Игра про самолёты и геополитику | ACE COMBAT

Summary

The video is a retrospective on the Ace Combat series, explaining how its arcade flight gameplay, cinematic presentation, and stories about war combine into a distinctive experience. The narrator sees the series’ central tension as the beauty and human ambition of flight set against the destructive purpose of military aircraft.

The Ace Combat formula

Ace Combat sits between a flight simulator and a pure arcade game: it features real or realistic fighter aircraft, but keeps controls and combat approachable. Its guiding aim is to make the player feel like a hero, not just a pilot.

Missions are self-contained adventures, usually built around a briefing, aircraft and special-weapon selection, combat, and a replay or debriefing. Objectives vary, including dogfights, bombing targets, defending bases, escorting aircraft, scouting, and navigating canyons or other hazards.

Aircraft and special weapons suit different tasks, so mission preparation can matter. Players can also choose arcade-style or more realistic controls, while optional takeoff, landing, and refuelling challenges add extra piloting tests. Cinematic environments, music, replays, and mission-specific scenarios make flying part of the drama.

Most entries take place in Strangereal, a fictional world whose conflicts let the series explore war without assigning every atrocity directly to a real nation. Recurring themes include civilian suffering, war crimes, propaganda, nationalism, and uncertainty about who is in the right.

Games discussed

Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown

Presented as the best entry point because it is widely available and distills the series’ core appeal. Osea and Erusea go to war amid resentment over Osean influence and a giant space elevator. The player begins as an Osean pilot, is sent to a penal unit, and gradually becomes a celebrated ace as the conflict grows more morally complicated. A conspiracy linked to Belka further complicates the war’s motives.

Dynamic clouds are central to both presentation and tactics. They can disrupt missile tracking and help conceal a plane, but thunderclouds can damage the aircraft’s electronics. The game also offers checkpoints and varied missions, including canyon flying and battles against powerful aerial enemies.

Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War

A large-scale war story about Osea and Yuktobania, former allies manipulated into fighting one another by Belkan conspirators. The squadron gives the story much of its emotional force. Players can order wingmen to attack a target or protect the player, and choose aircraft for the squad based on mission needs.

The narrator praises the game’s varied, multi-stage missions and its anti-war turn as the conflict escalates into attacks on civilians.

Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War

A prequel set during the Belkan War, told mainly through interviews with pilots who encountered the player’s ace. The narrator finds its story and standard missions comparatively repetitive, but highlights its distinct soundtrack, branching mission choices, and reputation system.

Destroying optional targets affects whether the protagonist is regarded as more honourable or more mercenary, which in turn changes the enemy ace squadrons encountered.

Ace Combat 4: Shattered Skies

The narrator’s favourite entry. Its story follows both a young pilot fighting Erusea and a boy who loses his family during the war and later grows close to the Erusean pilots responsible. That civilian perspective creates a painful contrast with the player’s largely impersonal combat role. The game’s minimalist presentation and beautiful skies are key parts of its identity.

One unusual mission has the player visually finding targets in a foggy mountain pass, with radar and missile guidance unavailable.

Ace Combat: Assault Horizon

A major departure from Strangereal, set in a contemporary conflict involving the United States, Russia, and a rogue general. The game adds helicopters, bomber and gunner sections, and scripted close-range dogfights.

The narrator acknowledges its spectacle, real-world locations, and occasional effective character moments, but argues that its repeated scripted dogfights become monotonous and that it loses much of the series’ usual sense of flight. Its reception and sales helped push the franchise into another pause.

Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation

An Xbox 360 exclusive with large battlefields, multiple simultaneous objectives, and airfields where players can change aircraft to match the situation. A squadron “ult” lets the player direct a powerful group attack.

Its story follows Emmerian pilot Talisman, wingman Shamrock, civilian Melissa and her daughter, and Estovakian officer Viktor Voychek. The narrator says the plot can feel melodramatic, but praises the scale of the battles, soundtrack, atmosphere, and several emotionally effective moments.

Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere

A cyberpunk story about a future shaped by powerful corporations, peacekeeping forces, and a terrorist group seeking to digitize humanity. Its branching story puts the player’s choices directly into missions, asking which faction or ideal to support rather than offering a simple good-versus-evil conflict.

The narrator admires its ambitions and themes, but notes that the original game was heavily cut for its Western release, losing much of its story and content.

Ace Combat X: Skies of Deception

A PSP entry with a dual perspective: an unnamed pilot’s war and a journalist’s observations of the conflict’s political and civilian consequences. Its chapter-based operations let players choose mission order, and choices can affect later missions and the state of the campaign.

The narrator especially praises this gameplay variability and the soundtrack.

Key tips and strategies

• Choose an aircraft and special weapon for the mission’s objectives rather than relying on one loadout for everything.
• In Ace Combat 5, use wingman commands to protect an attack run or direct squadmates toward targets. Squadmates can also help when the player is low on missiles.
• In Ace Combat Zero, optional targets affect reputation and can change which ace squadrons appear.
• In Ace Combat 7, use clouds to break missile locks or hide from pursuers, but avoid thunderclouds that can disable systems.
• In Ace Combat 6, adapt to changing battlefield needs and use airfields to switch aircraft. The squadron attack is especially useful when its gauge is full.
• In Ace Combat X, consider how the order of missions may affect subsequent operations.
• The series generally lets players opt into more realistic controls and optional flight challenges. The narrator treats these as ways to deepen the piloting experience, not as requirements.

The video concludes that the series’ entries vary widely in tone and design, but their shared appeal comes from combining accessible aerial combat with memorable skies, music, cinematic missions, and stories that question the meaning and cost of war.

Gamers and sources mentioned

People and gaming figures: Notka Yachmenya (the video’s narrator); Sasha Lifildai / Sasha Live Feel Die; Anton Logvinov; Dima Larin; Yura Khovansky; Firamir; Kazutoki Kono; Masato Kano; Keiko Kobayashi; Yu Suzuki; Takuya Iwasaki; Yoko Taro; Hayao Miyazaki; Misa Matsushima; Mary Elizabeth McGlynn; Hideo Kojima; and Ivan, mentioned in a brief joke.

Works and franchises referenced: Top Gun; The Wind Rises; Runway; Blade Runner; Akira; Ghost in the Shell; End of Evangelion; Drakengard; NieR: Replicant; Spec Ops: The Line; Call of Duty: Black Ops 2; and Project Wingman.