[Review] Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown – Deluxe Edition

System: Switch
Release date: July 11, 2024
Developer: Project Aces / Future Tech Lab
Publisher: Bandai Namco

While the Switch may be feeling a bit long in the tooth these days, leave it to Bandai Namco to swing for the fences with an incredibly ambitious port in the tail end of the console’s life. There’s nothing quite like Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown on the platform – dogfighting games are a rare breed in general, these days – and Ace Combat has always been a singular experience, melding fast and frenetic aerial gunplay with schlocky, yet surprisingly captivating storytelling. I’m a fan of the genre as a whole, so I was excited to see how the game would play on the Switch in what Bandai Namco is calling the game’s Deluxe Edition. While this version of Ace Combat 7 certainly is held back by the raw power of the Switch, it’s also an impressive port that retains the white-knuckle gameplay of the original release, and it captivated and challenged me from start to finish.

Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown is essentially split into two major modes – a narrative-driven, 20-mission campaign (plus a few bonus “SP missions” that are best played after the main story), and a robust multiplayer suite. I had played this game before back when it first released on other platforms, but never actually finished it, so this time around I chose to jump into the campaign first. This is probably where most players should start, especially those who are new to the series, as it introduces the game’s mechanics and provides an opportunity to try and master them before getting your ass handed to you by other players.

Like many games in the series, Ace Combat 7 is set in a place called Strangereal, resembling a near-future version of Earth with familiar technology but completely different geography and countries. It tells a self-contained story that isn’t strongly connected to previous games, so while there’s certainly some background lore that might be lost on brand new players, the overall experience is a great starting point for the series. Ace Combat 7 recounts the events of a war between two nations – the Osean Federation and the Kingdom of Erusea – after tensions have risen to their breaking point. Part of the impetus for the breakdown between nations was the construction of a Space Elevator, which provided some broad societal benefits but was viewed by Erusea as an infringement of their sovereignty. This kicks off what the game calls the Lighthouse War, which presents Erusea as the antagonists after they break the peace and take control of powerful drones called Arsenal Birds, making them a major threat.

The story in Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown is just as big a focus as the gameplay, but it can also be a lot to keep track of as it throws a slew of proper nouns at the player and asks them to remember it all. It’s all very schlocky, too, and may not be to everyone’s tastes, although I found it fun in the same way that I enjoy the frequent nonsense of a Metal Gear story. There are pre-rendered cutscenes between missions that tell the stories of a few key characters whose lives and motives intersect in various ways, from a woman named Avril who is captured as a prisoner of war, to the princess of Erusea who is trying to promote peace and unity in the region. It’s depicted mostly as series of internal monologues, almost like the characters are recounting their memories in real time. While it’s perhaps too campy for a game that is trying to posit a story about a war between two major powers, it’s bolstered by the fact that most of the scenes are gorgeously animated, with some stunning shots of the aircraft that are framed with incredible artistry.

You play as Trigger, your typical blank-slate silent protagonist who is, as you’d expect, a god-tier pilot just waiting to stretch their wings. After certain story events early in the game, Trigger is accused of a crime and punished by being assigned to an expendable squadron sent on highly dangerous missions. Before each mission, you’ll view a briefing that feels pulled straight out of an older Call of Duty game, outlining your objectives and possibly giving you a hint as to how you should approach the scenario. Missions all generally involve the same thing – shooting down rival aircraft, as well as land and sea-based targets – but specific objectives can have more nuance. Some will have you escorting a target to a destination safely, and clearing their path of threats before they get destroyed, while others will have you launching a full-on assault against a base and trying to rack up a certain amount of damage within the time limit.

Yes, missions in Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown are timed, which may come as a surprise to some players considering how rare it is to see that in modern games. It’s worth mentioning that even playing the game on Normal difficulty, the level of challenge is significant. The maps in Ace Combat 7 are generally quite large, and frequently, foes are coming at you from all angles, from all corners of the map, all at once. Frustratingly, your allies on the battlefield are generally useless at defending themselves, and you’ll need to provide frequent air support to them – fail to respond quickly enough, and let too many of them get wiped out, and it’s game over. At the same time, you also have the mission objective itself to contend with, and this can change mid-mission as new threats are introduced. This is a game where listening to the radio chatter is crucial. When an ally calls for help, or reports a swarm of bombers incoming from the North, you better hightail it over there unless you want to start over. Most missions have infrequent checkpoints, but some don’t, so I found myself replaying most of them several times as I learned the rhythm of it all (to be honest, its the main reason this review came out as late as it did!).

Does this have the potential to be frustrating? Sure. But more often than not, I found Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown to be one of those rare games in which the baseline level of challenge is what makes it so fun. It demands that the player gain mastery over their aircraft, get better at predicting enemy movement patterns, learn the maps and where the key battles are taking place. And the more I dug into the flow of the combat, predictably, the better I got. That’s generally just how games work, but it’s rare for that trial-and-error loop to be as satisfying as it is in Ace Combat 7, and I credit that almost entirely to just how rich the flight mechanics are in this title. (The only element that I really found inexcusable was that there is no option to adjust difficulty mid-campaign without starting over entirely, which I feel is a practice that really shouldn’t exist these days in games that have multiple difficulty setting.)

Flying the planes in Ace Combat 7 is so enrapturing that I genuinely couldn’t get enough; the game makes you feel like a force of nature. While not a real-to-life simulator by any means – the controls are very forgiving – the sensation of ripping through clouds and zipping over terrain is so tactile that it instantly and consistently makes you feel like a badass. If you turn on Expert controls, you can (in theory) pull off some really incredible maneuvers, like rolls and high-G turns, but even with that off, I always felt like I was in full control of aircraft. That doesn’t mean that combat is easy – while ground targets are straightforward to obliterate, your air-based rivals are often just as nimble as you. Your machine guns require careful alignment to be affective, and your missiles – while capable of locking onto a target – can be evaded if your angle of approach is poor. Even special weapons, like drones that pursue foes, have their own limitations that don’t necessarily make them an “instant-win” button, which I appreciate. And if you let your attention lapse, you’ll almost definitely get shot down yourself – especially if you fail to take out anti-aircraft weapons nestled in the mountains or among trees.

It’s a shame that I didn’t feel a need to experiment with flying different aircraft as much as the game wanted me to, though. This edition of the game – which, frustratingly, doesn’t bundle in all the previous aircraft DLC, only some of it – includes a few bonus aircraft that are available from the start. They’re objectively some of the best aircraft in the game, with top-tier agility, weapon accuracy and power, to the point where anything else feels like a downgrade. The game features a robust unlock system called the Aircraft Tree, where players can exchange currency earned in missions on new aircraft, special parts that improve functionality, and secondary weapons with unique capabilities and uses. It was hard to care about any of that when I could just pick a beast of a jet with no downside to doing so.

I will say that the sense of speed is a bit reduced in this game than on other consoles, something I attribute mostly to the lower frame rate – a steady 30 FPS. This is one of those rare cases where I feel the extra frames would have enhanced the experience, but their absence also didn’t make my gameplay experience any less enjoyable. I generally played in third-person, but first-person mode definitely feels a bit more zippy, and I applaud those whose reflexes (and stomach) are strong enough to handle that!

Like many Switch ports, while I’m impressed that the developers were able to get the game running at all on Nintendo’s aging tablet, some sacrifices had to be made. The game isn’t nearly as crisp as other platforms, hitting a max resolution of 720p in docked mode (although, at least the UI is crisp.) My instincts tell me that in handheld mode, it’s running at an even lower resolution, at least sometimes. Ground elements suffer from noticeable environmental pop-in, and most buildings and foliage are pretty ugly up close – although, it’s rare that you’ll need to fly that low anyways. All those caveats aside, I was genuinely pleased with how good the game looked in the heat of combat. Clouds are stunning to fly through, and weather effects can be gorgeous, like how moisture condenses on your cockpit windshield. The lighting, while not as realistic as on other platforms, is still incredibly convincing, and the sky can really pop during certain times of day. And when you shoot down a foe, and watch them erupt into a fireball, that sense of destruction is just as arresting as ever. The environments are impressive, too – even when the details are a bit fuzzy, the terrain itself is varied, and the way mission objectives are designed often require you to consider it more than you would expect from a game about flying above it. Yes, this version has compromises, but I was surprised at how 90 percent of the time, I didn’t really feel like the experience as a whole was a significant step down.

It’s all bolstered dramatically by the outstanding audio design; Ace Combat has a sound identity that’s wholly its own. As the afterburners roar, my flight computer beeps at me as I lock onto a foe, aligning my ever-moving reticle with my target for just long enough. I hear the missile whoosh off the wings of my aircraft and tear through the sky, followed by the muffled blast of distant destruction. “Missile, Missile,” the computer warns me as an enemy locks onto me from behind; I brake and pull up to narrowly dodge an attack, and can practically feel my assailer storm by. I escape through a cloud, and can hear the metal wings rattling from the forces of nature; at the same time, my radio channels are erupting as my squadmates deal with their own battles, the stress and desperation often apparent in their voices. As I burst through the top of the cloud, the soundtrack swells, a symphony of strings and choral hymns reverberating, as if celebrating my arrival. This is the essence of Ace Combat 7 in a nutshell, and if you haven’t experienced it before, you ought to – when it all comes together, it can feel borderline magical.

After beating the campaign, I dove into online multiplayer, which offers a few ways to battle other players, including a team-based mode and your standard free-for-all deathmatch. Normally, I’m not a big multiplayer guy and tend to get bored with match-based modes, but Ace Combat 7 has thoroughly sinked its hooks into me. Part of the reason for that, I think, is because after beating the campaign, it was really refreshing to play against players who were as good or better than me, which really forced me to engage with the game’s mechanics on a deeper level. I was frequently matched up with players who were flying at a very high level, and while I was initially worried I’d get decimated, I found that the mechanical balance was fair enough that I was still able to hold my own – and you score higher if you manage to shoot down a player of a higher rank than you. I got better at using the clouds to my advantage, and popping out to surprise a rival with a smattering of bullets or a well-timed missile shot. Perhaps most importantly, none of the grandeur of the game’s presentation is lost in multiplayer; if anything, the unpredictability inherent with playing against others helps make the experience more tense than the campaign, at times.

Matches are short, only lasting five minutes in my experience, lending them very well to the Switch’s pick up and play nature. I didn’t have an issue finding people to play against, although more than once I would find myself leaving a room and then immediately rejoining the same one, indicating that the player count isn’t very high right now. Still, there are features designed to mitigate that, like the abilities to start a match regardless of if the room is full, join a match mid-battle, and rapidly migrate hosts. There’s no voice chat – par for the course on Switch – but I enjoyed the fact that I could at least send pre-typed messages to other players waiting in the lobby. Playing in multiplayer also grants the opportunity to earn currency at a faster rate for players who are interested in filling out their aircraft tree. It’s simple, but the replayability and skill ceiling are high, making this one of those games that won’t be getting uninstalled from my Switch anytime soon.

Is this actually the definitive edition of Ace Combat 7? I’d argue no – it doesn’t actually include all the DLC, and the technical compromises inherent with the Switch platform hold it back from being a perfect port. Still, Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown – Deluxe Edition is remarkably impressive. It delivers on its promise of making the player feel like an ace pilot, thanks to its fine-tuned aerial combat and an audiovisual experience that perfectly captures the power and technology of the aircraft you get to fly. The campaign is a great time with some impressive set pieces, and while the cheesy story won’t win any awards for its writing, it is beautifully presented and just dense enough to help the player care about the fictional conflict taking place. The multiplayer suite, while light on modes, is also well-executed, capturing everything excellent about the single-player campaign and upping the action even further. If you’ve never played a game like this, you owe it to yourself to give this one a try – and if you’re a seasoned player just looking for a great portable version of Ace Combat 7, I doubt this port will disappoint. Look, it may not be what we all really wanted – a new Pilotwings game.

Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown copy provided by the publisher for the purposes of this review.