Ace Combat Zero: That's what WMDs are for.
So I'm almost finished with the game. I got through the 2nd half pretty well for the most part, though I'm currently stuck on the final mission, the Pixy battle. On one hand, I do like that the final battle does feel like a test of skill(and thank god it got it's own separate mission from "Valley of Kings") with some cool dialogue and a great song playing. OTOH, Phase 3 is pretty much a gimmick battle where suddenly, despite taking damage from numerous missile strikes, you have to hit it one very specific and tricky spot on a time limit and likely with ammo running out.
I want to give AC0 a lot of credit. The various squadrons you fight make up good mini-bosses. The superweapons are relatively restrained for this series, as they don't overstay their welcome(the Hresvelgr is introduced in the same mission you fight it and Excalibur is taken out in the mission after it fires at you the first time) and the game feels overall far less gimmicky then AC5 did at times. On the down side, it also has a number of missions which are just....kill everything. So if it doesn't have as many highs as 5 did, it also doesn't have as many lows either and since its a bit shorter, it feels like a lot of the fat has been cut off. Even "Valley of Kings" feels a lot less obnoxious then ACES about it's requisite death star trench run expy.
Weirdly, the game does feel MUCH easier than the previous one. I pretty much didn't die once until Excalibur did it's red circle of death thing, died to it's lasers a couple times and then pretty much didn't die at all until the canyon run to the dam(mostly due to SAMs, where this is the only time they're not trival to dodge) And of course, the final mission, which is a pain in the butt due to the Morgan.
Probably the biggest issue is that not much really happens in the first half of the game. The interviews with opposing aces don't pop up until later in the game, and there's no much actual story or setpieces until the Belkan invasion begins. Of course, then you get the double gut punch of Missions 11 and 12 where You're forced to enable the Aces take on the bombing of Dresden and of course, the infamous events of June 6, 1995, which causes Pixy to lose it. The fact it does have small cast and Pixy ends up going from your Buddy to the final boss is actually nicely done and feels emotionally resonant.
If I were critique the plot, I guess it's that the whole "A World with No Borders" feels not unlike Metal Gears Outer Heaven/Patriots(pick one) and while it's supposed to set up the whole Belkan conspiracy in AC5(and presumably 7) feels off, because the grey men are implied to be belkans who infiltrated in that game and, well, their presumably globalist utopian aims(I mean, I guess) don't seem to mesh with whatever the hell they were doing in AC5. But I'm not really expecting the AC lore to make much sense at this point.
I also expected the Round Table to be something special to the plot, considering it's so heavily contested and there's mention of a magnetic field, so I assumed there was some kind of underground weapon or factory or something.. Instead it just ends up being the site of a couple of massive air battles for some arthurian symbolism(and boy this does game love it's arthurian symbolism).
