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“La la la! Listen to our beautiful voice!“

Following the commercial success of Ace Combat 4, Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War released for the Playstation 2 three years later.

I don’t have as much to say about 5 as I had about 4. Its message is more overt and its story less interesting.

Ace Combat 5 takes place 15 years after the Belkan War, in which the titular Belka, torn from economic depression is taken over by a group of radicals who decide the best way to move forward is to invade everyone around them, including the continent’s superpower, the Osean Federation.

Despite its initial success, Belka loses, prompting them to drop 7 (yes, 7) nuclear bombs in their own territory to create a radioactive shield to stop the “invaders”.

In Ace Combat 5, the government of Yuktobania invades Osea for seemingly no reason. Our player character, Blaze, another mute protagonist, and his squadron fight the Yuktobanian onslaught.

Unlike Ace Combat 4, the story is told through aged CGI cutscenes and instead of focusing on the war on the ground, the focus is instead shifted to Blaze’s squadmates.

TL;DR, it turns out that Belka, to take revenge on losing the war they started 15 years ago, has infiltrated both the governments of Yuktobania and Osea to make them fight each other.

The villians of this game are Belka’s Ofnir and Grabacr squadron and I call them villians because that is their personality. Unlike Yellow 13, who despite having a very selective number of lines in 4 had lots of personality to him, both Ofnir and Grabacr are ideological zealots who are obsessed with restoring the “pride” they had 15 years ago.

Not only does the story fail to give the enemy we are supposed to be scared of any personality, the gameplay fails in the same regard, as it is possible to defeat both squadrons within 15 seconds of their respective “boss fights”.

After finding out that their governments have been highjacked, some Yuktobanian and Osean forces forgive each other and join forces to take down Belka (again), in the world’s most forced anti-war messaging.

Instead of muddling the lines at least a bit like 4, Ace Combat 5’s villians are cruel. They resort to dirty tactics, false flag attacks, nuclear weapons, chemical weapons and even orbital weapons. When their orbital weapon fails to launch, they just throw the whole damn platform into Osea’s capital from the damn atmosphere.

Don’t get me wrong, Ace Combat 5 is a fun game, however out of all Playstation 2 AC games, it is the one I have returned to the least. It doesn’t have a lot to say and what it has to say is not very interesting.

There are dramatic moments, moments that tug at your heart strings, but the same way an action movie would have those scenes. It doesn’t require any thinking from the player, it fails to show how the war affects the people, all it needs you to do is to follow orders so that the “good guys” win the day.

When you finish the game and the bad guys are defeated, one final cutscene plays to show the hangar that our squadron used the entire game empty. No planes, no personel, no bombs or missiles. A civilian propeller plane flies overhead, to signify that the skies that were once hostile to us have returned to peace.

Peace that will not last, of course. In following commercial success, Project Aces unintentionally has doomed the world of Ace Combat into a never ending, perpetual cycle of conflict, since if there is no war, there are no more Ace Combat games.

The need for Project Aces to develop games undercuts its anti-war message more than the stickers of Northrop Grumman, Boeing or Dassault on their covers. While unintentional, I find that fact extremely hilarious. Despite the fact that the games claim that the people have learnt their lesson, in a few years they will find another excuse to go to war, for as long as Bandai Namco deems their world profitable.