadron; coming right after the encounter with Mister X in the Yinshi Valley, Tabloid appreciates the simplicity of the operation, another Spare declares "This beats being stuck at the penal base!", and most of the radio chatter consists of various Spares enthusiastically commenting on the ensuing carnage—including one unnamed member cheering on Trigger if the player's dealt significant damage to the enemy facilities before Megastorm Inessa II rolls in.
    Spare Squadron: Yeah! That's the stuff, Trigger! Go ape on 'em!
  • The first half of Faceless Soldier (Mission 9) involves doing a "corridor flight" through mountain valleys with limited visibility due to cloud cover, special rules that cause players who rise above the clouds to get one-shotted if they don't go back under them within a few seconds, and an unclear path of traversal through the level resulting in some frustrating Trial-and-Error Gameplay. However, the second half of the mission is a glorious turn around involving a pleasantly challenging furball of a battle set to awesome music where the fractious 444th Squadron starts pulling together and kicking ass, and is extremely morale-boosting moment after several missions spent being degraded as disposable.
  • In Transfer Orders (Mission 10), you can shoot down Hate Sink Colonel D. McKinsey's plane Roper One despite it failing the mission if you do this. Here's the kicker though, not only the game itself awards you with 1,000 points, AWACS Bandog of all people sounds like he doesn't even care as he gives a rather deadpan reaction, making it all the more satisfying.
    AWACS Bandog: Roper One lost, along with the mission. Not that it was a load worth protecting.
  • In Fleet Destruction (Mission 11), there's nothing quite as satisfying as blowing out the support columns and watching the platforms topple over and fall into the sea, AND destroy any ships docked underneath them moments later. Even your allies comment on how wonderful it feels.
  • The final DLC mission, "Ten Million Relief" plan, has you dismantling a nuclear submarine after its captain, Matis Torres, goes off the deep and and tries to nuke a major city from 5,000 kilometers away just so he can revel in the so-called elegance and beauty of long-distance mass murder. It is immensely satisfying to see that Mask of Sanity fall off as you blast away at the hulking sub and make it go up in a mighty explosion (seriously, it gives off a dazzling show of red sparks before it finally explodes and makes waves) as he can only helplessly babble about his failed dream of claiming "one million lives!!" A perfect fight for those who wanted an absolutely hammy villain to face off against.
    North: Trigger, give him the answer! Have him take it to the bottom of the ocean!
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel: After the divisiveness of Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation and Ace Combat: Assault Horizon, this is considered a return to form for the franchise.
• Suspiciously Similar Song:
  • The "Space Elevator" theme is suspiciously similar to the Stranger Things theme.
  • The leitmotif sounds a lot like "Hero Memories" by Epic Soul Factory.
  • It's clear that Keiki Kobayashi was listening to some Bedřich Smetana when composing "Battle of Farbanti."
• That One Achievement: One of the medals in the game requires you to do a No-Damage Run through the entire campaign. Doesn't help that the AA guns are more accurate and fire much faster than in previous titles so it's more likely that they will hit you when you try to destroy them.
• That One Boss:
  • The prototype drone that appears in Mission 10 and Mission 20 as the Final Boss. It's extremely nimble, fast, and can pull turns in such a way your plane could never catch up before raining down hails of bullets at you. Even a very skilled pilot will have a hard time shooting it down without wasting several missiles and/or keeping a No-Damage Run record. Its bullets also count as CIWS fire, meaning you can't "joust" with them to score easy missile hits, since the missile will just get shot before even coming close.
  • Mihaly (aka Sol 1 or Mister X) also counts, especially during your first encounter with him in Mission 7. He does, thankfully, have a habit that can exploited (there's a short period of time where he'll fly in a straight line at low speed after avoiding a missile), but players might not even notice it until Jaeger points it out in the final battle. Getting accustomed to his flight patterns and being better prepared for skirmishes with more efficient aircraft and/or situation-specific loadouts bumps down the difficulty during later dogfights, but the "King of the Skies" can still prove a troublesome foe. It's little wonder the capabilities of the aforementioned drones, plus Hugin and Munin, are based on this guy's flight data.
    • Mission 7 - You suddenly find yourself up against an ace in an inhumanly manueverable Su-30SM (a plane that will outperform anything you're expected to fly in at that point in the game, never mind that the player may not have had the foresight to bring in A2A special weapons given the mission briefing) who has a tendency of rapidly accelerating and swerving out of the way right as your missiles look like they're about to connect, and the rock formations of the Yinshi Valley are hard enough to navigate without a thunderstorm in the area.
    • Mission 15 - Mihaly is accompanied by all of Sol Squadron, who are nearly as agile as their flight leader, and he has a habit of meandering through Farbanti's waterfront as the battle rages on, leading the player through tight spaces. He is somewhat easier to tag during the scripted sequence where he tails and eventually shoots down Wiseman, however, to the point that it's possible to immediately trigger everyone's HUDs and comm systems going offline once Wiseman is killed.
    • Mission 18 - Mihaly shows up in his shiny new X-02S Strike Wyvern, complete with a EML that will hurt if it makes contact. As in, a single hit will take your plane from 0% damage to 99% instantly (meaning you're at risk of suffering a One-Hit Kill if you couldn't avoid taking damage up to that point). While this is extremely telegraphed (especially if you check radar), Mihaly also tends to turn on a dime to face you right before he fires.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • In general, planes are "floatier" than in previous games, having incredibly sensitive turning that will veer the whole vehicle into other directions the moment you start pulling the stick. Even the clunkiest and chonkiest of planes are overly sensitive, making precision more difficult than it needs to be, which isn't helped by your Boring, but Practical machine guns having been noticeably nerfed in damage and spread. These changes are somewhat controversial for series veterans and fans of Project Wingman emulating the handling model of previous games.
  • For balancing purposes, certain SP weapons carried by DLC planes were severely nerfed in gameplay when compared to their game-breaking power in previous games, a change that was not well-received by more than a few veterans of the series who had an affinity for these planes. The most contentious example seems to be the power of the TLS shared by all three Season 1 DLC planes, which is horribly underpowered (even with the damage mod installed) to the point that one needs to fire multiple shots to take down a hard target. Contrast this performance with its capabilities in Ace Combat 5 and Ace Combat Zero where, in the right hands, it could wipe out all enemies on the screen with ease. The same applies to the Falken's FAEB and the Morgan's MPBM. While they look flashy on the surface, they're not really useful to take down anything other than clustered weak targets, as even with the customization parts that increase special weapon damage, those weapons will still fail to take down most hard targets (any ship bigger than a Destroyer, the Arsenal Bird's propellers, etc.) in one shot. This is all made even worse by the fact that values for special weapons are stored separately for each mode, meaning the nerfs were considered unnecessary in single-player mode. While PC players can get around this with mods, console players are left with underwhelming versions of their favorite superweapons.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • While Avril Mead does play a large role in the story and has her own character arc, she doesn’t actually get to become a pilot and fly alongside Trigger. Despite the game establishing her as having a passion for the sky and shows that she has potential as a pilot, she's instead be relegated to a conscripted mechanic and a frontline soldier. She even lampshades in a cutscene by complaining that pilots like her are instead being put into ground soldier roles.
  • Tabloid is set up to be the Token Good Teammate of Spare Squadron. He's the one who came up with the idea of having Trigger leading the squadron, allowing the convicts to fight as a united force at last. Afterward he's instead shipped to the frontlines while Trigger and Count go on to join other squadrons, and they never fly together again. He later reveals himself as a Belkan to Avril, but this also never gets brought up again, even when he confronts another Belkan, Dr. Schroeder, later in the game. Finally, he gets Killed Offscreen while trying to rescue a girl from the fallen debris, leaving any character development he had moot.
  • A major complaint regarding the game's story is that Spare Squadron is only relevant for one act of the campaign despite them being the focus of the game's marketing. It doesn't help that most of them die over the course of the game, with only Count receiving any real character focus and development.
  • The same goes to the IUN-PKF as a whole, which ceased to be relevant to the plot as soon as you got thrown into Spare Squadron. Aside from Brownie and her tragic fate at the hands of Mister X, none of your other wingmen in Mage and Golem Squadrons get much development before they disappeared from the story entirely. Many players have expressed disappointment that they don't even come Back for the Finale when the Coalition Force joined together in the final battle at the Lighthouse, which could have served as the perfect Book Ends as well considering that this place was where you last flew with them before you got thrown into the 444th and there could've been an opportunity for them to note how far Trigger had come since he was a fledgling under their wing.
  • From the DLC missions, we have the Mimic Squadron. An Ax-Crazy Sibling Team Wild Card who's out for Trigger's blood personally could have set up a potentially interesting development about their motivations and why they hate Trigger so much, along with the fact that they worked for General Resource Limited. Too bad they got killed off in only their second encounter with players barely knowing anything about them except for the fact that Clemens was their commanding officer and the aforementioned connection with a mega corporation from Electrosphere.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • There are noticeable story and timeline gaps with every mission after Mission 15: Battle of Farbanti. When communications are lost and the situation becomes unknown, this was a perfect opportunity to show Trigger and his allies trying to find a safe area to resupply and regroup and try to reestablish contact with their command among the chaos. Instead nearly 2 weeks go by and suddenly Trigger and the LRSSG are conducting another operation. After that mission, another 9 days go by before the LRSSG heads to Tyler Island to try and regroup with whatever forces they can find. The mission ends with a desperate need for more supplies and fuel. The issue is that the next mission to acquire them doesn't occur for another 14 days. There are multiple opportunities to fill in the timeline gaps with other missions or exposition about where the group is staying or launching from, but it feels like the game just skips a lot of details and information to get to the final mission.
  • With the amount of emphasis Knocker puts on Golem and Mage Squadrons maintaining element at all times both before and after Brownie's death, one might think this game would've been the one to reintroduce the squad order mechanics from AC5, ACZ, and AC6 (gameplay elements that several fans would've liked to see return) and give the player more direct control over their various wingmen throughout the campaign or even allow for allied strikes a la 6. Sadly, this doesn't come to pass. While this is a bit more understandable while you're flying for the 444th Squadron ^note there's no flight leader for Spare Squadron, Tabloid is the closest thing Trigger has to a wingman for that leg of the story, and the Spares don't even function like a formal unit until right before they're disbanded, Missions 11 and onward see Trigger placed in command of his own squadron, with several of those missions also involving Cyclops Squadron (and other friendlies) as allied units while being on a scale similar to operations seen in 6.
  • Despite the large variety of Callbacks throughout the plot — including the Inciting Incident involving Trigger becoming framed for the death of a major character from AC5 (to wit, Harling himself) — there is no mention of the Ghosts of Razgriz wanting to avenge the death of their friend.^note While plenty of Fan Wank can be had about whether a classified, black-ops squad should go around pursuing vendettas in public, it is unquestionable that a classified, black-ops squad could do so in private. Additionally, at least one of them has stepped back into the public spotlight — Lt. Kei Nagase, captain of the intrasolar spaceship Pilgrim One — raising the possibility that the others no longer need to hide.
• Unexpected Character: The Experimental Aircraft Series DLC announced on April 5th 2021 marks the return of the F-15 S/MTD, F-16XL and FB-22 after having been stuck in spinoff Hell for by their absence from Fires of Liberation. Many fans were delighted by the news.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: Project Aces made full usage of the Unreal Engine 4 and current-gen technology in order to create some absolutely stunning visuals. A few examples to note:
  • The cloud system. You can see the clouds swirling and moving around from strong winds as you approach and enter into them.
  • As ice begins to form inside the clouds, the ice slowly encroaches your cockpit's canopy from the outside, not unlike your car windows icing over in the winter. It gets thicker the longer you stay in the clouds, until your vision is completely obscured.
  • The amount of detail cockpits of the fighters, especially the canopy itself. You can see faintly see scratches and wiping streaks on the glass of nearly every fighter, especially at night when the moon is shining down. You have to actually look to notice them, but the fact that it's there is incredible.
• Win Back the Crowd: After the last major title in the series, Ace Combat: Assault Horizon, split the fanbase over its real-world setting and gameplay changes, this game appears to be Revisiting the Roots. It explicitly takes place in Strangereal, does away with the divisive "Close Range Assault" mechanic from Assault Horizon, and pre-release material contains several nods to Ace Combat 04: Shattered Skies, which is highly regarded and one of the most successful titles in the series.

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