Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve Review — Bandai’s Ace Pilot Reborn Through a Surprisingly Deep, Philosophical Story

Background: A Series Veteran's First Flight

When asked to review Ace Combat 8, I hesitated. I had heard of the franchise but never played a single entry. More than 30 hours later, that hesitation feels laughable. Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve is not just a good game — it is one of the most visually stunning and narratively ambitious titles I have played this year.

The game is developed and published by Bandai, running on Unreal Engine 5. It directly follows Ace Combat 7, itself one of the most beloved entries in the franchise. Rather than reinventing the formula, Wings of Theve refines it — tightening combat, expanding the narrative scope, and delivering a dark, brooding atmosphere that perfectly suits its philosophical meditations on war.

The Story: Strangereal, Rex, and the Ghost of Jan Cope

Ace Combat 8 returns to Strangereal, the series' most recognizable fictional world — an Earth that is decidedly not our own.

You play as Rex, a silent protagonist who takes over the callsign of his KIA'd comrade, Jan Cope. Cope's apparent spirit accompanies Rex throughout the entire game, offering introspective and retrospective commentary that gives your anonymous character a face and a voice. Rex flies with the Wings of Theve, a near-mythical flight crew fighting to reestablish the Federation of Central Usea (FCU), a state wholly occupied by the invading power of Sotoa.

Sotoa attacks the FCU because its own land is becoming barren and useless amid rapid industrialization. Its only hope is to seize arable, fertile soil from others. You lead your crew from losing all political recognition and power to reestablishing the FCU and taking the fight back to the Sotoans.

This war forms the backbone of the story, granting the game's significant cast of characters a strong context in which to exist and develop. Their interpersonal relationships — conditioned not only by personality but by external factors that can rip everything away at any moment — are the strongest part of the narrative. Each character is believable and realistic, if occasionally embellished by the game's overreliance on shonen-type storytelling and larger-than-life personas. They start as relative strangers but form tight bonds both in the air and on the ground.

Most characters go through a great arc from start to finish. Some get more growth than others — I would have loved more time with each cast member. They are all iconic, especially heavily marketed figures like Tasha and Baxter, who could easily have stepped out of a franchise like Top Gun.

Spoiler warning: The following paragraph discusses key narrative themes and endgame story developments.

The game embraces grandeur and epic scale, taking mundane elements like pilot squadrons and turning them into archetypical villains with exceptional aesthetics and music. When the Shadows, the game's chief antagonists, appear on the map, you instantly know you are not dealing with ordinary pilots. When their leaders show up, something is about to go down. This extends to every bit of the story, which is larger than life in every sense. It borrows liberally from series like Armored Core, Front Mission, and Metal Gear to deliver a ridiculous yet entirely comprehensive world. Jan Cope spends the entire game dwelling on the idea of war, a soldier's position within it, and the point of it all. He reminisces on a past his spirit is largely forgetting, speaks to Rex as both a successor and someone who has surpassed him, and in some way communicates directly with the player on these powerful subjects. Ace Combat 8 is at once completely bonkers and serious, simultaneously fiction and realistic — a striking contrast that works well most of the time.

The only problem with the story is how it is told. The game forces players into semi-cutscenes where you can move the camera but neither speak nor move. You are sometimes given yes and no prompts, but choosing either does not seem to impact gameplay much. Cutscenes sometimes fade to black at random moments without proper closure. It is a minor problem that generally goes away by the end of the game — which is when the best parts of the story actually happen.

The game's anime and shonen inspirations sometimes adversely impact the grim, gritty atmosphere. For example, Tasha and the rest of Joker Flight will be in the midst of a horrible battle where Rex is racking up dozens of literal kills, and she will be laughing and joking about it while asking Coster to play a song on the radio. The anime grunts and sighs happen constantly, and while not necessarily a problem, they have a knack for bringing things down a notch when they should not.

Combat and Gameplay: Refined, Not Reinvented

The combat structure largely mirrors other Ace Combat titles. You control a semi-arcade plane in one of three perspectives, equipped with main missiles (capped in this game) and special weapons. To unlock more planes, special weapons, and upgrades, you spend points earned based on mission performance and grade.

There are several dozen planes, most of which exist in real life: F-22 Raptors, F-15s, F-16s, MiGs, Sukhois, Mirage 2000, Eurofighters, Rafales, and so on. Several fictional planes appear too, mostly used by bosses and notorious pilots to elevate their status above conventional warfare. Each plane can be equipped with up to two special weapons — rockets, bombs, or support tools depending on type. Some missions require more air-to-ground warfare; others demand stacked air-to-air weapons. This is how the game keeps gameplay fresh between missions and staves off repetitiveness.

I played through the entire game and never once felt it was getting repetitive or stale. Destroying targets is incredibly satisfying, and chasing points only adds to that. Dogfights are intense, brutal, and unrelenting, though uneven difficulty between assignments can be jarring.

Missions unfold as narrative settings where you and your crew have a specific assignment. Things tend to go south more often than not, meaning missions meander between types. Generally, you either destroy enemy targets until eliminated, do annihilation battles to rack up points within a time frame, take on boss fights, or a combination of the three.

I played on realistic flight controls, meaning I had to roll the plane into a vertical position to turn. The game also features an arcade control scheme allowing turns by simply holding left or right. With realistic controls, every dogfight was a test of skill — though getting lost in the air happened more times than I would like to admit, not least because I also played from the cockpit perspective. The realism of the graphics, the attention to detail within the cockpit, and how the perspective impacts overall presentation drew me to this choice. After over 30 hours, I would not have it otherwise.

Multiplayer is fun but not a core component. I mostly liked team deathmatch and free-for-alls, as those mimicked some of the strongest moments from the story. The rest of the modes felt like extra baggage and a justification for the already-planned seasonal battle pass.

Ace Combat 8 is not a simulation game by any means, but it goes to great lengths to ensure a sense of realism for its dogfights and combat, especially regarding the little, almost unnoticeable details Bandai paid special care to include.

Visuals: The Most Beautiful Game of This Year

I use the phrase "the best/most of" too often in reviews, but here it is genuinely a must. Ace Combat 8 is one of the best-looking games I have ever laid eyes on — both in graphical fidelity and animations and in overall art direction.

The main characters look as lifelike as possible, while the rest of the game often features moments where it is honestly impossible to tell whether it is real life or not. It goes to extreme lengths to ensure every part of the world is rich in detail — even cities like Theve, which you will never really see from up close on the ground, are exceptionally pretty and high-fidelity. No part of the game is spared attention, and that is a big part of why Ace Combat 8 is so great.

The lighting is off the charts, as are the clouds, water, explosion effects, and particles. What's more, the game does all of this — in Unreal Engine 5 — while running buttery smoothly on my 9070 XT and 5800X3D at native resolution with all settings maxed out. It never lagged or dropped FPS below 60, except in some cutscenes, though I do not know how much of that was intentional. Even during the most intense and visually stunning combat scenes, the game stayed consistently above 60 and was a smooth ride from start to finish.

An Impressive Comeback for the Series

Ace Combat 7 was a beloved game and remains one of the best in the series. However, by significantly expanding the story and introducing so many likeable characters, Wings of Theve can simply be viewed as a direct upgrade over its predecessor. The combat is largely the same, though refined and made more visually appealing, but it is the story and the depth of its themes and characters that really stick out.

For newcomers like me, Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve is a surprising entry point — one that proves the franchise's reputation is not just nostalgia. For veterans, it is a refinement and expansion of what made Ace Combat 7 great. Either way, it stands as one of the most impressive games of the year.