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Who is the best Ace Combat protagonist? This poll is closed. |
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| Cipher |
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79 | 32.24% |
| Phoenix |
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9 | 3.67% |
| Mobius 1 |
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84 | 34.29% |
| William Bishop--lol get out |
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24 | 9.80% |
| SHOOT VISARI |
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49 | 20.00% |
| Total: | 245 votes | ||
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Nemo isn't on that poll, I'm reporting you.
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Aug 20, 2016 23:01
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| # ¿ May 2, 2024 12:11 |
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nine-gear crow posted:and frozentreasure getting the NA version of Electrosphere off the ground. Oh…may I blather on now? Well… uh, perhaps I should start talking about the history?  The electrosphere definitely exists, and it’s…well…it definitely exists.   Shocking as it might be to believe after watching this masterpiece of transhumanist dystopian future science fiction, Ace Combat 3 did not light the Japanese world on fire when it was initially released. People actually seemed to dislike it! Enough so that Namco had a strong change of heart about, say, spending a lot of money on localising the entire project for the international market. Voice actors ain’t cheap, Mister Namco runs a business, after all. Enter the export version of Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere, or “Ace Combat 2++” as I often refer to it in OPs for Let’s Plays of Ace Combat games and never again. Taken in a vacuum, it took all the best parts about Ace Combat 2 people liked (the level design I guess I dunno that game sucked pretty hard) and made them nice and shiny and 3D and put physics on them, and left all the worst parts about Ace Combat 2 people didn’t like (bad sprite graphics, mission briefing voice actor) in the dust. 36 top-quality levels blowing stuff up in the air and on the ground in planes and a killer soundtrack. Yes, the removal of voice acting also resulted in all characters and thought-out story being ripped from AC3’s belly like a CG Norman Reedus, the game progression is completely linear, and the leftover bits about the warring factions come across as even less sensical than they were in the first place. Yes, it’s an objectively worse game than the Japanese original, and it doesn’t have BULLS EYE. But I still maintain that it’s a perfectly fine videogame and a fine Ace Combat. The gameplay is just that good, and when I was like 10 or 11 playing this in the early 2000s, what little story it came up with, combined with the gameplay, got me hooked on the series far more than I think any other Ace Combat would have. Despite all the anime drama and ridiculous superweapons of the later games, it’s my favourite Ace Combat, and I think it’s worth seeing how it stands up on its own.  The game is super self-explanatory. There is exactly one real cutscene in the entire game and no voice acting even in that, so I and my co-commentators are going to speak over basically everything. The game is baby-mode-easy on anything less than hard difficulty, so we’ll be playing on hard and getting the best rank we can, which was still A back then. If you notice the UI, especially in the menus, looking kind of utterly terrible and unreadable, that’s an unfortunate side-effect of the PAL version. I’ll mention this in one of the videos, but I had the choice between recording at standard PAL resolution and getting the blurriness that was standard at the time for PAL games, or I could record at NTSC resolution and have as crisp visuals as possible. I chose the latter (except for one video where the Elgato just ignored the checkbox), recorded the entire game, and after recording everything, found out that the conversion got rid of a few lines that made the text actually legible. Bit of bad luck, there. Hopefully I won’t make too many references to the Japanese version of the game, and it won’t seem like required viewing. Still, if you haven’t seen the Japanese version, I do recommend watching Lunethex’s LP of it (link at the top of the post) at some point for comparison. On that note…  Turns out this game and this LP lend themselves well to a drinking game. Just my suggestions so far, you can come up with your own if you want. Take a drink when: - I say “unlike the Japanese version” - I mispronounce the name of a place or vehicle - The mission debriefing says that something is “under investigation” Really, on that last one: the funniest part of the “story” in this game is how many times a corporation does something that we have to put a stop to and the NUN puts the corporation or their actions under investigation.  Missions 01 to 03: Transport, Interference, Joint Maneuvers Part 01: Enter (F-15S/MT Eagle+) (wingman: nine-gear crow) We begin our day just like it were any other: blowing up a lot of stuff belonging to Neuwork as punishment for what appear to be very minor infractions. But I’m just the pilot, they probably don’t sweat the details for my sake, Neuwork deserve it I bet. We end up blowing up so much stuff that General Resource decides to take us out for drinks, whereupon we continue blowing up things belonging to Neuwork. Missions 04 to 06: Megafloat, Scramble, Target Acquisition Part 02: No Pals in PAL (wingman: Lunethex) (POST) Missions 07 to 09: Fragile Cargo, Demilitarisation, Moonlight Flower Part 03: A Rare Aurora (wingman: Lunethex) (POST) Missions 10 to 12: Maze, Escort, Stratosphere Part 04: An Eagle Piloting A Blimp (wingman: Kadorhal) (POST)  I think I get court-martialled if I don’t include some kind of analysis about the game in an Ace Combat LP post, but fortunately, Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere is brimming with rich backstory and lore that I can regale you with.  Look at all these characters!  F-15S/MT Eagle+ is the ace pilot of General Resource. A stat-hacking bastard, they have flown countless training missions to trick idiot rookies into flying upside down and crashing into the ground. Calm, confident, and able to text fellow pilots while in the air, F-15S/MT Eagle+ will always Megan Float is one of the cute popular girls at the University for Study of Engineering and Aviation. She's not really interested in a romantic relationship with anyone at the moment, but that nerdy kid Neumann keeps on trying to get her to go out with him, despite her insistence that she's not interested. Guy just won't take a hint. And by "a hint" I mean "a direct no". Fortunately her real friends are usually able to help drive him away.  A/F-117X Nighthawk is a mysterious loner hot boy who came to town. Nobody knows much about him but he always needs to flip his hair out of his eyes and he can be spotted at lunch wherever there are shadows, one hand always over half of his face. He's caught the eye of basically everyone at school, including some of our friends, so we have to do a probably totally reasonable round of recon to find out more about him. Curiously, I don't think anyone saw him after that… - So many characters! Wow!   Look, if they sign my paycheck, I’m not gonna go asking too many questions. Also they gave me this cool company laptop.  Neu  GR are the coolest people ever. They haven’t had anything that I’ve had to blow up so far. I think they’re probably the good guys! frozentreasure fucked around with this message at 13:52 on Feb 7, 2017 |
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Aug 24, 2016 12:28
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Who wants to play an Ace Combat without anime stories or characters? Cool people.
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Aug 30, 2016 08:05
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Back to important matters: Missions 04 to 06: Megafloat, Scramble, Target Acquisition Part 02: No Pals in PAL (wingman: Lunethex) We meet a new recurring character and protect her from unwanted advances. Unfortunately our chivalrous act has left us scrambling through the rain on the way home. Curse that Neuwork! As payback, we'll blow up a bunch of stuff belonging to them. We then get a gig as a photographer! Things are really looking up for our character, whatever their name is. Analysing the video itself, you can see the text looks a little more readable in the menu. This is the video that inexplicably got recorded at actual PAL resolution. And as a result, it also means that all the mission UI is fuzzy and, in the source footage, super jittery, thanks to the frame rate. This is the only video that will look like this, thankfully. One of the major gameplay differences between versions is the lack of teammates in the international version. Mission 05, Scramble, is the first instance of that being an issue when shooting for the highest rank in a level. An A-rank typically involves beating the level within the operational window and blowing up a certain number of extra targets, and without buddies to shoot at and distract the other planes, it makes it very difficult with any plane that shoots less than four missiles at once. (Also I'm pretty sure missiles in this version track less aggressively than they did in the original) Megan Float is one of the cute popular girls at the University for Study of Engineering and Aviation. She's not really interested in a romantic relationship with anyone at the moment, but that nerdy kid Neumann keeps on trying to get her to go out with him, despite her insistence that she's not interested. Guy just won't take a hint. And by "a hint" I mean "a direct no". Fortunately her real friends are usually able to help drive him away.
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Sep 3, 2016 02:23
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So apparently getting a full-time job means you don't have many opportunities to do work on other things? Whatever. Here are two updates to make up for missing a week. Now to figure out how to make up for the second week I missed. Probably nothing. Oh, there was some audio bleed from my mic into Kadorhal's for our videos. I did my best to cut it out. Missions 07 to 09: Fragile Cargo, Demilitarisation, Moonlight Flower Part 03: A Rare Aurora (wingman: Lunethex) We spend our evening helping a drunk man stumble home, at which point he starts attacking us, which is so rude. What a way to end a day. There was another guy hanging around, and I dunno, maybe he wanted to help, but he gave off a really suspicious vibe, so we tricked him into leaving us alone. Then we were meant to go meet up the next day with Megan and this cool guy named Keith to go get smoothies and watch the sunset, but Keith never showed up! To top it all off, on our way home we get lost, and we keep getting bad phone reception when we try to call for help! That's such a weird string of bad luck, I mean really, what are the odds? Missions 10 to 12: Maze, Escort, Stratosphere Part 04: An Eagle Piloting A Blimp (wingman: Kadorhal) All our friends want help today. There's a new person at school who's caught one of our friends' eye, and they ask us to casually stalk him and see what his interests are so they'll know what conversation topics to bring up. That seems reasonable and only a little creepy, but you know what they say about picking noses. I mean I hope you do, or that would have been a weird thing for me to say just then. We also made friends with the new rich kid; and good thing, too! He keeps drawing bullies over to beat him up for being a total nerd! If only he'd stop being a total nerd. This guy was a sick lad, though, and treated us to drive through on the way home. And he even offered to pay for the damage when we kept on crashing into the sides of the drive through instead of actually going in. And then a bunch of kids wanted help getting their ball down from a tree. I still don't know how they got it stuck up so high. Had to disturb a bird's nest to get it down. It sure does feel good to be a good samaritan! These sets of missions bring back some of what we now know as Ace Combat staples from AC2. Like I mentioned to Crow in the first video, the skeletal structure of most of the missions in AC2 became the building blocks for a lot of the series. We've got our classic canyon run mission, our "radio interference is blocking missiles, only one thing to do" mission, a couple of escort missions, and the frankly glorious return of the high-altitude mission. The mission in AC2 was a nice idea, like taking a deep breath and ducking under the water to find where you dropped your stupid little swim wallet, only upside-down. In practice, it's really linear, and there's the obvious limitation of high altitude being more of an on-off switch than a gradual ascent. The high-altitude missions in Electrosphere show how much better the engine is with the transition from low to high altitude being far less noticeable mid-flight, and putting you in a specialised plane lets you stay up there for as long as you want and appreciate the cool visuals. It's just unfortunate that the only planes you get to fly in these missions (plane, singular, for the export version) are more or less impossible to do anything with other than fly in a straight line. And the game puts us under a strict time limit to get targets that are doing more than flying in a very straight line, that's cool. I'm always a fan of canyon run missions, and coming back to this one after so long makes me realise how little actually happens in it. To be fair, usually not a great deal is happening in those missions anyway, with a couple of exceptions, but most other games make up for it with copious radio chatter. When I was younger, I enjoyed the tense feeling the altitude limit and canyon walls gave off, which was compounded by the music. I still get a bit of that as I'm older, but it's certainly missing something. A/F-117X Nighthawk is a mysterious loner hot boy who came to town. Nobody knows much about him but he always needs to flip his hair out of his eyes and he can be spotted at lunch wherever there are shadows, one hand always over half of his face. He's caught the eye of basically everyone at school, including some of our friends, so we have to do a probably totally reasonable round of recon to find out more about him. Curiously, I don't think anyone saw him after that…
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Sep 23, 2016 12:22
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Someone's DVD copy of Monk. Or Scrubs. Or the extended edition of the Lord of the Rings trilogy because they heard there was a funny scene of Gollum accepting an academy award.
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Sep 25, 2016 09:00
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nine-gear crow posted:I show up several times across his LP as a guest commentator, so this is him completing the circle, if you will. Okay. Missions 13 to 16: Claustrophobia, Reaching For Stars, Guardian Angel, Zero Gravity Part 05: " " Space. Space.  Space. frozentreasure fucked around with this message at 11:38 on Jan 4, 2017 |
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Oct 2, 2016 00:02
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Ah, another busy week for me. Missions 17 to 19: One-Way Ticket, Bug Hunt, Blackbird Part 06: Planes, Trains, and Deadly Nanobots (wingman: Kadorhal) Not sure what happened over the past few days, we went on a massive bender. For all I know we were in space, but that's not important. What is important is how we missed the train to school this morning, and no amount of toast in our mouth was going to make it any easier catching back up. Apparently that stupid nerd Neumann tried to impress Megan with his computer skills by putting a virus on the school's network, and then had the nerve to ask us to help fix it all when it got out of control. Of course we helped, since it gave us an opportunity to go "we're in" in a hacker voice, but then our friends at the General Resources frat house decided we were friends with Neumann and threw stuff at us from the rooftop on the way home. This is all getting so confusing. Maybe it would just be best to not align ourselves with any particular group of people, and be a mysterious loner instead. Seemed to work out well for Nighthawk. This set of missions, and the one in the previous video, are good examples of what happens when you have to create a new framework without the same story, but still using the same missions. On the one hand, you get Reaching For Stars and Guardian Angel, which were in different routes in the original game and also work with the narrative of constantly working for a wholesome UPEO. You help the shuttle take off, and you help it land again; makes perfect sense. On the other hand, you get the unique missions, like Bug Hunt, Zero Gravity, and the Blackbird missions, and they were obviously inclined to keep them in, because they were really cool, yet there is no good way to do so and keep it logical with the meagre story the game has. The only reason Blackbird is a handful of missions after Stratosphere, practically, is because the Blackbird controls so terribly that they clearly needed to give players a break between the two missions. On the plus side, the gameplay in all of these gimmicky missions is still really fun, so it just about balances out the lack of an engaging framing device or much else going on.  (Does this break tables? Is that still a concern?) Buggy Huntsman is a special nanovirus created by that stupid nerd Neumann, in efforts to woo Megan Float. I guess by deleting her term paper. Things went awry, and Buggy became sentient, and tried to shutdown power for several city blocks, shoot individual people with space lasers, turn off gravity; you know, the usual stuff. Long story short, we stepped in to help for a couple of hours, made friends with them, and now they live in our computer as a Bit-Beast. This has been a bit of a weird school year, all told. frozentreasure fucked around with this message at 11:38 on Jan 4, 2017 |
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Oct 15, 2016 04:53
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Hey somebody remind me to not forget to update my OP at some point this week, before I forget to update my OP at some point this week. Missions 20 to 22: Fjord, Counterterrorism, ECM Part 07: A Raptor Fighting An Eagle Piloting A Blimp (wingman: Lunethex) Nothing like a weekend getaway to the beach, eh? We take a trip to Petrol Coast, which is surprisingly pollution-free, and spend a lazy afternoon looking at the driftwood and lighting fireworks in the evening. There was some guy further up the coastline yelling about sublimating consciousness into the Internet, so we just stay down on the south side of the beach. Religious fanatics; can't seem to get away from 'em. Apparently someone was causing trouble on our behalf with a local bully, though, so when we get back home he decides to pick a fight with us, at four o-clock, by the bike sheds, be there. There always seems to be another fight lately. To teach the guy a lesson, after we already taught him a lesson by beating him up, we set up a DDoS of all his favourite websites. Jerk. First appearance of the 4053 Sphyrna in this version of the game, and the second appearance of 4054 Aurora. It's very clear how early in the development of Ace Combat we are when this is what counts as a boss battle. AC2 had ZOE planes and a very tender trench run to destroy a facility at the end, and the team are still dipping their toes into the realm of air battles that could not possibly happen with current technology. So for the time being we get a zeppelin with lots of guns and missiles. And we'll get it again and again before the game ends. More interesting is ECM, in which we make use of ECM. I don't have an encyclopaedic knowledge of the series, but I feel like this might be one of very few times this kind of gameplay twist is used. Ace Combat regularly puts the player in situations where they have to destroy enemy countermeasures to see targets on radar and lock on to them, and AC6 often gives the player support planes that offer countermeasures that basically act as a passive buff when you're in their radius, but as for a series of raids timed to jamming periods? Nothing is ringing an immediate bell. Most of the time missions of that nature are usually just a canyon run that fails the player for going above an altitude limit, rather than requiring the player to stay above the clouds to avoid detection until it's safe. Nevertheless, it's a cool idea, though it naturally results in no enemy planes for the player to fight unless they get caught, so the mission itself is relatively sparse.  This is Ouroboros? What a punk! Picking fights and chasing Megan Float like everybody else in town. And 'cause that stupid nerd Neumann went and flapped his mouth, now they're gonna keep harassing us in really meaningless ways. With everything else going on, another person causing trouble now sure does seem very pointless, but I guess that's life. frozentreasure fucked around with this message at 11:38 on Jan 4, 2017 |
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Oct 25, 2016 12:40
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Cythereal posted:Assuming Erusia isn't comically evil, there's no way to spin "We just tried to murder a bunch of women and children" into positive press. For one thing, bad guys in this series are comically evil, and for another, after today, we should probably recognise that you can turn literally anything into the most positive press imaginable. Have they ever shot down their own fighters? Maybe they wanted to use Stonehenge after their fighters were getting wiped out but didn't want to kill their own peoples. Which would be a weird line to draw considering they would die shortly afterwards at the hands of Mobius 1 anyway, but maybe.
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Nov 9, 2016 12:46
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Stop talking about that plane game anime game and start talking about this plane game anime game instead, even though there's probably nothing substantially new in that trailer. EDIT: If only I hadn't spent twenty minutes composing this masterful post I would have gotten it first.
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Dec 3, 2016 22:11
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The real concern is that Playstation VR is easily the worst of the three VR experiences.
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Dec 4, 2016 12:27
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LEGO Genetics posted:"It's the ribbon fighter!" I'd love if an Ace Combat had the enemy radio react with genuine terror when you show up at any time. Even at the very beginning of the original Mobile Suit Gundam series, whenever anybody saw Char Aznable's distinctive red mobile suit, Earth Federation forces would be sent into a frenzy as he would effortlessly rip through his enemies. There's a bit of that with Pixy in Belkan War, and the protagonist basically always winds up with that status by the end of the game, but it would be amazing if you could have a reputation that proceeds you before you even start. Even if it was only for an opening mission, so that they can give you an amazing plane early on just once, I want to get a sequence where it's you who is the ace pilot that shows up to shake everything up. A chance to be the indomitable Yellows, Strigons, and so on.
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Dec 5, 2016 08:04
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Merry Strangerealsmas. Missions 23 to 25: Swarm, Damage Control, Conspiracy Part 08: My Best Friend Su (wingman: Skippy Granola) Not only is it exam period, that stupid nerd Neumann made friends with the drama club, and convinced them to put on a completely new production for the end of the season. Being in the audience and watching poor choreography is lame, so we'll sabotage the whole performance, which is probably a reasonable reaction. It's not like we're convincing the Sharks and the Jets to fight each other to make propaganda for our own cause; that's another guy. We should probably help keep the peace on that front, though. And then blow up that guy's favourite Parrot drone as punishment. Bad. Outside of the very first mission, Swarm and Damage Control are the only two no-nonsense, pure air-to-air combat missions in the game (Swarm has ground targets at the end and Damage Control has the non-target element, but still). That's probably for the best, since the total lack of characters and radio chatter means these 10 to 12 minute missions can be fairly fatiguing when both are played in quick succession. One of the staples of Ace Combat are friend and foe alike making comments on the progress of your battles in real time, which does a lot to distract you from either getting from one group of fighters to the next or the time spent dogfighting. It also doesn't help that all of the planes you're tracking are super good, which makes taking them down that much harder. Swarm is helped by Meanwhile, Conspiracy is our first end-of-path mission, originally A Canopy of Stars in JP. It's a fitting alternative name, since UPEO was embroiled in a conspiracy for something like 15 missions, at least. And then instead of us and our last remaining ally taking down our former boss, it's suddenly the leader of Ouroboros? The mission itself couldn't change, so the cutscene and final attack on the copter had to stay, and they don't exactly have a wealth of characters or names to put in the vehicle, but considering how major an enemy Ouroboros and Dision are in the original game, which most of the end-game missions (that we are of course going to play in this version as well) focus on, that was probably the worst call to make.  That's Keith in that mission and you're not telling me otherwise. frozentreasure fucked around with this message at 11:39 on Jan 4, 2017 |
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Dec 26, 2016 00:42
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Sadly there's no way to know which is more powerful when everyone can only experience it for the first time once. I remember feeling an intense nervousness when Narrator confronted him in the localised version, since he was taking a massive risk (what I thought at the time, obviously now more like "giving up") on what little stability and makeshift family he had in 13 and the occupying forces to stick up for Daughter, her (their) cause, and be true to what he believed. Oh, I've got a one as well. Missions 26 to 29: Intercept, Plumber, Pathfinder, Ouroboros Part 09: Aerial Sea Mammal Rampage (wingman: Skippy Granola) I only noticed now that I was counting the missions incorrectly by like five. We're actually quite close to the end of the Intercept is actually a really tightly-timed mission for the A-rank. If the enemy craft even get close to the satellite the mission is failed, so cleaning up everything in the area is a job almost solely for the Su-43 and later unlocks, all of which comprise the end-game planes. It can be kind of surprising how fast you get here, and how quickly the stats on your planes ramp up from the EF-2000. There is nothing the Su-43 can't do; as long as you can control it, it's the best plane for the mission. In a modern Ace Combat, something like this and the F22 would be your final unlocks that are virtually unstoppable in combat. But Electrosphere isn't a modern Ace Combat, nor is it Ace Combat 2. If the boss fights can't be over-the-top, the planes will have to do. So Intercept and Plumber are the final two missions with a central gimmick in them, one a plate-spinning exercise and the other another stealth approach. Despite being incredibly short and simple, Plumber is actually one of my favourite missions for some reason, despite not being that big of a deal in the original game either, and Intercept is really good as well as a demonstration of the power you now wield with the 43 at your disposal. After those two comes what was another important story mission, now reduced to another two-phase city assault mission, and then round two with the Sphyrna. Three of these four missions were really important in the Japanese game's story, and the latter two are considerably lacking without the dialogue and cutscenes framing them. Like the first Sphyrna fight, it's a short mission with not much going for it otherwise. The variety and length of the others keep it from being noticeable, but the Sphyrna fight missions are usually little more than Sphyrna fights, and without being aware that those two missions are in different cities and the understanding that they couldn't be merged into a single mission with a boss fight at the end, it can seem like padding. It's been a rough ride for Electrosphere to make frameworks for these missions without a real story backing it up. But it won't go down without a fight, and, if nothing else, the next trick up its sleeve will surprise and amaze the mind of a ten year-old. That has no idea of the localisation issues. And was already diligently reading the mission text as if it was important. And hasn't played any other Ace Combat.  Hot drat.
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Jan 4, 2017 12:17
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My Internet was out for the past two weeks, so just pretend I posted this last month sometime. Missions 30 to 35: Search and Destroy, Tunnel Vision, Night Raven, Geofront Attack, Aurora, Electrosphere Part 10: I Love This [XFA-36A] (wingmen: nine-gear crow, Lunethex) It's been a weirdly long school year. Did we even do any school work? All I remember were the constant parties, fights, hanging out with friends, and very severely responding to everyone who antagonised us. In any case, it's graduation day! But that Ouroboros is a troublemaker and sabotaged the presentation! Even after beating him up again, we had to go under the stage to make sure no trap doors fell out from under anyone, stop him from flying remote-control planes into the crowd, and you don't even want to know the website he had set up to display on the projector. But at least we were able to put a stop to all of it and collect our degree, having passed with flying colours.. I don't know what kind of job economy there is for our set of skills, honestly. Mission 36: Geopelia Part 11: P-choo! (wingman: nine-gear crow) While we wait to find a real career, Neumann, that stupid nerd, offered us money to blow up his latest toys that had gotten hacked into. Wasn't the best paying job, but we got some very interesting samples of code out of it. He's apparently got his own satellite network, who knew? The final string of missions railroads the player along as all the Japanese storylines converge in a simultaneous burst of plot and lack of plot. More cutscenes and text explanations pop up here than anywhere else, yet no information is actually given. The Night Raven and Aurora become the new targets without knowing what they are and why any of it is happening. Nevertheless, that Megafloat destruction scene was pretty dope. Looked at from a distance and with the context of the Japanese version this all looks like a mess. The Night Raven fight is stretched across three missions, the Aurora shows up once again after inexplicably appearing twice before only now it's an actual fight, and for no reason other than that there were no mission briefings for the missions, the game doesn't back out to the menu to let you switch planes where it had before. Looked at up-close, through the eyes of a child with no context for the Japanese version, no experience with the previous games, and fully engaging with the relatively throwaway mission briefings without knowing that none of it means anything, a single fighter destroying the city you've been protecting across the entire game is a fairly awe-inspiring moment, and immediately being launched into a stellar tunnel run and a series of boss fights, culminating in a webzone fight with an AI, is a cool way to finish out a game. It's a glimpse at the bizarre and fuelled my desire to play more Ace Combat with the same level of gameplay and more of a focus on story. Fortunately, just a few years later… And then there's the bonus mission, unlocked after getting a B-rank or higher on every previous mission, in which you need to destroy eight planes that can completely pick and choose to not get hit. With that mission in the game, I believe the international version of Electrosphere covers four of the five possible endings of the original game. Or three and a half, I guess. None of them are regarded with any importance other than the titular mission, and the game overall contains 36 of the 52 original missions. Without a proper story to wrap that around and considering there are a handful of ultra-short story missions that are now rendered meaningless, as well as "literally the same mission from the other side of the conflict," the game did an impressive job in fitting just about every mission in. My stance hasn't changed over the years; it's a fantastic Ace Combat game to play, and with Project Nemo done and dusted, you can play the original game in English as well. It's completely deserving of a place in the Strangereal canon, even if that place is by way of an Assault Horizon: Legacy-style remake. Even that would acknowledge it and put in the necessary work to fit it in with the universe that became after the second and third games in the series. A game in which you go to space should not be so readily thrown by the wayside. OSL is the best, the laser cannon on the X-49 and XR-900 is easy to use no matter what any other AC3 LPers might say, and MIRV is still useless. Thanks everybody who stuck with me for this ride that went on a lot longer than I was expecting, but at least I made it before Note to self: make up something for the Night Raven and Geopelia before posting. Also get more milk on the way home from work. Also start using the reminders app instead of whatever tab is currently open all the time. frozentreasure fucked around with this message at 13:50 on Feb 7, 2017 |
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Feb 7, 2017 13:47
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