I've been an huge fan of Ace Combat all my life and it has only gotten better with the years. And as a huge fan, I was excited when this came out and got playing. With lots of memory of great combat and flying in mind from previous installment, I was looking forward to more of the same.
It was nothing like the old ones, they have come up with new ways of engaging the enemy to put more of the thrill of combat in to the game but it ends up being very dull when you can't just shoot someone down without chasing him and every one else for 10 freaking minutes. In previous games you could engage the enemy at your own discretion and finish quick and move on or shoot every single enemy down, here you sometimes have to engage an certain enemy at an certain time or he will not go down and you only find this out if you happened to catch him right there and then. Your Wingman is more then useless and since you can't command him, he spends most of the time at air acrobatics. In more attempts to make the game more real they have made the camera more "loose" so it's very hard taking sharp turns around buildings unless your sure it's clear behind it. Speaking of witch, when you are engaging an enemy in this new way where the plane just locks on to the enemy and just needs guidance from you to get him into the middle and you can shoot him down there is absolutely no way of telling if you're going end up being fine and continue or splattered on the ground because it finnish every showdown with an cinematic slow down of the plane exploding when the 5 or 10 missile hits it. This happens many times, to the point of it being so frustrating that you just want to quit. Even right in the middle of flying away from an missile it can just cut away and show something exploding in slow motion and leaving you right in front an skyscraper.
And the story, well the only new thing is that it takes place in the real world but that's completely pointless. The lead pilot that you're playing as has an voice and an bigger part in the cutscenes but that's nothing interesting any way.
And to finnish, things good about this new part. You get to take on more roles in the air, as an bomber pilot or door-gunner for instance.
All in all, if you love the Ace combat of olds....don't bother with this one.