Almost the best Ace Combat ever.

Pros
- Soundtrack is amazing, every stage has one motivational song. The mixing with the dialogues, mission progress, entering clouds, etc is also top-notch.
- Story is great; might not be so impressive for newcomers but it's a huge complement for the previous events. This is not a generic military war. The AI evolution and "how we're attached to technology" is a great theme.
- Characters are good, overall not so appealing (maybe due to little appearance) but I loved Tabloid and Avril.
- Gameplay is fantastic. Every aircraft feels smooth and responsive, I loved the addition of post-stall maneuvers and railgun special weapons. The weather system was annoying on my side many times but also saved me some other times, I like it.
- The aircraft tree research system is very confortable to progress. No crazy missions to do like some previous games but you still need to play a lot to unlock everything. Good they allowed multiplayer to share planes with single. Plane parts are a great variety for the customization.
- Missions overall are great, even the boring stuff like the stealth infiltration are compensated by good action at the same mission. And there's well-placed checkpoints to prevent going the boring parts again. Replayability is still as valuable as previous games with Ace difficulty and better customization.
- A good PC port in the performance part. My old rig managed to run better than consoles.
- Multiplayer is fun I guess
- Graphics overall are great. The dark blue sky is beautiful and the exploding planes in the air are breathtaking.

Cons
- Missed some options and choices in missions. I loved the "honor system" in AC Zero and was expecting something similar in this game, but it's totally linear.
- Multiplayer is very lacking in content. Two modes that may get boring after some hours and only accepts fighters. Not even a mode of attack/defend base to give multiroles or maybe attackers more value? Also co-op, Infinite was mostly enjoyable in co-op and there's none here. I expect multiplayer stuff coming in the DLCs.
- Other than the flight stick stuff everyone's complaining, the overall control customization could be much better. I play with yaw controls on RT/LT on 360 controller and they don't have incremental yaw, they just go to max yaw. Even on emulated PS2 games I can do that.
- Some textures in the game are veeery ugly. Could be my old graphics card but I set textures to maximum and still see some very blurry ground you get close like airfields. Even on planes, I can't read some of the emblems because it's so low res. Also lots of pop-in.
- Could use some more planes. Even tough AC5 had some fillers, more than 50 options on that was awesome, and then 36 planes on AC0. Then there's AC7 with 29 crafts. Customization with parts is much better than previous games so we might have more variety, but I miss A-6E, Tornado GR, JAS, J35, etc. Let's see what DLCs will give us.
- I can't play mission 19 for the first time again

The complaints are almost as many as the praises, but they are mostly nitpicks that don't interfere in how good and fun this game is. A solid 9/10, would easily be a 10/10 if wasn't for some of these nitpicks.

Almost the best Ace Combat ever. [b]Pros[/b] - Soundtrack is amazing, every stage has one motivational song. The mixing with the dialogues, mission progress, entering clouds, etc is also top-notch. - Story is great; might not be so impressive for newcomers but it's a huge complement for the previous events. This is not a generic military war. The AI evolution and "how we're attached to technology" is a great theme. - Characters are good, overall not so appealing (maybe due to little appearance) but I loved Tabloid and Avril. - Gameplay is fantastic. Every aircraft feels smooth and responsive, I loved the addition of post-stall maneuvers and railgun special weapons. The weather system was annoying on my side many times but also saved me some other times, I like it. - The aircraft tree research system is very confortable to progress. No crazy missions to do like some previous games but you still need to play a lot to unlock everything. Good they allowed multiplayer to share planes with single. Plane parts are a great variety for the customization. - Missions overall are great, even the boring stuff like the stealth infiltration are compensated by good action at the same mission. And there's well-placed checkpoints to prevent going the boring parts again. Replayability is still as valuable as previous games with Ace difficulty and better customization. - A good PC port in the performance part. My old rig managed to run better than consoles. - Multiplayer is fun I guess - Graphics overall are great. The dark blue sky is beautiful and the exploding planes in the air are breathtaking. [b]Cons[/b] - Missed some options and choices in missions. I loved the "honor system" in AC Zero and was expecting something similar in this game, but it's totally linear. - Multiplayer is very lacking in content. Two modes that may get boring after some hours and only accepts fighters. Not even a mode of attack/defend base to give multiroles or maybe attackers more value? Also co-op, Infinite was mostly enjoyable in co-op and there's none here. I expect multiplayer stuff coming in the DLCs. - Other than the flight stick stuff everyone's complaining, the overall control customization could be much better. I play with yaw controls on RT/LT on 360 controller and they don't have incremental yaw, they just go to max yaw. Even on emulated PS2 games I can do that. - Some textures in the game are veeery ugly. Could be my old graphics card but I set textures to maximum and still see some very blurry ground you get close like airfields. Even on planes, I can't read some of the emblems because it's so low res. Also lots of pop-in. - Could use some more planes. Even tough AC5 had some fillers, more than 50 options on that was awesome, and then 36 planes on AC0. Then there's AC7 with 29 crafts. Customization with parts is much better than previous games so we might have more variety, but I miss A-6E, Tornado GR, JAS, J35, etc. Let's see what DLCs will give us. - I can't play mission 19 for the first time again The complaints are almost as many as the praises, but they are mostly nitpicks that don't interfere in how good and fun this game is. A solid 9/10, would easily be a 10/10 if wasn't for some of these nitpicks.