Ace Combat 7

[Rudy]

I thought a separate thread would be nice. Any way we can move some of Smooth and my comments here. Smooth has some great detail here that I want to keep track of.


So far I'm at the beginning of mission 15. The plane I've used the most is the F/A-18F, which I've used in 5 missions.

I've used the A-10C Warthog 3 times in ground heavy or focused missions. And then I've used the F-4E, the F-14D and the F-16C two times each.

My new dog fighting plane going forward, which I just unlocked last night, the F-35C.

For early planes, the F-16C isn't bad, it's got good speed and a 4 Target Air-to-Air Missile for it's special weapon.

The F-14D is even better, better speed, better mobility, it has the Long-Range Air-to-Air Missile and the 8 Target Air-to-Air Missile.

The F/A-18F is probably your best fighter early on until you can get enough MRP to unlock the best planes. It has good speed, good defense, it has the Quick Maneuver Air-to-Air Missile which does great in dog fighting. It also has the Long-Range Air-to-Ship Missile for the couple missions with sea based enemies.

The A-10C Warthog, obviously, is your best ground attack plane you're gonna get. You can choose between Unguided Bombs, Rocket Launcher or 4 Target Air-to-Ground Missile. I like the 4AGM.

When you finally have enough MRP (it took me until after mission 14 to unlock it), the F-35C will blow all the other planes away, including the A-10C. Damn good speed, mobility, defense and great for both air and ground attacks. It comes with two ground based special weapons and a 4 Target Air-to-Air Missile special weapons.

Once I have the 999,000 MRP required, I'm buying the Multipurpose Stealth Coating , which will then unlock and allow me to buy the best plane in the game, the F-22A Raptor. Fast as fuck, incredible mobility, great defense, best Air-to-Air rating and a good Air-to-Ground rating. 136 normal missiles and the Quick Maneuver Air-to-Air Missile special weapon.

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[Rudy]

Just finished mission 3. Best one so far. Lots of dog fighting.

I wanted to buy the F18 since I have enough money but it isn’t unlocked. I guess I have to complete missions to unlock it.

[SmoothPancakes]

Just finished mission 3. Best one so far. Lots of dog fighting.

I wanted to buy the F18 since I have enough money but it isn’t unlocked. I guess I have to complete missions to unlock it.Make sure you've bought any parts in front of it. Unfortunately you can't just buy any planes you want, you have to follow the aircraft tree. If there's a locked/not bought part in front of the F/A-18, you have to buy that part first to then unlock the plane.

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[Rudy]

Make sure you've bought any parts in front of it. Unfortunately you can't just buy any planes you want, you have to follow the aircraft tree. If there's a locked/not bought part in front of the F/A-18, you have to buy that part first to then unlock the plane.

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Lol. I had no clue. I was skipping past the parts thinking I just want that plane. The layout just isn’t intuitive like most other games imo.

[SmoothPancakes]

Yeah, they make you follow the tree. There are three branches, the US planes (middle branch), Russian planes (the SU-variants) in the bottom branch and then I believe it's British planes in the third, top branch. If you want to get the F-22 Raptor for instance, you have to buy each plane and each part in that line ahead of the F-22. It took me until roughly mission 14 or so to get enough MRP to buy everything to get the F-35 and I didn't get the F-22 until mission 17 or 18.

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[SmoothPancakes]

The perfect description for multiplayer, especially when playing 8 player Battle Royale. :Dhttps://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20190124/5da4d764f6b60fe908c689bca3a9f2c6.jpg

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[Rudy]

Buying the F18 now after mission 4

[SmoothPancakes]

Buying the F18 now after mission 4Nice! That plane will serve you well throughout the campaign until you're able to unlock the better planes further down the tree. Hell, you could probably beat the entire campaign with just the F/A-18 if you wanted. It's a quality enough plane to do the job.

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[Rudy]

I haven’t even had a chance to use it yet! Tomorrow morning!

[Rudy]

It’s an utterly stupid decision to not let gamers change difficulty during the campaign. I started on Normal and it’s too hard. Keep screwing up mission 5 which you have to take down bad guys within a set time. So I either keep rage quitting or start all over. Game is fun but I’ve said it a few times, the layout and design is poor for a triple A title.

[SmoothPancakes]

Yeah, that was a really poor design choice. I started on easy for that exact reason, and even then, there were a couple missions I had trouble with, either because I couldn't complete all the objectives in time, or because they did a poor job on one or two missions explaining what the hell the objective even was, resulting in me not meeting it by the time the clock expired.

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[Rudy]

I HATE timed objectives. Then the game is telling me there is a mysterious plane hiding in the clouds and I can't find it because I'm trying to shoot down things or avoid dying.

[SmoothPancakes]

Yeah, some of those missions are frustrating as hell. I failed a number of missions and had to retry from a checkpoint because I either failed to destroy the right things, or I didn't destroy enough things before the timer ran out.

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[Rudy]

I’m going to sell this game. Online multiplayer could be fun if I didn’t suck. I almost never kill anyone and just spend the entire time trying to avoid being tracked by missles. Gun fire seems useless. I’m just not that good and it’s frustrating. I don’t feel like redoing the campaign because the designers were too stupid to not allow me to change difficulty between missions. Totally assanine decision.

[Rudy]

Well after cooling off I'm just restarting the campaign. At least I get to keep the money and planes I've earned when I restart on Easy. Did one mission. The missons are less frustrating and more fun. Just wish I could have dropped down. Saw a patch today but it was tiny. Was hoping they added that option but nope.

Smooth - you using Standard or Expert flight controls?

[SmoothPancakes]

I'm using standard controls. If I'm going to ever be any good in multiplayer, I'll have to learn to use to expert eventually, but all the twists and turns and maneuvers that I already was going in the campaign on standard, I'd probably crash into the ground or a mountain 10 times a mission if I tried expert. I'll have to go into free fly, with no enemies or objectives, and just fly the campaign maps on expert and get used to the different controls.

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[Rudy]

Good news is I've beaten the first 5 missions again on Rookie.

I really don't like the layout of the upgrades for parts and planes. I'm trying to save up for the F35. About halfway there as it's over 800,000.

One of these days I will check out the VR. Surprised my kids haven't yet but they haven't cared about this game at all for some reason.

[SmoothPancakes]

I'm tempted to buy a VR unit just to play the VR missions on this game. It'd be interesting to experience them.

[Rudy]

VR is still fairly expensive for the amount of time you play it. My kids wanted it and they paid for it. The games themselves are fairly cheap and you can get good sales quite often. But it’s a novelty. Sort of like owning the Wii U. Has some fun stuff but will always be a very secondary device.

The kids loved super hot and some other games. I will play this game in VR at some point. I barely play it and I get motion sickness when I try some things. Am away this weekend for a tournament but hope to check it out soon.

[Rudy]

Easy is hardly easy at times. I think I'm on mission 8 (was gone all weekend) and couldn't complete it this morning. Failed like 4 times. It's the one wear you have to fly low in a sand storm and take out ground targets. The hardest thing is finding them with the radar being wrecked by the sand. I just discovered I need to use the zoomed out radar more and will have to try it again. I HATE timed missions! I've gotten 18 or 19 of the required 20 targets but it is pissing me off!

[SmoothPancakes]

Easy is hardly easy at times. I think I'm on mission 8 (was gone all weekend) and couldn't complete it this morning. Failed like 4 times. It's the one wear you have to fly low in a sand storm and take out ground targets. The hardest thing is finding them with the radar being wrecked by the sand. I just discovered I need to use the zoomed out radar more and will have to try it again. I HATE timed missions! I've gotten 18 or 19 of the required 20 targets but it is pissing me off!Yeah, I hate that mission, such a pain in the ass! I've found the A-10 Warthog does the best job since you can fly at such low speeds with it, so you can get low and slow and fire off missles at the trucks the moment you get a lock.

I think I've only failed it once or twice for failing to meet the goals before time ran out. I did crash a number of times because I could pull up out of the way of a mountain or hill fast enough.

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[Rudy]

Yeah. You have to be under 400’ to pretty much use your radar and then a mountain ridge comes up and sometimes nails you. I crashed a couple times as a result. I didn’t buy that plane but I am buying the F35 now!

[Rudy]

The next mission is even worse! Fly under the clouds to avoid missles that you can’t avoid to take down 5 targets with at least two of them above the clouds exposing you. I keep getting shot down. These idiot designers don’t know what easy difficulty is. Plus the checkpoints are long and practically the entire mission half the time.

I have to find a different plane or missles to help with this mission.

[JBHuskers]

Think I'm going to get this within the next couple of weeks. Hearing so many good things.

[SmoothPancakes]

The next mission is even worse! Fly under the clouds to avoid missles that you can’t avoid to take down 5 targets with at least two of them above the clouds exposing you. I keep getting shot down. These idiot designers don’t know what easy difficulty is. Plus the checkpoints are long and practically the entire mission half the time.

I have to find a different plane or missles to help with this mission.Yeah, for that mission, basically all you can do is stay low until you get as close as possible, floor it into afterburners, race up out of the clouds, fire off your missile the second you finally get a lock on and then dive your ass right back into the clouds as fast as possible.

Think I'm going to get this within the next couple of weeks. Hearing so many good things.I've had a lot of fun with this game. Beat it once already on Easy difficulty, going to eventually go back and play on the next difficulty level. I also have Ace Combat 5 to play through, which I'm assuming was a pre-order bonus for PS4 (Xbox One got Ace Combat 6).

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[Rudy]

Did that cloud mission. I had just bought my F35 and was using it but I couldn’t afford the good air to ground missles to help with tha mission. So I switched back to my F16 and better missles to help.

Have not bothered with Ace 5.

[Rudy]

Man, I am either the worst flying gamer of all time or this company really needs to define "Easy". Doing mission 11 and twice I fail to score enough points to advance. I just read there are "core" targets on ground facilities I need to hit and not basic ones. I chose ground special missles but I don't know. Easy isn't that easy!

[Rudy]

This game just shoots itself in the foot at times. I gave VR a shot. While I can handle roller coasters no problem, I cannot handle VR. This game give me motion sickness. That is not the developers fault. But they force me to sit forward in my chair and I can’t lean back with no options to adjust the VR. The worst thing is they force advanced controls on you! Can’t use standard. So stupid. Don’t try VR without trying advanced controls which suck. Left/right just rolls the plane. It doesn’t steer. So you have to roll and then pull back on the r stick to turn. I don’t like it. All of it added to me not feeling well.

[SmoothPancakes]

Yeah, that's the only reason I haven't played much multiplayer, because I just used the standard controls in the campaign and have spent almost no time with the advanced controls. And yet, you pretty much have to use advanced controls if you're going to spend much time in multiplayer or expect to do good. Standard, you just turn too slowly. You have to pretty much go advanced if you have any hope of keeping up with enemy planes in high-G turns and corkscrews, or while trying to evade missiles with hairpin turns and reverses. You can't turn on a dime, do a quick reverse or do a 180 on a dime to avoid missiles or get lined up for a kill with standard controls. I started to experience that when I started facing the most difficult of the enemy planes and drones in the last 5 or 6 missions of the game, they're fast as hell and make such tight and sudden turns, I struggled so damn much trying to line up to use my missiles or guns on them with standard controls.

[Rudy]

Too bad they don’t have a Standard control option for VR and multiplayer to restrict some of those aces. I got tired of getting smoked by them. When I finish the campaign I will likely sell or trade it.

Edit: mission 14 through the canyon at low altitude is probably better with expert so you can turn on your side. That was a bit frustrating flying through tight corners.

[SmoothPancakes]

Too bad they don’t have a Standard control option for VR and multiplayer to restrict some of those aces. I got tired of getting smoked by them. When I finish the campaign I will likely sell or trade it.

Edit: mission 14 through the canyon at low altitude is probably better with expert so you can turn on your side. That was a bit frustrating flying through tight corners.Try going through that canyon with the throttle held down. :D

There's either an achievement or some in-game accomplishment for traversing that canyon at full speed. But hard as hell to do, some of those turns in that canyon are hard to do at a low speed, much less on afterburners.

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[Rudy]

Oh, I crashed twice on easy going slow lol. No thanks at full throttle!

[Rudy]

Damn this game tries to make missions annoying rather than fun. Mission 17 had too many timed objectives. I’d rather be in a difficult dogfight and actually die than deal with the time limiting stuff. And they hunk this is easy? Omg. I can’t imagine how a novice would be able to finish the campaign.

Edit: Finished Mission 18 and the dog fight with Mr. X was much better. He was tough and it's much better to actually fight someone and avoid dying than avoiding a time limit.

[SmoothPancakes]

Damn this game tries to make missions annoying rather than fun. Mission 17 had too many timed objectives. I’d rather be in a difficult dogfight and actually die than deal with the time limiting stuff. And they hunk this is easy? Omg. I can’t imagine how a novice would be able to finish the campaign.

Edit: Finished Mission 18 and the dog fight with Mr. X was much better. He was tough and it's much better to actually fight someone and avoid dying than avoiding a time limit.

Yeah, Mission 18 was fun. If you haven't played it yet, you're going to enjoy Mission 19! At least the first half of it, lol.

[Rudy]

I usually play in the morning and if I can't finish a mission in an hour or less Rudy gets upset lol! Hate having to redo things.

[SmoothPancakes]

Lol, I found Mission 19 to personally be my favorite of the entire campaign. Get your missile trigger finger itchy.

The first time I played it, it took me about 40-45 minutes to beat it. Second and third replays, I usually got the time down to maybe half an hour.

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[SmoothPancakes]

I just replayed mission 19 again for the hell of it. Did it on Expert controls. I did alright, beat it in 21 minutes, my third fastest time (fastest time so far is 19 minutes, 37 seconds) and destroyed 28 enemy planes. My best showing in that mission has been 37 enemy planes destroyed, not counting drones or the Arsenal Bird, just straight up actual "human" controlled enemy planes.

I think if I played long enough on Expert controls, I'd probably get used to them and get decent at it, though I still prefer Standard controls. I feel I have better control of my plane and can get kills easier and line up for missile shots better.

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[Rudy]

I better give myself enough time to do it. I do have my F22 unlocked with all weapons.

Can you replay any mission after you complete the campaign?

[Rudy]

Mission 19 in the books. Took forever to finish off that carrier thing. One left to go!

[Rudy]

Finished the game. I may try and give expert controls a chance along with online. If that fails - selling! Online is currently very hard. I wish it was easier like SW Battlefront 1 flying was. Maybe they need to add in some cpu ships just for fun and allow me to feel a bit good in beating someone instead of getting shot down 3 times more often than I get anyone.

[SmoothPancakes]

Congrats! How'd you enjoy the campaign overall? There were times I didn't really know what the hell was going on with the story, especially early on, as I have zero prior experience with the backstory of previous games or "history" of the countries and continents in Ace Combat's fictional world. But I still ultimately enjoyed the game. While there were a couple really frustrating missions, as a whole, I enjoyed the campaign and will no doubt end up playing through it multiple times going into the future. It just feels so good to finally be able to get back into the air again, as the last true air combat game I had played was HAWX and HAWX 2 back on the 360.

I still need to dive into Ace Combat 5, which was included as a bonus for pre-ordering the game. From what I've read, Ace Combat 4, Ace Combat 5 and Ace Combat Zero are apparently considered the "Holy Trinity" of the Ace Combat series.

[Rudy]

I did like the campaign although I have no history with this series and I ended up skipping a lot of the cut scenes. It was 20 missions and I did them lol.

I’d probably give the game a 7 or 7.5/10. The design decisions to not let you switch difficulties during the campaign or use standard controls for VR make no sense and hurt the game. I also felt even some easy missions were a bit too hard. The checkpoints for some of them should have been shorter. Even the layout of the aircraft tree wasn’t the best. I didn’t like that a lot of mission goals had a timer to them. The game was at its best when you were dog fighting. That’s why I thought I would enjoy the online aspect more but some of those guys are so good I felt I was constantly under fire and dying while rarely getting any kills. I think they could do more to make that better.

Overall it was fun but I think the game could have been a bit better in spots.

[SmoothPancakes]

I would agree with a lot of that. I'm glad I went with the easy difficulty first when I found out you couldn't change it. I didn't want to get halfway through then hit a wall because of a mission that was too difficult. Now that I've played the entire campaign on easy, knowing what the various mission objectives are, and being more comfortable with the controls and flight mechanics, I'll probably try the next difficult level up and see if I can beat the entire campaign on that level, then maybe try the harder difficulties after that.

As for your earlier question, yes, you can replay individual missions. If you going into the campaign, instead of selecting new or continue, it should give you an option called Free Mission or Free Play or something. I forget the actual wording. But that lets you pick any mission you've completed. I had to go back and do some early missions a second or third time to try and get some extra MRP to buy new planes before attempting the next mission while I was working my way through the campaign.

[Rudy]

I saw the free mission and eventually figured out what that was lol. There is just an odd layer of design or lack of polish to this game for some reason.