Ace Combat 8's Outrageous Absurdity Is Exactly Why It Works

Background: How the Series Arrived at This Point

Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve is not trying to start a new franchise from zero. It builds directly on the recovery led by Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown, which stands among the clearest cases of a single game rescuing a dormant series and winning back trust after the letdown represented by Assault Horizon. After 30 years of Ace Combat, Bandai Namco Aces did not need a full reset. The sequel keeps the series' arcade-style dogfighting foundation while adding enough refinement to make flight feel heavier, sharper, and more intense, especially as sustained G-forces lead into missile barrages and close-range air battles.

The reviewer remembers looking at cloud formations as a young person while riding trains or cars, a habit phones, laptops, and handheld consoles have mostly interrupted in later life. In Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve, that old sky-watching instinct returns. The game's high-tech jets, explosive action, and melodrama are its core, but the bountiful sky and its changing portraits of Strangereal from many altitudes are what repeatedly catch the eye. Cockpit glass can be soaked by rain clouds, and simple cruising can feel almost calm. The clouds are also tactical tools: thickness can signal altitude, and diving through them can help break a missile lock.

Development: The Campaign's Story Sequence

The narrative is more personal than before, centering on one squadron inside a much larger conflict. The sequence begins when the Republic of Sotoa invades the Federation of Central Usea, seizing much of the nation and scattering its armed forces. Outnumbered and outgunned, the FCU turns to propaganda to maintain morale. That is how the title pilot emerges: Wings of Theve is presented as a legendary fighter credited with taking down dozens of enemy aircraft during the fight against Sotoa.

Spoiler Warning: The opening reveals that the legend is fabricated. The propagandized pilot died without firing on a single foe, and the player inherits the callsign.

Military mythmaking has long been a tool of war, and the setup recalls Ukraine's Ghost of Kyiv, a mythical flying ace alleged to have shot down six Russian planes over Kyiv in February 2022. The story spread rapidly through media and online channels, but two months later the Ukrainian air force said it was morale propaganda. It is easy to see how that real-world episode could have influenced developer Bandai Namco Aces.

Then Ace Combat's own eccentricity takes over. Top Gun has long influenced the series, so the game invites a strange thought: imagine Top Gun: Maverick beginning with Tom Cruise crashing and dying, then passing his spirit to a new pilot who adopts the Maverick callsign. The dead pilot would remain as a voice inside the silent protagonist's head, offering advice and bitter reflections on the war with a melancholy close to the most recent Wolfenstein's B.J. Blazkowicz. The movie would also be an anime now.

That is the Ace Combat formula. A dead pilot narrating from inside your head may sound odd to newcomers, but the series has always mixed absurdity with earnestness. The idea is not quite as far as the Johnny Silverhand gimmick in Cyberpunk, yet it still fits the tone. The logic is deliberately loose, and removing the conceit would not rewrite the plot much, but its existence is oddly fun.

The premise, however, does not withstand close examination. The opening establishes Wings of Theve as a propaganda figure who supposedly shot down multiple enemies without actually firing. Once the callsign passes to the player, the fiction collapses into gameplay fact: Wings of Theve becomes a real pilot who turns the tide almost single-handedly. The propaganda angle stops being a subject of scrutiny and becomes a launchpad for standard Ace Combat escalation.

The game also touches on modern warfare in the age of social media, AI, and mass disinformation, but those ideas remain surface decoration. Social media is treated as dangerous in enemy hands and harmless in allied hands. Nuanced commentary is not the priority. Instead, the writing leans into melodrama with bold ideological lines and speeches about borders, heroism, and the big blue sky. In weaker hands this could feel clumsy, but the delivery has a wide-eyed earnestness that makes it entertaining.

The cutscene presentation reinforces that tone. The new first-person perspective regularly asks players to press A for salutes, handshakes, and other ceremonial moments, recalling the Press F to pay respects idea. Without Call of Duty's self-seriousness, the staging works as camp rather than solemnity.

The cast helps ground the spectacle. Tasha Severskaya is a pink-haired civilian, the squad's best pilot, who has not yet pulled the trigger. Her wingman William Coster stays mostly silent until a mission reveals that one of the pilots being rescued once played in his favorite rock band. Through cutscenes and radio chatter, the game builds squad relationships even while the story itself follows a familiar path. The narrative has issues, but its bombast is enjoyable when the series indulges the kind of absurdity only Ace Combat can sell.

Gameplay Progression: From Clouds to 30 Missions

The campaign's mission order swings between the familiar and the ridiculous. Players may face an ominous land battleship carrying a railgun capable of wiping out entire city blocks in an instant. They may also encounter an evil squadron that plays ominous radio music whenever it appears, with the track evolving across missions until it reaches a pulse-racing dogfight. The soundtrack remains one of the game's strongest layers, whether it uses sweeping orchestral pieces, prolonged Spanish Guitar solos, or up-tempo J-rock tracks.

Flying is still approachable. The real and fictional jets let players get into the rhythm quickly, but the handling feels slightly heavier than before. That extra weight makes full-throttle acceleration, breaking the sound barrier, and producing a sonic boom feel more physical. The vapor cone that forms around the jet and then vanishes is still a satisfying signal of speed. High-G turns can keep an enemy in your sights or dodge incoming missiles, so the act of flying itself carries reward.

Shooting down aircraft remains the basic loop, but tougher enemies force patience. They use believable pilot tricks: dashing through clouds to break line-of-sight, launching flares, and executing cobra maneuvers to reverse the pursuit. Some larger aircraft have multiple lock-on targets, letting players choose whether to disable anti-aircraft guns first or destroy propellers to send the craft tumbling.

Mission variety supports the 30-level structure. Players knock down buildings in the path of the land battleship, shoot down suicidal drones to prevent them from destroying a space elevator, fly an unarmed aircraft through a valley while avoiding enemy radar, establish airspace dominance, follow contrails to locate massive stealth bombers, and attack coastal ground forces to protect a naval fleet's advance. After 30 years of Ace Combat, the game feels like Bandai Namco Aces selected favorite scenarios from the series' past while adding new sortie types.

The pacing, however, can sag. With 30 levels in total, some missions function as filler, nudging the story forward with basic objectives. They are not bad, but they often follow more dramatic set pieces and can stall momentum. The campaign recovers as it builds toward a particularly histrionic conclusion, yet cutting a few missions could have tightened the experience.

Some levels are more open-ended, giving players freedom to choose targets. That connects to the deeper pre-flight system. Before each mission, players can select a plane, its armaments, and parts that improve mobility, weaponry, and other stats. The extensive Aircraft Tree unlocks new jets, weapons, and upgrades throughout the game. Some aircraft favor speed and dogfighting, while others specialize in bombing and land-based missile strikes. Upgrade parts can improve maneuverability, shorten air-to-air missile lock-on time, expand bomb payload, and add other benefits. Unlike a rigid universal system, each aircraft has specific capacities for each upgrade type, making more expensive jets feel meaningfully stronger.

Squadmate customization is also available. Players can assign different aircraft and weaponry to allies, balancing ground attacks and air support. In practice, those choices did not always feel dramatic. Squad commands return more strongly, allowing players to order allies to use special weaponry against heavy targets, push more aggressively, or fall back to provide support.

Multiplayer and Current State: Lobbies, Loot, and a Battle Pass

Ace Combat 8 includes the series' most exhaustive multiplayer setup so far. 100-player lobbies let players customize pilot avatars, wander around, visit an arcade to play Pac-Man, or go to a supply shop for loot crates. A battle pass called the Ace Pass offers free and premium tiers that unlock upgrades, consumables, and cosmetics for avatars and aircraft. New aircraft can be purchased. A short multiplayer session was available before launch, so whether pay-to-win elements exist remains to be seen.

At the current stage, Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve is an evolution rather than a revolution. Its 30 levels move the campaign from a fabricated propaganda legend into a personal squadron war, while cloud tactics, heavier jet handling, deeper aircraft customization, and expanded multiplayer make the arcade formula feel more intense without abandoning the series' roots. The story's most interesting premise fades into familiar bombast, and some pacing stalls between dramatic missions, but the game is strongest when it lets players fly through rain clouds, break missile locks, and choose how a squadron fights across Strangereal.