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Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation
aka: Ace Combat 6

"To all planes: We're going to take back Gracemeria today!"

The eighth (seventh in the main Strangereal series, if you count Zero) game in the Ace Combat series. As Talisman, alias Garuda 1, you fight in the Aenean Continental War of 2015 between Emmeria and Estovakia.

Ace Combat 6 was the first console game in the series to be released for a non-Sony system. It was released exclusively for the Xbox 360 in 2007 and became the best-selling game on that system in Japan.

Tropes found in the game :

A Father to His Men: Pasternak to his squadron.
Airborne Aircraft Carrier: There has been a number throughout the series, but Ace Combat 6 shows one of these being in-air refuelled by no less than eight tanker aircraft at once. Amusingly, they're smaller than its engines.
Airstrike Impossible: Par for couse in an AC game; there's tunnel missions, and the final level has you fly into the barrel of a massive railgun that's preparing to fire.
Anti-Villain: The Strigons.
Arc Words: "Go dance with the angels! Go dance with the angels! Go dance with the angels! Go dance with the angels! Go dance with the angels! Go dance with the ang—"* smack* SHUT UP!!!
Arms Dealer: Lorenz Riedel, who you fought before when he was Gault 7 of the terrorist group in Zero.
Attack Drone: Ilya Pasternak has UCAVs under his command.
Badass Army: The Estovakian military.
- In terms of gameplay, the Emmerian military is very much this compared to armies in previous Ace Combat games. You'll routinely see your allies make kills, and in almost every mission, at least one of the other squadrons/ground teams are capable of completing their objective without your help. And when you do help them out, they're more than willing to return the favor.
BFG: Chandelier, Estovakia's anti-meteor colossal rail gun. The weapon itself is about the size of the island right next to it.
Big Damn Heroes: The second half of Mission 12.
Big Lipped Alligator Moment: In-Universe, you end up fighting the Nosferatu, but it's not even mentioned that it's a special plane and has no impact on the story. Not even in the flight records.
Bilingual Bonus: All Minor Aces' callsigns are all in Russian. Strigon is named after a Romanian word.
Cherry Blossoms: The Zipang F-14D as a Downloadable Content.
Cherry Tapping: Perform only guns and/or only a single plane type (fighter, attacker, or multirole) for an entire campaign, albeit each results in an Achievement.
Cherubic Choir: "Chandelier/To All Things" from Ace Combat 6 is played throughout the final mission, during which you have to destroy a massive railgun while it rains destruction on your homeland from across the continent. The song also shifts into a rendition of "Fires of Liberation" at around 2:38.
Civil War: Partially what led to the events of the game.
Continuity Nod: The P-1112 Aigaion is mentioned to be based on Belkan technology - as such, the sequence to shoot it down is exactly the same as that for the XB-0 Hresvelgr in Ace Combat Zero.
- And veterans of Ace Combat Zero might also recognize the bonus ace of that mission, Lorenz Riedel, formerly 'Gault 7'.
Crowd Song: When Matilda and Melissa finally reunite, the background characters can be heard singing "A Brand New Day".
Crystal Dragon Jesus: The Emmerians in 6 have their "Golden King".
Delaying Action: Mission 7 is the type 1 (escape).
Disc One Nuke: Buying a CFA-44 skin in AC6, assuming you count buying DLC as a way to get a Disc One Nuke.
- Counts as Bribing Your Way to Victory.
Downloadable Content: You can buy skins that allow you to fly a craft without buying it ingame, although you're restricted to using the default SP weapon unless you have bought the plane and extra SP weapons ingame (there's no DLC for that). Skins tend to look good, recall pilots/teams/squadrons from the older games, and have modified performance characteristics. Of special note, however, are The Idolmaster themed skins which, in addition to being very high performance and having colored smoke trails on missiles, tend to have decreased standard missile counts and increased SP weapon counts due to the fact that the ammo counts are the height and three sizes (and for planes with a fourth SP weapon, weight) of the character on the skin; the exception is the A-10 skin, which has ammo counts that reference 765 Productions.
Dude, Where's My Respect?: Beautifully averted. Ilya Pasternak in Ace Combat 6 came to occupied Gracemeria just to fight Garuda One.
- During the Ragno Fortress mission, if you take the operation that requires you to fly through the tunnels under the base, you can hear intercepted radio chatter from the garrison that can basically be summed up as "Holy shit he's UNDER OUR BASE, BLOWING OUR SHIT UP!"
Fatal Family Photo: Inverted. The player's wingman Shamrock constantly mentions returning home to his family; however, when the heroes eventually recapture their capital, Shamrock finds out his wife and daughter both died.
Fluffy the Terrible: Throughout several missions you have to aid your country's navy. The flagship of the fleet is "Marigold".
Genre Blindness: City Lights: "This is Sky Kid. I'd just like to say, "mission accomplished.""
Goldfish Poop Gang: The Strigons have lost levels in badass by the last time they get fought.
Harder Than Hard: Ace Of Aces mode. It's only available after you've completed everything else, and it loves to insert multiple Nosferatus, support airships, and even Pasternak into levels where they wouldn't appear normally.
- Just to clarify for anyone not clear on the concept: on Expert difficulty, one missile instantly kills you, and that's not the hardest difficulty.
Heroic Sacrifice: Garuda 2 "Shamrock" fought his way back the capital city, only to find that his wife and daughter were killed during the invasion. Disgraced, he vows to leave the Air Force after Chandelier is destroyed. During the final battle, he decides to fly through a trench filled with AA guns in order to search for Chandelier's backup cooling unit. He confirms it's location, but his plane his heavily damaged, and he willingly lets it crash. In the ending cutscene, it is revealed that he survived the crash, but is confined to a wheelchair. He decides to continue living in order to see the peace he had been fighting for.
- Although Shamrock does say he's going through rehab, meaning there's a possibility that he's slowly recovering and regaining use of his legs. Kinda helps avoid what might have otherwise been a Downer Ending.
100% Completion: Ace Of Aces was DLC, so it's kind of like a Kaizo hack.
It's Raining Men: Missions in "6" combined this with Tank Goodness.
It's Up to You: Improved since the previous games: The AI has been ramped up enough that they easily account for 50% of the kills on the battlefield, and although you are still an integral part of defeating the enemy army, the rest of the forces manage to accomplish a good number of the objectives while you are busy doing the others. Both played straight and subverted in the mission, Weapons of Mass Destruction, where you and your wingmen are the only ones skilled enough to deceive an enemy radar net by flying through a valley, and subverted with a vengeance when an entire enemy fleet ambushes you after you destroy the convoy, and you're helpless to fight back (due to the unending missile barrage being thrown at you, you have no time to even aim), until your friendly allied squadron turns up and saves the day.
Jack-of-All-Stats: The DLC Gryphus Emblem F-22 in 6 literally breathes this trope. So much, that on the stat chart it looks like a perfect hexagon. The MiG-29 Fulcrum is also shown to be like this.
Macross Missile Massacre: Each launch of the ADMM special weapon in Ace Combat 6 targets 12 air or ground enemies at once, double that of the XMA6 and triple that of the XMA4, without expending that many missiles at once as they do; earlier games allowed no more than four simultaneous missile launches, and in each case one target = one missile. Its only weakness is that the weapon has a long reload time and that it has the same potential as the Advanced Air-to-Ground Missile (XAGM) for being wasted against ground clusters that could have been destroyed with a single bomb. Nevertheless, that's potentially up to 216 struck targets on Normal... worse yet, even on Easy the CFA-44 Nosferatu "boss" (piloted by Ilya Pasternak) is not above using it on you.
- Backfires on Pasternak though when you can call them in on him, through Allied Support — clearing operations and generally helping out your side allows you to call in fire support against targets in your view or who are attacking you, so no matter who's on whose six you can call in multiple missile shots almost at will.
Mauve Shirt Army: 6 has several allied squadrons/pilots/units that appear in every mission and are easily identifiable. They even have names, ranks and biographies if you care enough to look them up in the Assault Records.
My Country, Right or Wrong: 6 subverts this when one of the Estovakian officers, despite still believing in this trope, hated the idea of allowing innocent civilians die, and willingly surrenders over the secrets to his country's last trump card, the Chandelier.
Thirteen Is Unlucky: Strigon 12 believes this. Ironic, because his best friend died in the 13th mission.
Real Men Fly Pink Raptors: Some of the downloadable paint schemes for 6 plaster giant pictures of iDOLM@STER girls on your planes.
Reasonable Authority Figure: Ilya Pasternak -the new Strigon Team Leader- is this according to Strigon 12/Toscha Mijasik.
Redshirt Army: In 6 your allies only become useful after you've earned the right to call in their help. When you do call on them, they can clear the entire screen in seconds.
Reds With Rockets / Russians With Rusting Rockets: The Estovakians of AC6 appear to be a mix of these, having Russian names and using a mix of Cold War era and modern Russian-made aircraft in their inventories.
The Republic: Emmeria in 6.
Shout Out: The DLC paint schemes for 6 include pictures of iDOL@STER girls.
- Also, Sky Kid is named after an old Namco game (which has had shout-outs throughout the series) and his wingmen (Red Baron and Blue Max were the playable characters.
Stupid Sacrifice: Shamrock's performance in the last mission of Ace Combat 6 is half this and half Death Seeker, as he's suicidal over his perceived failure to protect his family. The stupid part is that he had nothing to do with his family's death except in the most general sense of being a member of the military that was driven out of Gracemeria.
Theme Naming: The callsigns for allied pilots all follow a certain theme depending on the squadron. For instance, the 15th squadron's theme is types of falcons (Windhover, Lanner, Saker) and the 2nd's theme is snow (Avalanche, Blizzard, Serac).
Violation of Common Sense: Lampshaded in Ace Combat 6, during the Tunnel operation in Mission 10.
Bird Eater: Aircraft flying through tunnels? THAT'S never been done before!
War Is Hell:6, where virtually every cutscene has one or more characters mourning dead loved ones or wondering whether war actually accomplishes anything.
The War Sequence: 6 explicates it, with the cutscene for the first mission showing that Talisman/Garuda One is (initially) just one amongst many pilots defending Emmeria, as well as the ally assistance system where helping allies to accomplish secondary objectives would lead to being able to get their help back later.
- Calling for allied support and watching missiles streak toward a target from all directions is one of the more awe-inspiring sights in the Ace Combat series. And you can do it as much as you want.
Worthy Opponent: Notably, Ilya Pasternak seemed to see you this way, as well as the world at large given the assault records' description of his death as a 'heroic sacrifice.' The reality is that he ambushes you after you take back your own capital while you're low on weapons and low on health while he's flying a plane somewhere between 'Weaponized UFO' and 'Arch-Angel Michael Wielding God's Flaming Sword,' plus the several score drones he launches to fight alongside him. Yet even in this light he is apparently 'heroically sacrificing' himself, since it appears that he and everyone else in the world was certain that even then he was no match for the dreaded Talisman. You could argue that he could have been hopeful or even confident of his own victory and the heroic part come in since he told his whole squadron to bugger off so they wouldn't get all get killed by Talisman, but then you're really just raising the issue that it would have therefore been wholly expected that Talisman would have won against Pasternak and the entire Strigon Team by himself had they engaged with Pasternak. Probably true.
- Considering you can call in allied support to gun down Pasternak it's pretty obvious that Pasternak isn't just fighting one ace, but the entire Emmerian military. Maybe he can take down Talisman, not a sure thing, but he's a dead man going up against those odds even with drone backup. His sacrifice was noble because it got his squadron out of a lost battle with their lives.