Intro

I’m an avid fan of flying games, both arcade and sim. I have fond memories of playing Ace Combat 2 on my PS1, as well as Ace Combat 7 a few years ago. While I’m no Ace Combat veteran, I’ve enjoyed the previous games. So, here are my thoughts after spending around 25 hours playing through the campaign and checking out the online mode in Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve.

The Story 

Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve takes place in the fictional world of Strangereal, where the Federation of Central USEA (FCU) finds itself under attack by the Republic of Sotoa. Following a sudden invasion, the FCU loses most of its territory, leaving its military scattered and struggling to fight back.

You play as a fighter pilot who is rescued at sea and taken aboard the aircraft carrier Endurance. With the FCU in desperate need of a hero, you end up taking on the identity of the legendary Wings of Theve. Alongside your new squadmates, you must fight the invading forces and help reclaim your homeland.

Keeping track of all the different countries and political conflicts can be a bit confusing. For example: “The FCU accused Sotoa of helping Osea convince Yuktobania that Erusea had secretly allied with Sotoa against the FCU.” Things eventually fall into place, but it can be a little overwhelming at first.

The story isn’t anything groundbreaking, but it does enough to drive the plot forward.

Graphics, Music and Audio

Visually, Ace Combat 8 looks great, with detailed fighter jets, impressive environments, and large-scale aerial battles. The explosions and weather effects add to the spectacle. The game does a great job of making dogfights feel cinematic, just like the previous game. This time, though, the spectacle is cranked up to 11.

The audio is just as important. The roaring jet engines, missile launches, explosions, and music help create the feel of a large-scale aerial war. Together, the visuals and sound make each battle feel intense and keep the action moving at a fast pace.

The music is fantastic. I recognize one or two tracks from Ace Combat 7, but there are also some new ones. They set the tone perfectly.

The voice acting is pretty good, and I like how the characters interact during missions. The radio chatter makes battles feel more alive, as you hear your wingmen and enemy pilots react to what’s happening. Some of the dialogue is a bit cheesy, and a few conversations feel overly dramatic. However, that’s not always a bad thing in an Ace Combat game. Still, the constant chatter can sometimes be distracting during combat.

Gameplay

The strongest point of AC8 has to be the gameplay.

Flying feels great and responsive. The controls feel a little heavier than in the previous game, and I like this change. The missions also offer plenty of variety throughout the campaign. You’ll destroy bases, engage air and ground targets, escort troops, and even take on some “boss” battles.

There are 30 missions in the campaign. Most of them were great, but one stood out for the wrong reasons. It involved flying from point A to point B while staying under the radar. I didn’t find it particularly interesting, and it was by far my least favorite mission.

Before each mission, you get a briefing that explains your objectives and gives you an overview of what you’ll be doing. Once the briefing is over, you can select your aircraft and prepare for the mission.

You unlock new aircraft and parts through the plane tree. As you progress through the game, you earn currency that you can use to unlock new planes and parts. Once you’ve selected your aircraft, you can equip it with the upgrades you’ve unlocked.

Each plane has three categories of upgrades, with a limit on how many you can equip in each category. These limits vary by aircraft, so how you set up your plane will depend on your playstyle.

After that, it’s time to fly. There aren’t any major changes to the established formula, and the core gameplay remains as enjoyable as ever. If you’ve played any Ace Combat games, you know what to expect. Your plane has a gun, basic missiles, up to three selectable special weapons (a variety of bombs or missile types), and flares.

The game can be played with a mouse and keyboard, a gamepad, or a HOTAS, although there are some issues with the latter.

There are two different flight modes, Standard and Expert, and I personally think this is a good addition for players who want different levels of control over their aircraft. Standard makes flying much easier, as you can turn left or right without having to worry too much about the aircraft’s orientation. Expert, on the other hand, gives you more direct control over the plane, requiring you to roll and pitch to perform turns. I’d recommend Expert from the get-go, as it offers a much more immersive experience.

The campaign spans 30 missions, which will take anywhere from 15 to 20 hours to complete, depending on your playstyle and chosen difficulty. There are checkpoints throughout each mission, which save you from having to replay entire missions from the start if you die or fail to meet the requirements.

After finishing the campaign, you can replay any mission on your chosen difficulty and customize your plane with skins you’ve unlocked through gameplay. Every mission also offers a replay once completed, allowing you to switch camera angles and watch your playthrough in all its glory. It’s very cool.

Multiplayer and Monetization

There is also a multiplayer component to the game. While I did not dive very deeply into it, what I will say is that it’s far less impressive than the campaign for a number of reasons.

It feels as if it was just added to check a box so that the developers could monetize skins and season passes. The UI is horrendous, and the matchmaking does not seem to have any kind of balance.

People who bought the Season Pass, for example, will have access to some of the most powerful aircraft from the start. Players who spend money to access these aircraft or unlock them through the Battle Pass will have a competitive advantage over those who don’t. In a competitive multiplayer mode, aircraft balance is important, and giving paying players access to more powerful options is basically pay-to-win.

This is not a good way to start. While the mechanics of the multiplayer missions feel fine, the mode doesn’t offer the same sense of urgency that the campaign manages to create, and really feels low effort. It’s a pity as I was excited for it, and it could have been so much more.

Issues

Unfortunately, the PC version has some technical issues that hold the overall experience back.

The performance could certainly have been better, with substantial frame rate drops during gameplay and especially during cutscenes. There was some stuttering as well,  but for me it was pretty infrequent.

The game supports DLSS, but the upscaling settings appear to be mislabeled. For example, Balanced actually uses Quality settings, while Performance appears to use Balanced settings (from what numerous people have tested). Frame Generation is not available in the game’s options either, so it needs to be enabled at the driver level.

Ordinarily, I wouldn’t really mind, but because the frame drops can be pretty bad in some areas, I opted to use MFG 2X, as I’m running the game at 3440×1440 on High settings. Ultra did not run well. At High, it maintained 120fps in gameplay, but not always in cutscenes.

Regardless, players shouldn’t have to resort to workarounds to access features that could have been properly implemented in the game. You can have a look at John’s benchmarks to get an idea of the performance across various graphics cards. It’s not great. The game is demanding, or unoptimized. Realistically, it could be a combination of both.

While HOTAS support is included in the game, it is also poorly implemented. Buttons cannot be customized in-game. With my X56, even after customizing the buttons in the software, the game still detected each button as its default input.

I had to emulate a controller using 360ce and also use HIDHide to hide my X56 from the game entirely. Otherwise, the game would mix up my inputs, causing buttons to trigger both the mappings I had set up in 360ce and the default X56 configuration.

However, the game works fine with a gamepad or mouse and keyboard, and most folks will likely use one of these options. I would think that if HOTAS support was already included, the developers could at least implement it properly. Hopefully, they will address these problems in future updates (they didn’t with AC7, so I’m not holding my breath).

For now, the game could certainly use some additional optimization.

Conclusion

I really enjoyed Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve. The campaign is fantastic, even if the story can be hard to follow at times and isn’t anything groundbreaking. The gameplay is excellent, and the missions deliver plenty of action. The game gets the most important part right, and I never found myself distracted or bored while playing through it.

However, the experience isn’t without its problems. The biggest disappointments are the PC version’s poor performance and lack of proper HOTAS support. The multiplayer monetization also raises concerns, and the mode itself feels tacked on so the developers can nickel-and-dime players with character skins, planes, and other stuff. Apparently, every game needs a live-service aspect these days.

All that aside, if you’re here for the flying and some of the best aerial combat around, or if you’re a fan of the Ace Combat series, Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve comes highly recommended from me, provided you have a PC that can run it decently.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Computer Specs: 

Windows 11 64-bit computer using an AMD Ryzen 9800X3D, 64GB RAM, and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 16GB graphics card