“Can you see any borders from here? What has borders given us?”
We’ve finally arrived at the final Playstation 2 Ace Combat game, the end of the “golden age” as some fans would call it. And Project Aces would end this era with their best work yet.
For many Ace Combat fans, Ace Combat Zero is the best game in the series. At first, I disagreed, mostly because I like to be contrarian. However, out of every Ace Combat game, Zero had me coming back the most. “Have you found a reason to fight yet, buddy?” It would ask me every time I did.
For the setting of Zero, we are back in the Belkan War that was first described in AC5. We play as Galm 1, or Cipher, yet another mute psychopath.
Unlike the previous two games on the Playstation 2, we play as a mercenary, flying for the country of Ustio which is now under Belkan occupation.
What makes Ace Combat Zero great however is its overall narration in my opinion. Ace Combat 4 was a retelling from the perspective of a child affected by the war and 5 had CGI cutscenes that followed parallel to the gameplay. However Zero has real actors mixed into pre-rendered scenes who play out the characters we meet in the skies (and shoot down). It is told through a journalist, who is following our footsteps to find us to make a documentary about the Belkan War and he conducts interviews with these pilots to learn the true story about Galm 1.
Another thing that makes Ace Combat Zero great is its gameplay. For the first time in the series there is some resemblance of difficulty. The game puts an emphasis on elite squadrons whose sole purpose is to stop Galm 1 and your wingman Galm 2, Pixy.
Each Squadron has a face behind it, dialogue to flesh them out and an intro to set the tone of the fight before the game lets you off its leash. This sort of characterization completely lacked in 5.
And of course, I can’t talka bout Zero without talking about its music. The musical identity of Zero is something I have never come across in any game I have ever played.
Since its inception Ace Combat has taken a lot of liberties from the original Top Gun movie. This includes a heavily rock-inspired soundtrack for the games. This is not to say they are bad, because that would be a lie. They are all amazing, from ‘Fire Gunman’ in Ace Combat 2, to ‘Comona’ in Ace Combat 4, to ‘First Flight’ in Ace Combat 5, which even featured in the opening ceremony of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
Ace Combat Zero is heavily inspired by Spanish flamenco, especially when you are forced to face a strong enemy, the guitars start coming about. And its greatest strength isn’t that the music sounds amazing, but it completely restructures the theme of the entire game. Flamenco’s fluidity goes hand-in-hand with the dance of the fighter jets circling each other in the air. You are no longer regular air force, rather mercenaries who fly differently, without having to adhere to strict tactics or orders. The guitar makes Ace Combat Zero. Without it, there would be no game worth even spending a second thinking.
Then there’s the rest of the game, which follows the Ace Combat structure of:
Mission 1 – “We need you to take out some bombers.”
Mission 18 – “There’s a secret terrorist organization who wants to wipe out civilization with a cluster nuclear bomb. Also they have a giant airship now.”
The coalition wins against Belka, of course, however before a peace deal can be finalized, Belka drops the aforementioned seven nukes across its borders to stop the coalition’s advance. To make matters worse, it turns out that our wingman, Pixy who has been calling us “Buddy” the entire game, is a part of this organization called “A World Without Borders” and is now the main villain of the game.
The organization’s main goal, as it turns out, is to use a secret Belkan nuclear weapon titled the “V2”, a weapon powerful enough to wipe out civilization across the planet. And Pixy now holds control of it.
To stop him, you alone face him in one final battle, on top of snowy mountains. Pixy starts to address Cipher personally through the radio and drops some BANGERS such as:
“Those who survive a long time on the battlefield start to think they are invincible. I bet you do too buddy.”
It’s clear that the game carried the same anti-war message that the rest of the games had. The lines between enemy and ally are blurred even more. We now that Belka is the enemy, however the coalition conducts dubious acts as well.
This is very overt in one mission, where you help bomb a city named Hoffnung (Hope in German) which has industry that helps Belka’s war effort in what I believe is a parallel to the real life bombing of Dresden during WW2. Hoffnung still has civilians in it when we conduct the bombing, leading to inevitable collateral casualties. Pixy protests, however the mission continues, which pushes him later on to pursue his involvement with “A World Without Borders”.
Our journalist finally reaches Pixy, who is now in some unknown land fighting an unknown war. He thinks back on his actions on what roles borders have on what war is or peace. And of course, he shares his thoughts on his “Buddy”, Cipher.
The game tries to sell us a version of peace, this time knowing however that it would not last and that more conflict would result due to the Belkan War. Yet its messaging is clearer than 5, and its plot more focused with better gameplay.
However Glatisant is the worst mission in the entire Ace Combat Playstation 2 series. There, I said it.