I wanted to like this game I really did, it impressed me early on but a quick downslide made me upset. The mechanics are solid, and the way the game progresses up to a certain point is smile inducing. Then for some reason this turns into the star wars prequels, just a major let down from early expectations.

So a little lingo that I use for this real quick; the game is broken down into 4 campaigns: US Army, US Navy, Japan Army, Japan Navy. Each campaign has a number of mission arcs that require you to go through 4 battles a piece.

Through each difficulty, the AI makes modest strides in its advancement, the basic AI is not where the real problem stems. The true problem stems in the artificial difficulty that crops up in Leader and Legend Mode. This is my first major issue with the game.

My second major issue with the game is the random objective battle generation. This too is broken at higher difficulties. With both issues combined you’re forced to find the portions of the coding that are mentally impaired and exploit those to no end. This literally saps the enjoyment that the game begins with away. I found it quite upsetting, truth be told.

Let’s start at Easy difficulty. Just don’t play this I had one battle per campaign mission where the enemy fighter just crashed into the ground for no reason. Like just started the battle and nosedived straight into the sea I just laughed. I went to normal shortly after and found the game to be enjoyable for a time. Then I went to ACE and found the game to be even better.

Unfortunately, these became easy to accomplish as well. I went to Very Hard and began to see some discrepancies in the application of certain rules. The first campaign mission arc I faced off against enemies whom felt no need to follow the 2 High G maneuver restriction and began throwing out three to four of these moves, making it extremely difficult to keep pace. Mix in their two to three ACE maneuvers and you got a hell of a fight brewing on your hands.

Now, this wouldn’t be completely terrible if it weren’t for the mission selections. In Normal and ACE you can expect to see mostly fair fights with a rare unfair one early then becoming more abundant later on. Once you go to Leader mode though this gets thrown completely out of whack. You’ll suddenly face off in 3v1 battles very early on. I hope you can begin to see how the combination leads to some frustrating mission arcs.

Finally, I began to beat missions in Leader mode, but something was suddenly missing. The fun had totally evaporated. I wasn’t devising better tactics to combat the enemy I was exploiting weaknesses in the AI and that was it. I was using the same combinations over and over again. It became instantly repetitive. I was frustrated that the game boils down to proving you’re more flexible than a computer program. Check my achievements, you can see that I can beat 3v1 missions on Leader, it’s just that it’s not fun.

With the difficulties that I enjoyed ending up becoming easy quickly this game lost its fun factor after the second campaign. You’ll try and get more satisfaction from this but you’ll end up more disappointed than before you started that quest. It’s ok to enjoy bad things though so play on.

I wanted to like this game I really did, it impressed me early on but a quick downslide made me upset. The mechanics are solid, and the way the game progresses up to a certain point is smile inducing. Then for some reason this turns into the star wars prequels, just a major let down from early expectations. So a little lingo that I use for this real quick; the game is broken down into 4 campaigns: US Army, US Navy, Japan Army, Japan Navy. Each campaign has a number of mission arcs that require you to go through 4 battles a piece. Through each difficulty, the AI makes modest strides in its advancement, the basic AI is not where the real problem stems. The true problem stems in the artificial difficulty that crops up in Leader and Legend Mode. This is my first major issue with the game. My second major issue with the game is the random objective battle generation. This too is broken at higher difficulties. With both issues combined you’re forced to find the portions of the coding that are mentally impaired and exploit those to no end. This literally saps the enjoyment that the game begins with away. I found it quite upsetting, truth be told. Let’s start at Easy difficulty. Just don’t play this I had one battle per campaign mission where the enemy fighter just crashed into the ground for no reason. Like just started the battle and nosedived straight into the sea I just laughed. I went to normal shortly after and found the game to be enjoyable for a time. Then I went to ACE and found the game to be even better. Unfortunately, these became easy to accomplish as well. I went to Very Hard and began to see some discrepancies in the application of certain rules. The first campaign mission arc I faced off against enemies whom felt no need to follow the 2 High G maneuver restriction and began throwing out three to four of these moves, making it extremely difficult to keep pace. Mix in their two to three ACE maneuvers and you got a hell of a fight brewing on your hands. Now, this wouldn’t be completely terrible if it weren’t for the mission selections. In Normal and ACE you can expect to see mostly fair fights with a rare unfair one early then becoming more abundant later on. Once you go to Leader mode though this gets thrown completely out of whack. You’ll suddenly face off in 3v1 battles very early on. I hope you can begin to see how the combination leads to some frustrating mission arcs. Finally, I began to beat missions in Leader mode, but something was suddenly missing. The fun had totally evaporated. I wasn’t devising better tactics to combat the enemy I was exploiting weaknesses in the AI and that was it. I was using the same combinations over and over again. It became instantly repetitive. I was frustrated that the game boils down to proving you’re more flexible than a computer program. Check my achievements, you can see that I can beat 3v1 missions on Leader, it’s just that it’s not fun. With the difficulties that I enjoyed ending up becoming easy quickly this game lost its fun factor after the second campaign. You’ll try and get more satisfaction from this but you’ll end up more disappointed than before you started that quest. It’s ok to enjoy bad things though so play on.