Is an early aerial combat simulator still worth your time 30 years later?
What Is It? Ace Combat 2 is an aerial combat simulator from NAMCO, released on the original PlayStation in 1997. The game tells the story of you flying into an enemy’s airspace 20-something times to complete various objectives so your vaguely defined country/military conglomerate can reign supreme.
Ace Combat 2 is split up across roughly 20 missions. You start with a brief overview of the mission, then move towards selecting your jet before jumping into the fight. After the first few, most missions will allow you to select a wingman and give them an assignment such as “cover my tail”, “take out enemy jets”, etc…
The star of the show is the combat. The game provides three different control modes; Novice, Expert, and Analog. I played on Novice which meant the D-pad handled all of the steering while the R1 and L1 buttons handled accelerating and decelerating. If you position targets, generally ones within 1000 meters, in your large sites, you will achieve lock on them and be able to fire your homing missiles in their direction. You also get unlimited machine gun ammo, which is in contrast to the limited number of missiles.
You will go head-to-head with many, many other aircraft in the game. Eventually, you will figure out the best positioning to make sure your missiles don’t miss, and also how to avoid incoming missiles. Initially, this mostly just means getting behind an enemy who is flying in a straight line. As the game progresses, various enemies will display advanced movements which make getting a lock on them in a good position quite difficult. This is a fun, gradual progression that adds some satisfaction to the game when you are able to take out more advanced foes later on.
You will also need to attack various ground targets. These took some getting used to on my part as I had a tendency to crash into the ground while attempting this. After some reps, however, I was able to get the hang of things and I enjoyed the difference in approach that ground targets required versus airborne ones.
Missions are mostly straightforward “take out a bunch of red targets on your map” affairs. There is some variety thrown in such as flying through canyons or performing a rescue mission. Many of them end up feeling the same, but I was never bored with the few minute bursts of fun that they each provided.
As you play, you will earn credits for each mission. These are used to purchase new jets to play as. You will unlock new options throughout the game. Playing on Normal difficulty, I never had any issue being able to afford the latest-and-greatest available flying machine.
The core game takes about two to three hours to beat on normal difficulty. There is an Expert level if you want to push yourself. I was able to beat most missions on my first try, but a few later ones took a few attempts. The game sprinkles in a few extra to find and jets to unlock if you want to dive in deeper. The Aces are notable enemy fighters found in each level, they will gain you extra money for defeating them and even lead to a couple of extra levels. The game also features a branching choice which will send you down one of two paths for a handful of missions, so you’ll need to play through twice to see the ones you missed the first time. All of that adds up to some solid replay value on a relatively short game.
The game mostly looks like you would expect a PS1 game to look like. It is a little rough these days, but if you’re used to playing games from the era, it looks pretty good compared to its contemporaries. Notably, I did not have any issues seeing the targets, either in air or on the ground. The draw distance on the other jets was nice, and the great radar system ensured I never had any issues knowing where the enemies were.
The Best Part: This is a great game for people who don’t play combat flight simulator games. The learning curve, with the slowly advancing enemy tactics, allows you to figure it out as you go with no really annoying difficulty spikes along the way. That the game offers harder difficulty and advanced controls only adds to this;if you want to really dive in, you can. Ace Combat 2 serves as a great introduction to the genre with plenty of options to dive in deeper.
The Worst Part: Early on, you will need to select your aircraft based on the mission. Certain jets are better at aerial flights while others excel at targeting ground targets. Some are faster and weaker, others slow and bulky. This is a really fun tradeoff that makes you understand the mission and make the right selection. It also plays into the wingman system where you might want to instruct yours to take out the optional target jets while you focus on destroying the ground targets. My issue here is that after a while you will unlock jets which are simply superior to everything else and take the decision making out of it. If a new aircraft is great at air-to-air and air-to-ground combat, why would I bother with something else?
The Verdict: Ace Combat 2 is the first aerial combat game outside of Star Fox that I had played in decades. I mostly knew what to expect, but I wasn’t sure how I would take to the game or the genre. It was a pleasant surprise when I found myself glued to the game for a couple of days as I worked towards seeing the credits. I had such a good time that I found myself looking into which Ace Combat game to try out next (I’ve heard 0, 4, 5, and 7 are generally considered the best).
Ace Combat 2 is the most expensive game in the series currently and is stuck on the original PlayStation. It also doesn’t top many people’s list of best games in the series. Given all of that, Ace Combat 2 is a difficult game to recommend for most. However, if you have a copy laying around, or can Any Way You Can, Ace Combat 2 is a lot of fun and offers a great introduction to the genre.
How to Play: PlayStation*
*console played on for this review
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