A great entry in the series that just does not reach as high as AC:5.
The graphics and sound of AC:0 are an incremental improvement over AC:4 and AC:5 so I will not spend any time dissecting them. The one exceptional thing about AC:0s sound is the music. The developers went with a classic latin theme for the music which seams out of place at first, but grows on you as the game progresses, i particularly like the end theme.
The story in AC:0 is just as strong as it has been in the last two ACs. This game is actually a prequel to AC:5 and explains the events of The Belkan War which happened 15 years prior to and is ultimately the cause of the war in AC:5. The story is told through a series of live action cut scenes that take the form of interviews being conducted by an author writing a book about The Belkan War. I have to say that I still miss the hand drawn scenes from AC:4, but these scenes are very well produced and keep the story fresh. I do think that there could have been more of them though.
The gameplay of AC:0 is where the real meat is. The two things I felt were missing from AC:5, custom loadouts, and re-arming mid mission, are back. The wingman commands are still here, though you only have one wingman instead of three in AC:5. But that is okay because your one wingman in this game is more effective than all of your wingmen in AC:5. The addition of the battle records is one of my favorite things about AC:0. Every time you shoot down an enemy ace(named plane) they are added to your battle records and you can go there and read a short bio about that pilot. I hope they use this in future games to create continuity by bringing back characters from AC:0. And the aces in AC:0 are not pushovers, they are just as heavily armed as you are and they use different tactics than the regular enemies. On the higher difficulties they can provide a pretty good challenge, especially if you are in an inferior plane and there are a lot of them. All things considered the gameplay in AC:0 is the best in the series.
The main beef I have with AC:0 is the legnth of the campaign. It is only 18 missions long, with a few branches here and there. Granted there are three different ace styles Mercenary, Soldier, and Knight which determine how the missions go and what aces you fight, but the variety of AC:5 just isn't there. This and the complete absence of an arcade mode are the determining factors for me that drag this game's score down below the scores of AC:4 and AC:5.