Review: Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown Is a Poetic Ode to Flight

It’s no coincidence that Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown begins with a monologue from Avril, a mechanic with a profound and unabashed love for the “deep blue” of the skies. Even after it thrusts Avril into the middle of a sudden war between the fictional Osean and Erusian countries of the franchise’s Strangereal universe, the game sustains its elegiac ode to flight. That’s certainly evident in the many deaths that occur throughout Ace Combat 7’s campaign and how stirringly scored each mission is. Even at its most climactic moment—when your stealth fighter stalls out as you attempt to spin it out of a missile lock—the game remains focused on the way the sky appears to caresses the player.

If ever it seems as if you’re simply strafing enemy targets, just wait until you’ve reached the replay modes following each mission. A video editor allows you to find the perfect angle for your most sumptuous action-packed stunts (though there badly needs to be a faster way to search through footage). More importantly, the debrief’s minimalistic summary screen iconographically maps each plane’s actions onto a grid, turning the nastiest aerial encounters into a beautiful ballet of colored arrows that wend and weave their way through space, much like a ribbon-twirling routine. Such shifts in perspective, from the sleek photorealism of a replay to the way data renders into art in the debrief, serve to demonstrate the many ways in which Ace Combat 7 is about more than just the momentary, visceral thrill of flight.

The majority of the game’s 20 missions also feature a unique element that in some way further transforms the way in which we interact with and fundamentally regard the sky. One sortie—a military term for deployment—tasks you with navigating through a pattern of detection zones that appear on your radar like a Fibonacci-like spiral of deadly dots. Another has you darting in and out of cloud cover like Asian carp do through water, all in an effort to avoid a base’s automated missile defenses. Sometimes you’ll have to riskily fly through a thunderstorm—getting zapped will temporarily lock up your craft and disable its HUD—or sift through the radar-jamming sandstorm, looking for elusive targets. Beyond the stunt challenges required for obtaining an optional hidden medal in each level, some levels also introduce technical obstacles, as when you’re required to precisely navigate bunker buster bombs to their target, or when you have to manually identify planes as friend or foe when your IFF goes down.

Ace Combat 7 also offers a lot of customization before a mission even begins. There are nearly 30 planes to unlock, and over 50 performance-enhancing parts, only eight of which can be equipped at any time. This makes mission briefings a vital part of the game, as they suggest the best loadouts. If you’re trying to disable a naval fleet that’s well-equipped with anti-aircraft batteries, you’ll want to bring along a ship that can fire an LASM (Long-Range Air-to-Ship Missile). Elsewhere, an annihilation mission that requires you to pick off multiple clusters of ground targets benefits from your plane having a GPB (Ground Penetrating Bomb). And if you’re planning for lots of combat in the clouds, you may want to equip gear that reduces the chances of your plane icing up, or improves the homing capabilities or distance of your missiles. The only downside to this robust skill tree is that purchases are non-refundable, so if you find yourself underpowered for missions with strict time limits, you may have to replay earlier levels or multiplayer in order to earn more MRP.

Sadly, while Ace Combat 7’s plot does a terrific job of setting up unique scenarios that put your skills as a pilot to the test, it’s far too grounded in exposition and unenthusiastic voice acting to ever take off. The FMV cutscenes initially suggest that they’re going to show the war from both the Osean and Erusian perspectives, with the news-as-propaganda media machines of both countries accusing the other of striking first. But the game commits pretty firmly to the Osean narrative, offering only confusing, slapdash glimpses of an Erusian scientist’s work implanting a war ace’s muscle memory into a new batch of experimental drones and the Erusian princess’s firsthand experience with the plight of war-torn refugees. Given how much detail is put into the game’s briefings and after-action summaries, it’s readily apparent just how superficial these characterizations are by comparison.

This one flaw, though, is hardly a deal-breaker. After all, Ace Combat 7 offers a story-free option to replay any campaign level in a Free Flight mode that removes all enemies and objectives, leaving you by your lonesome to get to know that “deep blue” sky as intimately as possible. Meanwhile, the three bonus VR missions included as a PS4 exclusive offers players the possibility of more immersion. Ace Combat 7, the first numbered entry in the series in over a decade, plays to its strengths whenever its focus leans heavily and poetically on the grace of planes and not on the drama of the humans who fly them. Fly through Ace Combat 7 on those terms and you’ll find it to be a freeing, exhilarating experience.

This game was reviewed using a download code provided by fortyseven communications.