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Ashsaber
Oct 24, 2010

Deploying Swordbreakers!
College Slice


Hello, Ashsaber here. I'll be covering Ace Combat Xi Skies of Incursion, the mobile game made based on X, as a sibling game to X.

Back in 2010 I watched TyrantSabre's LP of Ace Combat 6 and was entranced, and I decided I needed to get into the series. I devoured my way through 6 and X, but lacking a PS2 of my own and knowing that the Golden Trilogy was old enough that it would have been nigh impossible to find any of those games I turned to Xi, released in 2010 on the itunes store.

It was not exactly able to live up to expectations.

While I lack the ability to do video, I assure you you aren't missing much, especially not my fat thumb flying. The game is fairly slow and awkward, and all coms chatter is pretty much ripped straight from X because this was a huge cashgrab you're fighting in the same war, so please assume the bits I'm not screencapping are just generic grunts doing variations of 'its them!'. Please enjoy the game in all its 480x320 pixel glory.

Skies of Incursion is not exactly a story heavy game, nor does it really expand upon the world. What it does have is fairly simple, and mostly outside of game play, but I will try to show off what is relevant.




For the purposes of this thread I will be doing a new playthough of the campaign, on normal difficulty.





This game does not get pretty briefings, it gets text dump briefings that contain all of the game's plot, thus I will endeavor to bring you it unaltered.

Right now we are at the very beginning of the war, and Aurelia is getting its poo poo pushed in by Leasath's surprise attacks. Now we need to defend our air base, which is close to the capital from bombers.

So, this is the standard Ace Combat opening mission, take down some bombers and their escorts. Don't want to be too overpowered, so lets use something low level, like the Fishbed.



Wait, what? Yes, all real world planes in this game are paid DLC, which I don't think I could get even if I wanted to. Therefore lets go with what we actually have available.



That's more like it, one of the total of five planes you can use without DLC, the XFA-27 is both the best I have open to me and the only one we've seen in previous games, and it is only available since I beat the game once before on Easy. Why do we not get access to real world planes? its a cashgrab Its because our squadron is meant to fly experimental planes to evaluate them. We're basically what the titular squadron form Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X. was supposed to be.

Do note the lack of both special weapons and ammo counts in the hangar. The game is quite simple, so special weapons aren't possible, and on at least anything under hard you don't have a limit on missiles either.

Now, when you start the game you get a tutorial every time. I'll be covering most of it myself, but there is something that needs to be understood.



The default control scheme is tilt controls. This is not very good, for a number of reasons. Most importantly, you cannot re-calibrate without going back to the title screen, so if anything goes even slightly wrong you are careening into the scenery. In addition I am playing this game on an iPod Touch, which has a screen smaller than a credit card. Holding it at arms length and trying to both see what is going on and control everything is a nightmare.

Now, lets actually get into the game play.



Well, would you look at that. We actually have a squadron, I feel like this is the only mission in the game where we actually have them with us. They're useless as hell, but they're here for moral support. Not sure why they're in Migs rather than Apalis, kinda breaks the idea that we're supposed to be an experimental squadron, but whatever.

Now, before I explain all the controls, and how things go, say hello to our lovely AWACS, AWACS. AWACS is Crux without any personality at all, literally. All his soundbites are straight from X, but you only get the generic ones.

Onto actual important stuff, clockwise from top:
  • Time remaining, generally fairly short. This mission started with just five minutes on the clock.
  • Points, no one cares about these generally
  • Target, how any points what you've got targeted is worth, again pretty useless
  • The MPG (multi purpose gauge), which has a gauge that means different things depending on the mission. Here it tells roughly how many enemies are left relative to the start, drain it to win
  • Altitude and Ammo. The former is useful to avoid slamming into the ground, the latter is pointless outside of hard mode.
  • Your combat controls, target switch, Missiles and Guns. These are the second most important controls.
  • Your speed controls, Throttle is obviously Go Fast, Brake is the opposite. Awkward to use sometimes.
  • Directional input. If you aren't using tilt controls you will have either a digital D-pad or a digital analog stick. Both tend to be a bit slippery, and using them blocks a portion of the screen with your thumb, but its better than nothing.
  • Speed. Is speed. In don't think you need an explanation
  • Autopilot button, automatically sets you to level flight when pressed, useful since regular maneuvering is difficult
  • Radar screen. Tap to zoom out.
I want to make very clear right now that it is very, very easy to fat finger this game, especially the movement controls. Which I am using my thumb to control. This is very, very bad for doing anything precise, like flying in general, and leads to me careening about the sky as often as preforming a proper maneuver, so I'm not too sad about you not seeing me in motion. The other big thing is that you need to cover the screen with your fingers to actually do anything, leaving you with less of the screen to actually see.

As to the opposition here, its a few bombers and a small number of Fishbeds that fly in mostly straight lines.



Enemies who also steal all their lines from the mooks in the first mission of X proper. Not the interesting lines that allies may react to, just the boring ones.

The major saving grace when playing this is that missiles are very, very generous about hitting enemies. Generally make sure they are at least towards the center of the screen when locked on and you will likely score a kill, regardless the orientation. Also, the Migs at least only took a single missile to kill each, though from a combination of series wide habit and difficulty in quickly swapping targets and firing I used two for each.



To be quite honest there really isn't much to say about this mission, its early game guff. Hell the first half of this game is early game guff. There really isn't much to show for quite a while, but I will do my best to show you what there is.

Due to me having difficulty with the controls the mission took two and a half minutes, not too bad. What were the results?



A total of ten enemies. No, we don't get a debrief, or a replay, those are a bit too much for this game, so all we can do is go back to the menu or continue onward.

Next time, we defend another base. An important one!



Falco Squadron
Experimental Flight Technology Evaluation Squadron "Falco"
Members
  • Falco One[/b]
  • Two other known members
Before and after the outbreak of the war, Falco Squadron was stationed at Phuku Lagolla Air Base, an air base located southwest of the capital of Griswall, where they served as a test squadron for experimental flight technology. When the Leasathian forces invaded Aurelia, Falco Team was one of the many squadrons deployed to defend their territory, most of which had already surrendered to the enemy.

The squadron mostly uses experimental, mostly COFFIN equiped craft, such as the XFA-24A Apalis (seen on the title at the top there), the YR-302 Fregata and the XR-45 Cariburn. Since we've never seen any of these craft before, I decided not to let your first exposure be on the tiny little screen of my old ipod, but instead be in the main game, though that won't be for quite a bit. Falco squad also has access to multiple standard planes, such as the MiG-21-93 and the F-22, though the player doesn't without shelling out real money.

The emblem for Falco Squadron, like Gryphus, features the southern cross heavily. Mostly, it seems, so we can be called the Southern Cross to save on audio recycling.

And, no, that isn't just me being lazy on the members of the team. They are never even given a simple callsign like Falco 2 or Falco 3, as that would probably require more voice work, so it was never going to happen.



Phuku Lagolla Air Base

An air base just southwest of Griswall, home to the Falco Squadron. Not really much else to say about it, though.

?
Falco

To be serious, Falco is Italian for Hawk, and mostly serves to reinforce Aurelia's bird naming scheme for it squadrons.

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Ashsaber
Oct 24, 2010

Deploying Swordbreakers!
College Slice
The entirety of Xi takes place between the war beginning and the first mission of X. I will be posting one update for each of the first eight missions of X, as by that point we should be past the only thing that Xi could possibly spoil about X.

Trust me, you aren't missing anything by getting the cliff's notes on the missions, nothing plot relevant happens during the missions themselves.

Ashsaber
Oct 24, 2010

Deploying Swordbreakers!
College Slice
Welcome back to Ace Combat Xi Skies of Incursion.





Mission 2 introduces us to probably the most important location in this game, Base Sallqa, which is likely the most important remaining base in our country. It houses both air command and logistics command, so if this base falls everyone in the Aurelian armed forces will have trouble getting things like food, fuel and ammo. It is also pretty much the only line of defense between the capital and the enemy army. We lose it and the war is pretty much lost in an instant.



Today the MPG displays BASE, but it really means the number of allied units that have died. The bar fills up for every ally that dies, if it fills all the way you lose.

I did at least try to get some shots of the base, but again, mobile game from a decade ago, no free flight mode, awkward controls. It was difficult just getting this much.





Pictured, pretty much the entire base, including the whole five allied units/buildings we need to protect. I suppose all the ground forces that could have been used to defend the base must have been sent to the frontlines already.



Pictured, the biggest enemy in this mission, the ground. When you need to fly low to hit tanks and AA guns and the like it becomes exponentially more dangerous to fat finger your controls. In my tests before capturing these pictures I lawn darted at least four times on this mission, I will admit.




This mission was a lot harder than the previous one at least, mostly due to needing to spend so much time near the ground. Similar to the last mission's Migs the tanks in this mission only required a single missile each. Still not worth trying to switch targets mid attack run to get more than one at a time though, too much potential to crash while fumbling buttons. There were a couple Migs in the air that I ignored since there was a time pressure, but the attack added up to 14 units overall, which gives you an idea of the scale of the game.

...Yeah. That was really kind of short, but there really isn't much else to say about it.

Next time, we bop some botes.



Base Sallqa

Positioned between the border and the capital, Base Sallqa also houses Aurelia's army logistics and air defense command. The base is essentially the most important asset in the continued fight against Leasath invaders, being both a major line of defense and the nerve center for Aurelia's remaining military.

...Still could probably done with keeping a couple of tanks in reserve to keep it safe though.

Ashsaber
Oct 24, 2010

Deploying Swordbreakers!
College Slice
Welcome back to Ace Combat Xi Skies of Incursion.





A naval themed mission this time. Taking place in scenic Challwa, a city that exists for this mission and this mission alone, it seems. We still need to defend the area to avoid Leasath from going around our forces and capturing the capital though.

Also, not sure how the hell they missed the problems with that last line, wow.



This mission centers around keeping landing craft out of the city's port. Three Landing craft get in we lose. The landing craft take a very long time to get to the city though, at least a minute for the first one, as I found out when I tried flying around to see if there was anything interesting about the city (there wasn't).

I actually noticed a HUD button I missed before, the pause button at the top there. Probably not enough to save yourself if you need to calibrate mid-mission on tilt controls, but it does mean you can calibrate mid mission.



The mission is honestly a bit of a turkey shoot, as boats don't have the luxury of hills that block your shots and flight. The Bridge there seems to line up mostly with where the enemy is going, and also provides the only interesting visual element to the stage. Also, you might just recognize that bridge, since I'm pretty sure we literally just saw it in mission 3 of X.



None of the missions in this game are particularly long, so this one is also done and dusted without much issue. All you missed in terms of chatter this time were variants of 'Shoot him down, dammit!' and 'Oh Holy gently caress we're sinking!'.

I tried to get some shots of the city itself, but how they turned out, well...



The city itself is a blurry mess of jpegs on the ground, with a few blocky structures. Hard to see due to draw distance is that the city surrounds a bay that the bridge crosses, fed by a river at the back end. The only neat detail I saw was in that last shot there, a couple of concrete wave breakers, one mostly obscured and underneath my plane due to inopportune timing on my screenshot.

The mission is notable for one major reason though, it uses the same music as the very final mission in X, which I had to replay several times to make sure my ears weren't deceiving me. Its like if there was a mobile game connected to Ace Combat Zero that's set before Cipher goes off to stop some bombers at the start, and in a simple early bop the botes mission you were being called Demon Lord and listening to Zero. Or one connected to 4 and you get called the Ribbon Fighter and Megalith Agnus Dei plays over tank busting. It is really jarring when you notice it.



This time I actually went to hunt down all enemies this time, so we get a complete score screen (minus deck guns, just take down the ship itself instead). Interesting note, difficulty in this game determines the number of enemies in addition to how smart they are, on easy there are only three landing ships total.

Next time, back to Base Sallqa to pull our bosses out of the fire again.



Just pretend there's more blurry city jpegs here, okay?
Challwa

A presumably military naval port city south of Griswall, and at the foot of Mount Nevera. By the time we arrive they have taken enough of a beating that they have no way to defend themselves. Despite this they remain one of the most important Naval facilities to free Aurelia, largely due to the proximity to the capital.

Ashsaber
Oct 24, 2010

Deploying Swordbreakers!
College Slice
Welcome back to Ace Combat Xi Skies of Incursion. Today is going to be a quick one, even for this game.





Back to defending Sallqa, because they don't have anyone else who can defend them. The big things here are that Challwa is actually important as a military area, and that we've already lost 60% of Aurelia to the enemy, holy poo poo. Other than that the enemy is pissed and wants to level Sallqa now, which is also bad.



Hey, its a gloomy day now, rather than bright blue skies, so they changed something at least. This mission mixes the first two, defend the base and kill the bombers, nothing new. But apparently losing buildings doesn't actually damage the base? The bomber right in front of me there will hit that building in a second and do nothing to the MPG, so :iiam:.



One of the bombers was acting little strange though. Not sure why it was sticking straight up during a bombing run, but it did. Maybe the pilot was drunk?



Beyond that very little interesting happens this mission. I did realize that the only thing that will actually budge the MPG is a bomber going through the square on the radar there, despite being nowhere near any actual allies. :ms:




Again, didn't bother chasing down all escorts, so there were probably a couple more planes out there. Sallqa is once again safe, and its time for us to move on.

This is the half-way point for Skies of Incursion, and most of the actually interesting parts are ahead. See you next time as we make a brief detour into the bootleg Round Table.



Nothing new to see here, move along please.


I swear, the next mission will beat least somewhat interesting.

Ashsaber
Oct 24, 2010

Deploying Swordbreakers!
College Slice
Welcome back to Ace Combat Xi Skies of Incursion.





Looks like we've pissed off Leasath enough that they've sent the not-Strigons after us. Now we have to meet them at the not-Round Table (The Square Table?) to keep them from just cutting us off. Aside from the fact that Navaro is probably about to shoot the poor sap in charge of Leasath's Air Force, our AWACS is being a bit snippy.



Today we have an air to air brawl on our hands. No need to defend allies that don't do anything, just us and them. This is the first mission that actually felt like Ace Combat to me. Again, just kill everything to win :black101:

We also have more time than usual for this, seven whole minutes to complete the mission rather than five. Also we've got a rocking track from much later in X playing, this time actually very fitting for the matter at hand.



Our enemies are kinda making GBS threads themselves at the sight of us at this point. Its quite nice to be recognized.



We're fighting solid numbers of mid-game planes now. Not nearly as many Fishbeds flying in pretty much straight lines for most enemies, we actually need to fight now.



Once you take down the first seven or eight enemies Chimera Squadron shows up. They seem pretty sure they can beat us.



Their allies are not so confident. :smug:



Chimera Squad is three planes, all SU-37s, which seems to be the prevailing choice for enemy aces in recent times. They do seem to have more advanced AI than standard, I actually needed to put in some effort against them. In fact, I took multiple hits from them, enough to put me into the yellow for the first time.



Still, with a little bit of focus Chimera Squadron joins the ranks of all the other squadrons that cross paths with a player character, and end up burning wrecks.



Twelve enemy planes, all of which were actually a danger to us. I actually found myself enjoying this mission, quite a bit. Much more than the milk runs that came before it.

Next time we repay tit for tat and try to ruin Leasath's supply lines.


Image Does Not Exist
Chimera Squadron
Members
  • Chimera 1
  • Chimera 2
  • Chimera 3
Squadron Composition: Su-37 Terminator x3

A squadron well known for their actions in the Leasath civil war.

... No, we don't ever find out what those actions are. The squadron is either two or three planes depending on whether you are on easy or not. Beyond that they are pretty generic. They don't even get an emblem.


Image excised due to excessive blandness
Area Z2K
A mountainous area between Griswall and Sallqa. Is a major artery for aerial supply runs between the two. Otherwise there is nothing to note.


Chimera
A creature made of parts from multiple other creatures, at least in mythology. In real life usually used to describe a creature caused by interbreeding separate species, such as horses and donkeys interbreeding to create a mule or hinny.

...No idea what it has to do with the Squadron though, they're not flying special planes, and they don't seem to be cobbled together from other squadrons.

Ashsaber
Oct 24, 2010

Deploying Swordbreakers!
College Slice
Welcome back to Ace Combat Xi Skies of Incursion.





Well, looks like all our hard work is paying off, we are even on the offense now! Most of our allies are getting ready to punch back now, and if this mission goes off well then we will probably start making major gains. Odd though, since Skies of Deception doesn't exactly start with Aurelia counterattacking on all fronts. I'm sure its just a continuity issue.

About the mission itself, once again we get the series staple of a mission where we need to stay low or lose. Thankfully though it is not a canyon run, and most of the terrain does not even reach the altitude limit.



In gameplay terms we just need to stay under 400m, in an area consisting of mostly hills that reach to around 200m around a river valley (with the occasional gunboat). The MPG this mission is based on the number of mission critical targets you need to destroy, namely hangars, and for a change most enemies don't really matter at all. Seven minutes on the timer, which is quite generous.



The target hangars are usually guarded by a couple AA guns or SAMs, but they de-spawn when you take out the hangar they guard. Also, hello, ground. I'm not sure how I got that close to the ground and didn't die, since despite my fast and low play style in most Ace Combats I still don't feel totally comfortable with the controls here, but I lived.



Lets skip ahead to after the second hangar was destroyed. Aside from the terrified Leasath soldiers freaking out there is one thing I want to point out here, which I couldn't really get in screenshots. I originally overflew the hangar because I was too busy hitting SAMs, which led to me flying up one of the hills, to the point where I went over 400m. I was expecting it to act like all other Ace Combats I've played and either instantly fail me or launch a super SAM that insta kills and cannot be evaded, instead I just took a bit of damage until I went back under 400m. I'm now assuming Leasath's radars are just so powerful that they damage my plane just by pinging it.



As you might notice from the time remaining I decided to stop loving around at this point and just finish it. I was bee-lining for the hangars at this point and ignoring the rest. But now we've got enemy fighters incoming, huh? Well, that could be interesting game design, having to stay under a certain height and dogfight enemies who don't, or just stick right to the targets, so its nice to see something different for once.



Oh. Well, I guess that makes sense. Now it will be easier to take out the last two hangars, at least.



Yeah, AWACS has some pretty good advice at this point. Look at all the little white dots on the radar now!



More Leasath freakouts, we seem to be getting pretty popular. And I think this is the most enemies that we've seen at once, probably more enemies than multiple previous missions put together.



So gently caress trying to take down everything, I hit the last target and then it was time for me to leave this lovely nameless place.



My ranking reflected my cowardice, but gently caress it.

Next time, an actual connection to X, and a mission I'm not sure ever got proper playtesting.

No analysis today, we don't even get a name for this area.

Ashsaber
Oct 24, 2010

Deploying Swordbreakers!
College Slice
Welcome back to Ace Combat Xi Skies of Incursion. gently caress this mission very much. This is where the need to take my fingers off the controls to take screenshots really started to kill me, repeatedly. There's not going to be many screenshots of the latter half of this mission for that reason.

In fact, while most of the screenshots from this update are from my attempts on Normal, the rest of the LP will be on Easy.





Oooh boy, where do I even start? Well, good spirits are all well and good, but Sallqa's defenses without us around to baby them are... lackluster at best. Having us go down to Port Patterson to protect our boats is going to leave them wide open, even if enemy activity is reduced at this time. In fact, let me get my map...



Yeah, we're going to be a bit too far away to bail them if another five tanks decide to roll in.

Anyways, time to start our escort quest!



We need to escort the four whole ships on our side to the edge of the combat zone for this mission. That means we need to kill all enemy ships so our allies don't get blockaded, and shoot down all enemy bombers so they don't die. It is unlikely that our allies will fire a single shot to help us.

Also, hey Thalasa's captain, what are you doing here? Aren't you needed in Crow's escort mission?



Things start simple. A bomber spawns every 15-20 seconds, and then a Frigate and a Destroyer pop in, all in a fairly small area. The Bombers and Frigate take two missiles each, but the Destroyer takes four to destroy. This I could deal with, mostly, but by the time I was making my third pass on the ships there was already another bomber on the way.

Speaking about the bombers briefly, you might have noticed they aren't regular bomber types, like B-52s or old Russian bombers. Instead they are probably a bomber variant of another Ace Combat Original plane, one that I also want to be shown off on something better than my lovely little ipod screen (if it were even in this game). The YRB-89 is a bomber that Leasath uses in the three missions in this game that involve bombers, then they never appear again in the whole series. I kind of wanted to make a joke about how there is totally a legitimate reason for this lore-wise rather than it being to save money licencing real bombers, but I can't be assed after this mission.



There is a lot of chatter this mission. Like a ton. This update is already image heavy, if I tried to get all the chatter and post it the post would be ridiculous, and it would be a massive pain. It is also at this point I pretty much gave up on getting everything, because...



This mission loving sucks! You constantly have to be flying from a set of ships that you need to take down so your allies can continue to the bombers that are constantly spawning to kill your allies, all while the enemy's SAMs have a better range than you. The enemy ships take too many missiles to take down in a reasonable time frame and you don't get any method of mitigating this. No special weapons, no allied planes, nothing. Because of that you need to spend way too long in SAM range, dodgy controls making it hard to dodge, and making it difficult to accelerate and shoot or maneuver at the same time.

After this I threw myself against the mission for around half an hour, and got shot down at least a half dozen times. Eventually I snapped and restarted the campaign on Easy (You don't even get briefings if you are in Free Mission mode)



After that it was pretty much a cakewalk to go through the mission. Easy mode means all the ships take a single missile to kill, and only half as many bombers spawn. And at the end of the mission, when a final blockade spawns, only half as many ships are part of it.

I had to go back later to take a look, because I had thought the enemy carrier was a bit small, but I guess it was just the screen size and such making me think that.



Anyways, mission complete, the fleet from Port Patterson is on its way, and now its time to take the fight all the way to Leasath's turf.



But wait, Crow had to liberate Port Patterson back in mission 3, and the next mission is the last one for Skies of Incursion. So what happens to set the course of the war to what it was at the start of Skies of Deception? Well, the only mission they put any real effort into, for one thing.

No Analysis again, Crow already covered Patterson much better than I ever could.

Ashsaber
Oct 24, 2010

Deploying Swordbreakers!
College Slice
Welcome back to Ace Combat Xi Skies of Incursion. Its the last mission for this little game, and this one probably got most of the budget, not that it says much.





Well, nice to see that our terrible escort quest paid off, I guess. And that description of the Gandr? Well, 20 times the thrust of a normal fighter is probably not enough for it, as you will soon see.



This mission obviously got most of the budget for the game, you can tell because it starts us off with the only cutscene in the game. You can see us there, flying over the fleet we saved last mission.



Hello there. Just so we're clear, before anything else, this particular superweapon does not have the Glepnir's special stealth systems. At best it may be something in the same vein as an B-2 or other stealth aircraft, but really the entire allied fleet failed to notice a flying fortress wandering towards them.

You can probably guess where this is going.



Yep, a SWBM just hit the objects of the escort quest from hell, undoing all our work. How could it possibly destroy them at sea level? because while the destructive power of an SWBM might be higher at greater altitudes, the fleet was clustered and slow, meaning that even the lower power available at that height could destroy them.



Now we get our official introduction to our final enemy, the Gandr, the prototype of the Glepnir. Unlike 99% of video games and animes it is worse in every way from its successor.



Time to kill another flying fortress. All we have to do is kill the weapons on its wings until the actual weak point is exposed. On Easy (thank you mission 7) this amounts to killing two AA guns and two SAMs twice. On harder difficulties it would be revealed that Falco One is even shittier than we thought, as Chimera Squadron would show up to protect the Gandr as well.



After the first wave of weapons they decide to reuse more of the Glepnir fight and start launching SWBMs repeatedly to try and slow us down. It really does not work.



After taking down the second wave of guns the Gandr exposes its weak-point, a single lonely SWBM port. Compare to the Glepnir, which had like eight at least. The idea here, I guess, is that we need to shoot it as an SWBM is launched so it blows up in the tube, destroying the Gandr, but with the shoestring budget and the iPod Touch's capabilities...




Yeah, there was only enough in the budget for one cutscene, so the mission just ends. But hey, unlike every other mission in the game, this one has an outro blurb, so lets cap the game off with that!



...Yeah, that is how Xi ends. Hooray, we won the air battle, but we lost in everything else. Our fleet was destroyed, leaving us with no naval power anywhere useful, and our ground forces are screwed since it looks like Sallqa got a visit from the Glepnir. Everything we've fought for is up in smoke, and we reach the canonical beginning of X.

So, that's how they fit this game into the events of X, by making everything we've done pointless, by erasing all our work. Yeah, its no wonder I never came back to this after the first time I played it, beating the game leaves you with no feeling of triumph, or anything. In the time leading up to this mini LP I read through the plot of Skies of Incursion multiple times, but even knowing it was coming, actually getting here and having the game throw out everything I had done as worthless... It left me feeling hollow, useless.

This is not a good note to end a game on.

By the way, if I had beaten the whole campaign on normal I would have unlocked the last free plane available, the Falken. With no TLS. What even is the point?




Gandr
The Airborn Fortress Gandr is a Leasath superweapon, and the prototype of the Glepnir, with all the problems you might expect from a real world prototype of this nature. Pressed into service when it was unfinished, it lacks many of the features that make the Glepnir so fearsome, including the Optical Camouflage and the Shock Cannon, as well as being armed with less SWBMs and conventional weapons. These flaws, along with the crippling weakness presented by its lone SWBM launcher allowed Falco One to easily destroy the Gandr on its first combat mission.

There is not much information available about the Gandr, so the rest of this is conjecture on my part. Meant to be a test-bed for the air frame developed for the Glepnir, the Gandr was likely never meant to do much more than get in the air and prove the air frame is effective. There is no evidence that the Gandr was ever intended to be fitted with a Shock Cannon or Optical Camo, though it is likely that it could have been retro-fit with said systems. It was launched incomplete, and there is no solid data on what the completed Gandr would have actually been capable of. The likely minimum that the Gandr would have brought to the table would have been a more robust series of conventional weapons, making it comparable to one of the Estovakian Gyges-class aerial warships, themselves capable of being a massive threat to any non-player squadron. More unlikely would have been a full retrofit to give it optical camo, which would have effectively given Leasath a second Glepnir.




Jormungandr
The world serpent of Norse mythology. The middle child of Loki and Angrboda, and said to have grown so large it circled the world and took hold of its own tail. At the time of Ragnarok it is said that Jormungandr will release its tail and spew poison upon the land, and will be killed by Thor, but not before fatally poisoning the God.

While it is not confirmed to be the name from which the Gandr gets its name, it fits with the naming scheme of other Leasath superweapons.

Ashsaber
Oct 24, 2010

Deploying Swordbreakers!
College Slice
Thank you to anyone who was interested enough in Skies of Incursion to actually read all of that. According to Acepedia there is supposed to be an 'Air Combat Challenge' mission, but I don't know whether it was DLC or if it is unlocked by beating Hard difficulty, either way I am not able to show it.

To the rest of you, no more Xi updates cluttering up the thread from here on out! Yay!

Ashsaber
Oct 24, 2010

Deploying Swordbreakers!
College Slice
Pretty sure I have Ace Combat but Tanks but never did much with it. Got it for like five bucks before going on vacation for a few weeks a few years back, I believe the opening lines to the story were something along the lines of 'these tanks were never meant to be used for war', which was just hilariously stupid, but coming off of AC 6...

Ashsaber
Oct 24, 2010

Deploying Swordbreakers!
College Slice
Fun fact, there's a spiritual sequel series toHerzog Zwei, called Airmech, which comes in MoBA and action RPG forms.

Ashsaber
Oct 24, 2010

Deploying Swordbreakers!
College Slice
Still echoing my thoughts from much earlier, Having played this game and having a decent sort of memory for how the decision turns out, I don't really feel comfortable casting a vote here.

That said, here we go :allears:

Ashsaber
Oct 24, 2010

Deploying Swordbreakers!
College Slice
Glad you're at least done with the jammers for this game, Crow. Having this as my first AC game made me fear jammers in all other games I played, but this is probably the worst they get in the entire series.

Also, IIRC my first run somehow got both 3C and 7C, possibly 12C as well. At least it got me the 'do the longest possible run' trophy off the bat.

Ashsaber
Oct 24, 2010

Deploying Swordbreakers!
College Slice
Twink out some of the original planes to the best possible, compare them with regular ones. Lets see if the plane on crack is as good here as it was in Joint Assault.

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Ashsaber
Oct 24, 2010

Deploying Swordbreakers!
College Slice
Oh right, almost forgot. Remember way back when, I made mention of really unfitting music in the mobile game? Well, now I can actually name what track that was. it was 34. End of Deception I & II. Yeah, the high energy final mission music, for a dead easy mission shooting a few ships.

What the gently caress were they smoking when they decided on that?

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