Did you know that the F-16 first flew 50 years ago, just a few months ago? It is currently enjoying its Block 70 overhaul, in case you were worried that air forces around the world are still flying technology that is half a century old. In the meantime, Bait fight turns 30 next year and, like an airplane block revision, it evolves with each new entry. Unfortunately, Nintendo owners may have missed this evolution entirely, with only a Game Boy Advance entry and two slightly different 3DS versions of a Ace Fight 2 remake successfully navigates to Nintendo heaven. Unfortunately, the 3DS game in the West is titled Assault Horizon Legacy (+), confusing potential young gold minnows to take the plunge, as the home console Assault Horizon remains the most thoughtful entry in the series, with developer Project Aces attempting to do what Duty-ism in the formula with disastrous consequences.
The pressure was on. The Xbox 360 exclusive Ace Combat 6: Fires of Deliverance had raised the bar for the series (which had already been extremely high following the PlayStation 2 trilogy), so Project Aces had to ensure that the next numbered entry in the series was their shiniest, most polished F-16 equivalent yet. In January 2019, Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown launched on previous-gen consoles and soon after on PC to glowing reviews. Five years later, this same Unreal Engine-powered opus is now landing on Nintendo Switch, something none of us here at Nintendo Life ever expected to write. There has to be a catch… right?
The year is 2019 and we find ourselves in Strangereal, the fictional but fairly believable alternate-reality Earth where most of the Ace Combat canon takes place. Here, different landmasses, different nations, different historical events lead to different wars. For this single-player campaign, we take on the role of a faceless and silent rookie Osean Air Defense Force pilot who goes by the callsign “Trigger.” The peace is shattered by the invading military forces of the Kingdom of Erusea, leading to a conflict that will be known as the “Lighthouse War,” a reference to the plot-critical International Space Elevator installation.
The epic 20-mission campaign chronicles Trigger’s journey from pilot to disgraced convict and his eventual rise to legendary war hero. While certainly not original, the presentation is exceptionally well done, with high-quality cutscenes that could easily pass for a standalone CGI film, featuring characters narrating their own experiences from both sides of the conflict and interactions with the player, whether as an ally or an enemy. Whether or not this is your first Ace Combat, you’re in for an epic ride. Don’t worry about being overwhelmed by the controls, the first few missions do a great job of acting as a built-in tutorial with detailed instructions on basic flight and firing maneuvers.
The biggest new feature in this post is the weather. While previous posts have tried to be more subtle, here weather makes a full-fledged appearance. For the first time in the series, volumetric clouds are scattered across each mission’s self-contained map, each one featuring hundreds of square miles of detailed terrain, cityscapes, oceans, mountain ranges, and so on. Flying your impressively modeled aircraft into those clouds will produce condensation, represented by water droplets and even ice, on your cockpit glass, as well as contrails from your wingtips.
More than just visual feedback, this is also an important gameplay element, as cloud cover will now disrupt missile lock-on for friends and foes alike, making it an important strategic element to keep in mind at all times. Rising hot air currents, desert storms, lightning strikes, and other meteorological phenomena will humble your multi-million dollar warplane, turning a majestic piece of aviation technology into a helpless piece of paper as you tighten your grip on the controller as if that will keep you from slamming into the ground or the side of a mountain. Add in a dozen or so ground and airborne enemies trying to shoot you down and it’s pretty easy to overlook an obvious fact: this game is astonishingly beautiful!
Every environment is crafted with such care and mastery that it’s easy to miss the finer details. You can fly over roads, directly into cityscapes, through underground hangars carved into mountains, and even through highway tunnels if your skill allows. Every skybox is a mural, every explosion a chorus of rubble. The fact that all of this survived the 1:1 content transition in this Switch port explains why it took over two years to develop.
Don’t be afraid of the lack of content either. After you’ve completed the single-player campaign, there are dozens of hours to enjoy thanks to the Aircraft Tree. Each mission earns you MRP, the currency that unlocks new aircraft from European, Japanese, American, and Russian manufacturers, along with sets of special weapons for each. Your personal favorites have almost certainly made it onto the playable list.
Each route also unlocks parts that can help you customize each plane to your liking, so it’ll take a while to fully unlock and test out all the combinations on offer. Hidden ace pilots lurk in every single-player mission, and tracking them down (and claiming their unique liveries for your skin list) further expands the replayability factor. This is all for the solo pilot, but surprisingly surviving the transition to Switch also involves online multiplayer.
While it’s still a bit bare compared to the long-defunct Ace Combat Infinity‘S squad-based missions, the eight-player online multiplayer functions much the same as it did five years ago. There are only two modes (eight-player free-for-all and 4v4 team battle) played on some of the single-player campaign maps. Matches can quickly devolve into endless circle dances between players with no one successfully gaining the upper hand, or someone having such a superior fighter/special weapon/parts equipped that it becomes a one-sided slaughter. Either way, the online multiplayer is the fastest way to earn MRPs to spend on the plane tree, as the rounds are short and even the bottom of the leaderboard will earn you enough MRPs to make the pain worth it.
But just like five years ago, the experience is very unbalanced thanks to the hundreds of possible aircraft combinations on offer. At the time of writing, just after launch, we could not find more than one or two active rooms, but at least all the matches we participated in were free of cheaters, something that completely ruined the experience on PC.
Time to address the proverbial elephant in the room: can the Switch’s aging hardware handle such an ambitious game under Unreal Engine 4? We certainly had our doubts. This conversion targets 30fps (unlocked), which translates to occasional slowdown as the entire sky fills with explosions, resulting debris, missiles, enemy aircraft, giant air gun platforms spitting out dozens of drones, storm clouds, rain, etc. There’s also some noticeable geometry pop-in for trees and buildings when you’re flying low, most noticeable in densely forested maps or massive cityscapes.
A few compromises, then, but there’s a sense that it shouldn’t be possible to get this to run at all, but somehow it is. None of the issues really detract from gameplay, either in docked or portable mode (where the later Switch OLED models really show off the beauty of this game). Having spent over a hundred hours with the original PC version, we were able to really dig deep into several key missions of the single-player campaign to see just how much the Switch would have to compromise its aging mobile chipset, and we were pleasantly surprised at how much it all just works.
If you’re still thirsty after experiencing everything the base game has to offer, it’s time to fly over to the eShop. The Deluxe Edition moniker translates to a generous offering of three additional DLC missions, along with previously pre-order-exclusive aircraft and even a three-concept aircraft pack from previous Bait fight games thrown in for good measure. But this is where the generosity ends. Every bit of DLC is also available on the Switch version, meaning that something that previously took months to trickle out to players is now available on the eShop from day one, with the total cost of each commemorative and concept aircraft pack ending up costing the same as the base game. Most of these aircraft offer some truly unfair advantages in both single and multiplayer modes, further proving the imbalance and unfairness of the multiplayer experience.
Yet we cannot deny that Top Gun: Maverick crossover pack offers a great value thanks to the addition of iconic aircraft from the film, along with decals, aircraft skins, and even a cover by Namco’s own composer of Kenny Loggin’s Danger zone. We did need for speed, but the fictional Darkstar aircraft from the 2022 film is such a beast in that department that it breaks a number of single-player missions and becomes an absolute nuisance in multiplayer. You simply can’t catch one when the pilot decides to turn tail and go! We know this is all optional, but we have to admit that having the full package is the only way to scratch an itch we otherwise can’t.
We’ll save a final paragraph to highlight something that’s often overlooked in reviews: the sound design. Skies Unknown’s soundtrack blends both electronic and orchestral genres with ease. It’s in the sound effects department, however, that Project Aces went the extra mile. Jet engines, rockets and bullets whizzing by, the delay between distant explosions and the resulting treethe lightning striking your plane – everything is just pristine. It rounds off the presentation very nicely, the icing on the cake that helps you immensely to immerse yourself in the world of Strangereal.