That looks way more impressive than I expected it to be, and I like the branching storyline and wingman behavior setting. A remake of the first game would probably be really successful.
Fun fact: Air Combat drew heavy inspiration from the Manga series (also 1985/1986 OVAs) Area 88, created by Kaoru Shintani. It ran from 1979-1986, and focused on a mercenary fighter pilot named Shin Kazama, fighting for his life during a civil war within the Kingdom of Aslan, a fictional middle eastern/north african country.
With this game i found out about needing a memory card to save progress, waking up the next day and seeing only mission one . So in one afternoon i finished the whole game , i was so happy and my proudest moment lol (i was like 10 ). A happy moment in a time when stuff just wasnt ok at home i think i still remember the final words of the the credits something like "from the bottom of our hearts ... thank you " and then your plane just goes straight into the sunset
First PS1 game I ever played and second one I ever owned. Did not have memory cards either lol. Still maybe one of the best in the series still, to this day. The hard mode AI is best in the series as it makes you work for it. Its not braindead like the AI in a lot of the latter games has. Looking at you Ace Combat 2.
Have I played some different AC2? After revisiting it back to back with AC4 (with AC7 and PW a bit earlier) I was quite impressive of how enemy AI performed in comparison, some even used post-stall maneuvers further in the campaign. Maybe AC1 is even better, can't argue by that, because I can't get it running on Duckstation properly for some reason - the only PS1 game I have emulation issues with (or any PS game at that point at all - back in a day I've managed to get AC04 running smoothly even before PCSX2 addressed its issues).
@@evilbabai7083 The Su-37 can do those at the end but in comparison to AI in Air Combat,they are all pretty brain dead. Just slowly flying around. Air Combat has AI that will punch it to max speed,hit the breaks and do loops and such. You always have to chase them down and if you dont,they will be on your tail constantly and aggresively trying to shoot you down. Especially bad since hard mode on there makes enemy missiles damn near able to make full 360 degree turns to chase after you. Ace2 AI is no where near as clever or aggressive. Honestly,aside from some of the boss planes on 7 (like Mister X) the game in the mainline series that came the closest in AI was Zero and its boss squadrons.
@@ThatMetalheadMan maybe AC2 AI pilots weren't quite aggressive, but they weren't an easy pickings either after a few missions in and displayed some self-perservation. Talking of nasty missiles, AC3 had pretty irritating ones - I was so excited to see them using predictive guidance, but the novelty has worn off really soon, because it turned out that now it was you who can't predict if they connect or not: double tapping almost never worked since AI was either so good it dodged both just by moving slightly or second missile just went pass for no reason, flying directly behind the first. I guess it was made to conceal some scripts or something, because it wasn't uncommon for me to experience missing shots that would've been a sure hit not only in any other AC game, but a few moments ago in the same mission, some planes wouldn't let me to hit them with the first shots no matter how perfect the angle or timing was (and I've been spamming load state to try every possible move), so I either gave up and chased another target or just went guns. But the worst flight model and AI I've seen in the series so far was in X2, the game seeed to intentionally push as many planes in your view with them flying as slow and straight as possible to stay there, I wasn't even able to get myself beyond the mission two (misplaced use of older games tracks and cheesy original music made the impression even worse).
@@evilbabai7083 were you playing the Japanese version of 3? Because the non Japanese version was pretty heavily nerfed in enemy missile tracking. As for 2,maybe I have played it SO much that it feels easy. Still,Air Combat can still provide a challenge while to me 2 can be beaten on hard with my eyes closed,almost.
@@ThatMetalheadMan I've played JP version (with Project Nemo) and I wonder how much worse it cold be in global, because I had my eye twitching because of all those times when I'm shooting almost point blank at the neatly positioned enemy plane in front of me just to see both missiles casually shaken by a sluggish turn or one of them failing to connect for no reason. When I got myself in such situations where even load states are powerless to provide me with options, I tried to use gameshark codes for rapid fire just to see if it will give any effect, and it would make couple of dozens of missiles to make at least two of them hit, despite all of them having almost identical trajectory. And I haven't noticed any pattern with such behaviour - with one batch of enemies I can get one or two merge kills every time and then just turn around to fire and forget the rest, but with another batch of similar ones I'd have to circle shit out of each and every one of them to land a perfect hit, having Yellow Squadron flashbacks in the process. That's basically my biggest issue with AC3 - it never felt fair, it was either all too easy or had an infuriating difficulty spikes out of nowhere. I'm all in for a quality dogfights, especially with an AC3 flight model where you should carefully manage your speed and altitude, but I don't like it being superficially prolonged because missiles can't fly straight when they should. Guns are not great in this one either, reticle is not only useless but distracts and obstructs the view of actual tracers path, so funnily enough most of my successful gun his were beyond the reticle appearance distance (and it's a shame that the actual range is not much farther than that, because that way it could've used guns against the ground targets more often).
That looks way more impressive than I expected it to be, and I like the branching storyline and wingman behavior setting. A remake of the first game would probably be really successful.
Fun fact: Air Combat drew heavy inspiration from the Manga series (also 1985/1986 OVAs) Area 88, created by Kaoru Shintani. It ran from 1979-1986, and focused on a mercenary fighter pilot named Shin Kazama, fighting for his life during a civil war within the Kingdom of Aslan, a fictional middle eastern/north african country.
With this game i found out about needing a memory card to save progress, waking up the next day and seeing only mission one .
So in one afternoon i finished the whole game , i was so happy and my proudest moment lol (i was like 10 ). A happy moment in a time when stuff just wasnt ok at home
i think i still remember the final words of the the credits something like "from the bottom of our hearts ... thank you " and then your plane just goes straight into the sunset
It's mad that I love this game, but have never got around to playing any of the others in the series!
Good times , simpler ones
Just started playing it yesterday as of when I am writing this
Goes hard
First PS1 game I ever played and second one I ever owned. Did not have memory cards either lol. Still maybe one of the best in the series still, to this day. The hard mode AI is best in the series as it makes you work for it. Its not braindead like the AI in a lot of the latter games has. Looking at you Ace Combat 2.
Have I played some different AC2? After revisiting it back to back with AC4 (with AC7 and PW a bit earlier) I was quite impressive of how enemy AI performed in comparison, some even used post-stall maneuvers further in the campaign.
Maybe AC1 is even better, can't argue by that, because I can't get it running on Duckstation properly for some reason - the only PS1 game I have emulation issues with (or any PS game at that point at all - back in a day I've managed to get AC04 running smoothly even before PCSX2 addressed its issues).
@@evilbabai7083 The Su-37 can do those at the end but in comparison to AI in Air Combat,they are all pretty brain dead. Just slowly flying around. Air Combat has AI that will punch it to max speed,hit the breaks and do loops and such. You always have to chase them down and if you dont,they will be on your tail constantly and aggresively trying to shoot you down. Especially bad since hard mode on there makes enemy missiles damn near able to make full 360 degree turns to chase after you. Ace2 AI is no where near as clever or aggressive. Honestly,aside from some of the boss planes on 7 (like Mister X) the game in the mainline series that came the closest in AI was Zero and its boss squadrons.
@@ThatMetalheadMan maybe AC2 AI pilots weren't quite aggressive, but they weren't an easy pickings either after a few missions in and displayed some self-perservation.
Talking of nasty missiles, AC3 had pretty irritating ones - I was so excited to see them using predictive guidance, but the novelty has worn off really soon, because it turned out that now it was you who can't predict if they connect or not: double tapping almost never worked since AI was either so good it dodged both just by moving slightly or second missile just went pass for no reason, flying directly behind the first. I guess it was made to conceal some scripts or something, because it wasn't uncommon for me to experience missing shots that would've been a sure hit not only in any other AC game, but a few moments ago in the same mission, some planes wouldn't let me to hit them with the first shots no matter how perfect the angle or timing was (and I've been spamming load state to try every possible move), so I either gave up and chased another target or just went guns.
But the worst flight model and AI I've seen in the series so far was in X2, the game seeed to intentionally push as many planes in your view with them flying as slow and straight as possible to stay there, I wasn't even able to get myself beyond the mission two (misplaced use of older games tracks and cheesy original music made the impression even worse).
@@evilbabai7083 were you playing the Japanese version of 3? Because the non Japanese version was pretty heavily nerfed in enemy missile tracking. As for 2,maybe I have played it SO much that it feels easy. Still,Air Combat can still provide a challenge while to me 2 can be beaten on hard with my eyes closed,almost.
@@ThatMetalheadMan I've played JP version (with Project Nemo) and I wonder how much worse it cold be in global, because I had my eye twitching because of all those times when I'm shooting almost point blank at the neatly positioned enemy plane in front of me just to see both missiles casually shaken by a sluggish turn or one of them failing to connect for no reason. When I got myself in such situations where even load states are powerless to provide me with options, I tried to use gameshark codes for rapid fire just to see if it will give any effect, and it would make couple of dozens of missiles to make at least two of them hit, despite all of them having almost identical trajectory. And I haven't noticed any pattern with such behaviour - with one batch of enemies I can get one or two merge kills every time and then just turn around to fire and forget the rest, but with another batch of similar ones I'd have to circle shit out of each and every one of them to land a perfect hit, having Yellow Squadron flashbacks in the process. That's basically my biggest issue with AC3 - it never felt fair, it was either all too easy or had an infuriating difficulty spikes out of nowhere. I'm all in for a quality dogfights, especially with an AC3 flight model where you should carefully manage your speed and altitude, but I don't like it being superficially prolonged because missiles can't fly straight when they should. Guns are not great in this one either, reticle is not only useless but distracts and obstructs the view of actual tracers path, so funnily enough most of my successful gun his were beyond the reticle appearance distance (and it's a shame that the actual range is not much farther than that, because that way it could've used guns against the ground targets more often).
I've never played it! Would love to.
Looks good to my opinion. Sure, being 29yo, but this is history of the Ace Combat franchise. 🫡