Format: Advance
Genre: Action
Developer: Human Soft
Publisher: Namco

Not quite the flight sim I was expecting. Ace Combat Advance takes the top-down approach to this flight sim franchise. There are 12 missions in this game and not much post-game at all. The missions themselves are time based and fast, often revolving around going to a certain location and destroying a certain thing. Of course, all the missions themselves also have secondary goals in them. Each mission has 3 levels of completion as well. Completing all the goals will net you an "accomplished", completing the main goal only nets you a "completed" and barely scraping by will net you some bunny ears "over". There are multiple types of fighter jets you get to choose from in this game, and beating levels unlocks more of them. Some are good on defense, others speed, some have a wider array of weapons. Knowing which jet is best in which mission definitely helps speed up the gameplay. During gameplay, the jet you're piloting as well as enemy jets can be in either the upper altitude or lower altitude. This is important since you can only attack ground enemies while flying in a lower altitude. When you're in a higher altitude you can traverse through the map quicker. Speaking of enemies, they have a very annoying habit in this game. The gameplay, like previously stated, is a top-down map-style mission based shmup-lite. The enemies will come directly at you from various angles, however, when getting close to you they will immediately pull away and go in the opposite direction of whatever your goal currently is. They do this CONSTANTLY. It's better to think of them as annoying buzzing bugs than targets. Clearly someone had the bright idea that they were going to make this AI with the sole goal to distract the player. The real threat in this game are the ground turrets and boats. They do some thirsty-nasty damage. Luckily you have the option to press the select button at any point during gameplay to refuel your fighter jet which completely refills your ammo and health. The trade off is that you have to "link up" with this "mothership" or whatever it's called. There's a lot of weirdness in it, but it's how you win the game. Most of the time you'll be paying attention to the big green radar on the right side of the screen. It shows the locations of everything you'll need. Most of the time it's better to shoot far in advance when you're tracking something on the radar long before you get to it on your screen. Some things can also be sniped in this way. This is extremely helpful when dealing with things like boats or ground turrets, as they will light your shit up. One tactic I found useful was to summon the mothership as I headed into a frenzy of boats or ground turrets. The delay between summoning and needing a heal lined up pretty well. This game went by pretty fast overall once I got the hang of it, it's just getting the hang of it that's the issue. A for main gun, B for rockets, R for thrusters, L for strafing(you won't need this), select to summon mothership. Credits after the final level.

All in All, Ace Combat earned a 6.7 score for it's slightly better than average gameplay. Dull Concept. Hard to turn! Enemy Ai is retarded. Specific jets required to beat specific levels. Short Game.