The Ace Combat series adds an actual story to the mix, does it hold up?
What Is It? Ace Combat 4: Shattered Skies is the fourth entry into the Ace Combat series, released in 2001 for the PlayStation 2. The game tells the story of a war in a fictional Europe-like area, centering on a neutral city in between warring sides of the continent. Further investigation would tell you that this universe is called Strangereal and is a completely alternate history, and geographic, version of Earth.
The story is told through static cutscenes voiced by a child in this neutral city that has been occupied by the enemy forces of the game. It focuses on Yellow 13, an ace pilot that locals pin their resentment on. The story is mostly detached from the actual gameplay, which has you playing as the unnamed pilot of Mobius 1. The story backdrop helps elevate the inevitable conflict with Yellow 13, but the missions are mostly small, standalone “go blow these things up” affairs.
As an aerial combat game, you should expect that all of your time in Ace Combat 4 will be spent flying a plane and blowing stuff up. That expectation is absolutely true.
In my only prior Ace Combat experience, with the second entry on the original PlayStation, I used the simplified control scheme. Here, I used the standard one. This mostly means you can only slightly turn left or right while flying straight, needing instead to roll then thrust to turn before leveling out. This sounds simple, but I spent at least the first quarter of the missions getting a decent handle on these controls. It was fun and rewarding to improve in this regard, but it was rough for a while.
On the combat side, Mobius 1 is equipped with three weapons per mission: a machine gun (ammo-limited, this time around), standard homing missiles, and one special weapon slot. The first two are standard on any plane, the only variation being how much ammo for each is held. As you purchase new planes, you can purchase new special weapons as well. These vary wildly and, along with the plane variety, offer much of the variation in the game. Strictly air-to-air missiles which can target four enemies at once are incredibly useful in certain situations, but mostly useless if the mission calls for eliminating many ground targets. In that case, the long range air-to-ground missile would be more helpful.
The variety of the planes and which weapons they can equip, paired with various missions having different engagement types, offers most of the depth in the game. Playing through as a normal person, you won’t have enough money to buy nearly everything your first time through, so understanding the gaps in your fleet and where to use your hard-earned cash is a fun and important part of the game. However, you are highly unlikely to ever get soft-locked because you spent your money on poor or overlapping planes.
The game introduces a feature which allows you to fly south in any mission (always south, for some reason) to return to base and repair/reload. This makes the game significantly easier as you can almost always return and come back to finish the mission. The only time this is risky is during the timed missions, but I never ran into any issues there.
I spent around five hours with the game before hitting the credits after eighteen missions. The replay value is returning to get better scores, earn more cash, unlock more planes, etc… It is a fun, tight experience that works well for this genre.
The game looks good overall. Super detailed graphics are hardly necessary in a game like this, so it holds up better than many other games of the PS2 era. The draw distances are functional, and the game pops up small targeting squares before the rival jets show up, which is a working solution to combat hardware limitations of the era.
The Best Part: The mission variety. Eighteen missions, ranging from five to 30 minutes, is a lot. The game does a great job of keeping things fresh mostly by way of throwing some very random mission types in between the standards. Standards, in this case, being the missions where your goal is simply to eliminate all of the targets and leave the area. A new standard is getting a set amount of time to rack up a certain number of points. These two types make up the majority of the missions, which is fine as they are both fun. The oddballs, however, really keep things interesting. Needing to use your machine gun to take out a series of blimps not on your radar within a time limit, shoot down fast moving missiles before they reach your base, and others add just enough variety. The game also has some main story-related threads which carry across multiple missions. Small touches that add to the immersion and help elevate the game.
The Worst Part: The part of the game I found most annoying was that some of the planes you unlock only have limited options for custom weapons and oftentimes those options kind of stink. I’m excited to get a great new plane that looks cool and has great stats, only to find out its special weapons are all unguided. This is a minor nit, but I would definitely have spent my in-game money elsewhere had I known what each plane’s custom weapon options were.
The Verdict: Ace Combat 4: Shattered Skies is far from a perfect game, but is a game that I feel like accomplishes exactly what it set out to. Take the strong aerial combat the series is known for, add some mission and plane/weapon variability, and wrap it all up in a nice overstory with a bit of heart. Let players hit credits within just a few hours but give them plenty of reasons to replay if they want to experience more.
Sometimes, there’s not a lot to say when a game has a clear vision and executes on it extremely well. I had a great time with this 25 year old game and I suspect many others will as well if they are in the mood for some aerial combat goodness. In a genre that doesn’t get nearly as many entries as it used to (yes, I know Ace Combat 8 is coming out in 2026), sometimes you need to visit some of the classics to get your fix, and Ace Combat 4 delivers exactly what I was looking for.
How to Play: PlayStation 2*
*console played on for this review
Leave a Reply