Confession time: I haven’t seen the original Top Gun movie. I’ve seen Maverick, and thoroughly loved it, but discussing Ace Combat without referencing the Top Gun movies feels akin to sacrilege. Even so, Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve is here, bringing the dogfighting spectacle series out from the cloud cover after 7 long years.

Bonus confession time: I’ve never played an Ace Combat title either. I own 7, but never managed to find the time to play it. As such, I’m bringing my review and perspective from that of someone entirely new to the series. Ace Combat has always, in my mind, been something of an intimidating IP to enter into, much like Armored Core was before I played VI; and for the record, I had a rip-roaring time with Armored Core VI.

With all of that pretext out of the way, it’s time to fire up our engines, set our aircraft for takeoff, and launch to the skies. Can Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve prove itself a capable dogfighter, or will it get splashed by a missile before it hits Mach 7?

No Cope

We’ll start with the weakest part of Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve, its story. When I say weakest, I categorically do not mean bad, and that will make more sense when discussing the rest of the game. There are two pillars to the narrative here: the first surrounds your pilot and the “personality” he inhabits as the role of Joker 1 and Cope. The second is the overarching conflict between the FCU and Republic of Sotoa.

The former initially left me somewhere between confused and slightly baffled. In the early part of the story, your silent avatar usurps the previous Joker 1 pilot’s spirit of sorts. You’ll hear Cope’s voice throughout the campaign, dishing out exposition and giving context for interpersonal drama. It’s a strange concept that could only work in a B-movie kind of way, but by the end I was surprised to find myself actually being fully immersed in it.

Your flying companions are comprised of both Joker and Queen flight, who all have their own personalities and interconnected histories. Baxter is your level-headed teacher and wingman, Tasha is an eccentric K-Pop-inspired beam of charisma, while Coster is more stoic but loves a good rock song. It genuinely shouldn’t work, but Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve earns its more heartfelt moments, even if there is a glut of overdone dialogue and cutscenes at times.

Earn Your Wings

The conflict you find yourself embroiled in is much more immediately accessible, but over time is less interesting than the more human elements. Following the secession of multiple nations from the FCU into neutral territories, the Republic of Sotoa takes advantage in an attempt to take dominance over the continent. You form part of the FCU’s last stand and pushback, while Sotoa take up the role of the villains. There is some effort made to contextualise them, but they do boil down to standard evil stock.

Having said that, the main opposing antagonists are designed and brought to life with inspiration, and are awesome to go toe-to-toe with. Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve throws in some other themes around mega-corporation control, the concept of idols in war and other bits, but these are less focal throughout. Again, I didn’t really expect to care much about any of this, but come the conclusion of the campaign, I was right up there with Joker and Queen flights in battling back.

What didn’t improve was the overabundance of superfluous QTE inputs throughout almost all cutscenes. Why I need to press X periodically to shake hands or enter a door is beyond me. Thankfully, mission briefings are delivered with a militaristic panache and the cutscenes are generally gorgeous. I don’t quite know how it did it, but Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve pulled me into its sphere and had me latched on to its wings, despite the actual story being almost nonsense at times.

Ride The Combat High

With Cope in mind, both figuratively and literally, let’s take to the skies and see how this fighter jet handles, shall we? As a newcomer, I decided to go with the Expert control scheme from the outset. Despite my apprehension, I cannot stress enough that this is the only way to experience Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve. The learning curve was not only much smoother than I expected, but it was far more rewarding and satisfying. Playing with Standard will be doing yourself and the game a disservice.

The core loop revolves around lining up ground or air-based targets for missile lock-ons, bomb drops or machine gun fire. On Expert controls, you have complete freedom to pull off corkscrews, rapid turns and all manner of evasive tricks. When I tell you that this game gives you the tools to make you feel like an absolute badass, I truly mean it. This is the coolest, slickest and most exhilarating I’ve felt with potentially any video game.

Of course, the learning curve had me smash nose-first into the ground on multiple occasions, poorly line myself up for 8 missile misses in a row, or just generally had me looping myself like I’d lost my eyesight mid-flight. However, overcoming these hurdles to pull off your first 180 high yo-yo on an opposing fighter is a thrill like none other I’ve experienced. The controls, handling and design of Ace Combat 8 are so finely tuned, it basically begs you to learn and master it.

Eight ‘um Up

Once you’ve got to grips with the flight systems through both training and the prologue, you’ll be exposed to increasingly difficult challenges in the 30-mission campaign. These can range from strict dogfighting variants in the skies to decimating entire bases or naval fleets on the ground. Peppered throughout are curveballs, like a boss fight involving downing a mega aircraft guarded by shielding UAVs, a stealth escape from dozens of radars and search squads, and even defending a space elevator from an onslaught.

The combat system, as you may have gleaned by now, is utterly brilliant. Enemy aircraft and anti-air ground units will obliterate you should you venture into SAM site range or find yourself in range of more elite piloted craft. Other times you’ll be too focused on dogfighting to realise your allies are getting demolished, allies who are your primary objective to protect, no less. On lower difficulties, you can get more leeway, but Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve will still expect you to pay attention to briefings and prioritise effectively.

Learning how and when to engage targets is essential, as is knowing how to optimise your fighter’s equipment to match the threats you’ll face. This is not a run-of-the-mill jaunt amongst the clouds – if you waste your ammunition, you’ll find out quickly when suddenly faced with a surprise squadron bursting in from nowhere. Get it all right, however, and you’ll be zipping between targets, nipping through tight spaces and splashing plane after plane.

Rootin’, Shootin’ and Tinkerin’

As mentioned before, setting up your craft is imperative if you want to have any hope of success. Missions can range anywhere from 5 to 40 minutes long, typically. Go into a primarily air-to-air engagement mission with nothing but hopes, prayers and unguided bombs, and you’ll either pitifully watch the timer tick down or be shot down faster than an arrogant rookie in a war movie.

To this end, before each mission you’ll be provided with a full briefing advising of expected threats, as well as some handy indicators with thresholds that need to be met. There’s an entire aircraft tree with dozens of fighter jets, encompassing four separate roles (all-rounders, dogfighters, ground busters and electronic interferers), alongside hundreds of upgrade components and unlockable weapons.

It’s a mammoth tree, one that encourages a huge amount of replayability to unlock everything. Don’t be deterred here either. I came into it overawed and worried I’d taken on more than I could comprehend, but the systems are intuitive. Within a couple of missions, I was tinkering and testing all sorts of different setups, and though Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve expects much of you to succeed, it’s a graded curve with just enough tools and helpful systems to nudge you along without removing player autonomy.

Theve The Limelight

More than anything else, I want to put aside my usual breakdown of the “components” of a game I typically use to approach reviews. My greatest appreciation of Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve comes from its presentation, its desire to put you, as the player, front-and-centre of this awesome, adrenaline-surging sense of bombast. Missions are accompanied by a soaring, epic soundtrack, some songs of which I’ve been replaying over and over since playing.

Finishing a level also comes with a full replay that tracks your aircraft through the entire experience, cutting to cinematic angles, closing up on successful missile launches, and highlighting every manoeuvre you pulled off. I’m seldom someone who stops to take in games or watch over my own gameplay to learn, but here it was different. There’s just something intrinsically gratifying about seeing your sharp twist turn into a perfect angle for a missile launch from a movie-style camera position.

I’d come away from play sessions on this game feeling awesome. Quintessentially, this is what video games are about. Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve inspires a sense of joy and entertainment that’s rarely distilled quite so effectively as this. It reminded me a lot of learning and blasting through Armoured Core VI, despite being a whole different combat sandbox. When the main theme – Everflow – kicked in during its associated mission, I couldn’t stop myself from getting pumped up and wholly submerged in this game’s desire to make me feel like the ultimate pilot.

Joker’s Ace

With a 15-20 hour campaign, fully fledged online offering, ranking system for missions and multiple difficulties to master, Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve is a compelling package. It runs like a dream, with only the occasional visual oddity and one instance of a loading screen getting locked, requiring a restart. More importantly, it has one of the most epically inspiring soundtracks I’ve had the pleasure of listening to in some time.

The narrative is an odd mix of nonsense and endearing; the gameplay is second-to-none and a thrill a minute, while the presentation and difficulty curve round this out to one of the best action games I’ve played this year. As a newcomer to the series, I was blown away by the sheer quality and electric fun this game dispenses with such ease. The series has earned a new fan, to put it mildly.

That it’s captured my imagination so vividly is a testament to Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve’s quality and approachability for newcomers and veterans alike. If you’ve been put off by the daunting reputation of the series prior to this, take this as your full-hearted recommendation to throw yourself in. It’s one of the frontrunners for my game of the year, and it’s some of the most sheer, unabashed entertainment I’ve experienced in a long while.

Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve is available October 1st on PlayStation 5 (review platform), Xbox Series X|S and PC.

Developer: Bandai Namco Aces Inc.
Publisher: Bandai Namco Entertainment Inc.

Disclaimer: In order to complete this review, we were provided with a promotional copy of the game. For our full review policy, please go here.

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