Video Game / Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation

aka: Ace Combat 6

Go Dance With The Angels!

"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 Anean Continental War of 2015-2016 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. The game became backward compatible for the Xbox One upon the release of Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown in January 2019.

Not to be confused with the other AC6, Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon.

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Tropes found in the game :

• Adventure Duo: Implied. Shamrock cracks wise and takes bets with the rest of the Air Force, while Talisman is said to take things a little more seriously.
• Airborne Aircraft Carrier: There have been a number throughout the series, but Ace Combat 6 features the truly humongous P-1112 Aigaion, which is so large it is refueled 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.
  • Mission 10 is especially hilarious for lampshading this. Operation C for said mission has you flying through small tunnels to shoot down facilities. Despite having been done in a little over the past 15 years in historical battles against massive superweapons, both your allies and your enemies think you're insane for doing it.
  Bird Eater: Fighter jets diving into tunnels... That's never been done before.
• All There in the Manual: Background materials from the game's website indicate that the conflict between Emmeria and Estovakia isn't quite as black and white as it seems in the game. An in-universe newspaper article indicates that Emmeria was providing monetary assistance to Estovakia to recover from the Ulysses asteroid impacts it suffered from. Much of the money was going to the Lyes United Front, a political faction that was responsible for starving almost 200,000 civilians who refuse to accept their rule in 2007, and this was the event that triggered the start of the Estovakian Civil War when 4 other factions rose up in outrage. In spite of this, the Emmerians continued to fund the LUF for another 3 years, only suspending aid in 2010... and then planning to restart the funding to the LUF only 1 year later, which led to the Eastern Faction blaming Emmeria for prolonging the civil war. In the end, the LUF was defeated and the Eastern Faction won the war in 2013. In light of this, it's not so surprising the Estovakians under Eastern Faction rule were able to rally popular support for an invasion of Emmeria two years later.
• Anti-Villain:
  • The Estovakians in general, they're portrayed as being desperate due to major damage to their economy and infrastructure, rather than evil. They also seem to treat their POWs humanely, the ones we see in the game don't appear to have been mistreated or abused.
  • Voychek seems quite ashamed of what his people have done and admires his adversaries' courage and tenacity.
• Arc Words: "Go dance with the angels!", which gets repeated ad infinitum by just about everyone.
• 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.
• Back from the Brink: The Emmerian forces retreat to a military base on the far western part of the country. It's from there that they start to push back.
• Badass Army: In terms of story, The Estovakian military. The Estovakians had spent six years fighting a brutal multi-sided (at its worst five different factions) civil war that came about as a result of a meteor shower that devastated the countryside and completely destroyed its economy. Despite this, they were able to create a powerful fighting force within two years (the Airborne Fleet notwithstanding) and not only take Gracemeria, but occupy the entirety of mainland Anea (a continent that is at least twice its size) over the course of roughly three months.
  • In terms of gameplay, the Emmerian military is very much this, compared to allied 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.
• Badass Crew: The Emmerian Air Force, a close-knit group of Bash Brothers who basically turn the tide of war. Of course, the best example is your squadron, Garuda Team.
• BFG: Chandelier, Estovakia's colossal anti-meteor rail gun. The weapon itself is about the size of the island right next to it, and the projectiles it fires are house-sized.
• Big Damn Heroes: The second half of Mission 12.
• Bilingual Bonus: Every minor enemy ace's callsign is in Russian. Strigon is named after a Romanian vampire, the Strigoi. The names of each ace pilot in Estovakia is culturally Serbian.
• Bling of War: The "Golden King" takes this to ridiculous extremes, it's a Samurai-esque armour worn by a past Emmerian king, made entirely out of gold. It apparently averted a war out of its sheer blingness and the king's warm smile. It ends up adorning an Emmerian tank, and both the tank and the armor atop it become a monument to the war.
• Bribing Your Way to Victory: Buying an aircraft skin DLC unlocks it right away, regardless of where you are in the story. Including the CFA-44.
• Career-Ending Injury: Happens to the original Strigon leader, Voychek, after you shoot him down during the initial invasion, which causes him to shuffled over to a desk job in Intelligence.
• 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.
• Comic-Book Fantasy Casting: Voychek has a rather similar face to Tommy Lee Jones. Considering he was famous in Japan for his BOSS Coffee commercials, quite many Japanese players point out the resemblance.
  • Toscha (AKA Strigon 12) bears a striking resemblance to a certain Maverick. Suddenly, his infamous cutscene with Pasternak starts to make a lot of sense...
• Continuity Cameo: Veterans of Ace Combat Zero might recognize the bonus ace of Mission 9, Lorenz Riedel, formerly 'Gault 7'. He also appears in the Ace of Aces version of Mission 4 as Gault 7, along with the other three surviving members of his old squadron.
• 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.
  • Not only that, an ace from that game appears in the same mission.
• Crowd Song: When Matilda and Melissa finally reunite, the background characters can be heard singing "A Brand New Day".
• Crystal Dragon Jesus: The Emmerians have their "Golden King", a ruler who wore a set of golden armor and had a smile so warm, he was able to avert a war in Emmeria's past. His armor adorns a statue in a castle across the bay from Gracemeria.
• Cut Lex Luthor a Check: With all the money the Generals must have spent on a ludicrous arsenal of fighters, an experimental carrier-capable stealth fighter, divisions of armored vehicles, a large navy, UAVs, weapons of mass destruction, a fleet of aerial warships (one of which is an airborne aircraft carrier capable of launching WMDs), cruise missiles and city-killing railguns, you have to wonder why they didn't spend it on fixing Estovakia's crumbling economy and infrastructure.
  • All are justified except for Pasternak's CFA-44 Nosferatu: The Railgun was made BEFORE Ulysses as a possibility to shoot it down, but it didn't work out. The Aigaion was a desperate attempt to stop the civil war that ravaged Estovakia, which DID work and helped unite the country. The CFA-44 (a stealth carrier-based fighter with highly advanced weaponry) has no reason for existing whatsoever, though was likely intended to be mass-produced and launched off the Aigaion, given its nature as a carrier-based aircraft.
  • And even in-universe, the CFA-44 is addressed with this trope. Background materials indicate that while it was in the development stage, the Estovakian mass media repeatedly lampooned its existence and the billions that were being poured into its production. In fact, the reason the plane is even called "Nosferatu" is because the media labeled it a "vampire" draining the country's economy. The mocking came to a halt once the civil war ended and Gustav Dvornik's Eastern Faction took control of the country and did away with the free press.
• Cute as a Bouncing Betty: Throughout several missions you have to aid your country's navy. The flagship of the fleet is "Marigold"... a Kirov-class battlecruiser. Marigold proves to be a tough old girl, and becomes a frustrating thorn in Estovakia's navy, surviving multiple naval engagements against incredibly stacked odds (even if Garuda doesn't support her and her escorts). This is Truth in Television as well; Kirovs are notorious for being tough and heavily armed vessels, essentially the equivalent of battleships (substituting the large guns for cruise missiles and point defense systems) and second only in size to aircraft carriers in sheer mass; their firepower is such that when the United States learned of the existence of these ships, they immediately recommissioned the Iowa-class battleships.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!: Veteran Ace Combat players familiar with the PS2 trilogy may have to take some time getting used to the Xbox 360's control scheme, including that the controls for yawing and accelerating/deceleration have been switched.
• Delaying Action: Mission 7 is the type 1 (escape).
• 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, as usual for Ace Combat. Ilya Pasternak 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!" Emmeria Independence Radio's DJ outright fanboy the Garuda team in the same mission. Your fellow pilots even compare you to movie stars.

• Even the Guys Want Him: Ilya Pasternak is apparently something of a womanizer, judging by his dialogue and interaction with his Strigon wingmen. Toscha (Strigon 12), who has a fiancee met later in the story, lampshades that had he been a woman, he'd have fallen instantly for Pasternak.
• Excuse Me While I Multitask: Basically every mission, where you juggle several ops at once and you have to choose which ones you want to do.
• 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.
• A Father to His Men: Pasternak to his squadron.
• Fire-Forged Friends: The Garuda team. A less obvious example, as Shamrock was pretty OK with being Garuda 2 from the very beginning.
• Fireworks of Victory: In the mission "Gracemeria Patrol", the people of Emmeria celebrate the liberation of their capital with fireworks above the city. However, the celebrations end up being premature, as the Estovakians start firing the Chandelier at Gracemeria to deny the Emmerians their victory.
• Foreshadowing: When you pick your wingman Shamrock's plane and weapon for mission 14 - 'Gracemeria Patrol', he doesn't talk to you at all, unlike previous missions where he always asks you which plane and weapon he should pick, hinting something is wrong. Later in the mission, you learn from Shamrock that his wife and daughter died in the invasion of Gracemeria. He only finds out after the liberation of Gracemeria. Shamrock, whose main reason to fight and liberate Gracemeria is to reunite with his family, is devastated and wants to quit the Air Force. However, after the mission, seeing his country is still under attack, he decides not to resign until his last dance.
• Fractional Winning Condition: The operations system works this way: each mission is subdivided into several (three to nine) localized operations, wherein the Garuda team must complete certain objectives (provide close air support, destroy enemy planes, etc.). Completing an operation frees up its surviving allied troops to assist Garuda on other ops, so the choice of the first one is important. Winning a mission requires beating about two thirds of the available ops; ops can be failed if neglected for too long, but as long as the mission winning condition can still be met, it will continue.
• Free-Range Children: Gracemeria is full of them, with the majority being war orphans.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: As mentioned above, Voycheck suffered a Career-Ending Injury after his plane is damaged during the invasion of Gracemeria, with heavy implications that you shot him down. The issue with this is, during the time that Strigon actually shows up in the first mission, you are not required to engage them and in fact your present objective is to escape them. Should you stick around and fight, you might hear radio dialogue indicating Voychek's plane is damaged, but the game doesn't differentiate between you hitting him or an AI pilot hitting him with a lucky hit, or even his plane being damaged during gameplay at all.
  • Estovakia is shown to be a moderately sized nation, yet possesses a military that would put its superpower neighbor Yuktobania to shame, being able to field staggering numbers of aircraft and armored vehicles, a large surface fleet, as well as an impressive aerial fleet and lastly, a massive railgun.
• Genre Blindness: City Lights: "This is Sky Kid. I'd just like to say, "mission accomplished."" Cue waves of cruise missiles and stealth fighters.
• Goldfish Poop Gang: The Strigons have lost levels in badass by the last time they get fought. Justified considering that, much like Yellow Squadron of Ace Combat 4, by the end of the game all of their top fighters have been killed or otherwise rendered unable to fight (in the case of Voychek) and so Strigon is reduced to taking any remaining pilots they can scoop up at the time.
• Greater-Scope Villain: The "Generals", the military junta that appear to be in charge of Estovakia are this. We never see any of them in the flesh or even learn any of their names (outside of, if you care enough to look at the Assault Records, Gustav Dvornik, who is implied to be the leader of the Generals as a whole), but they have the miserable, starving and desparate Estovakian population under their thumb until they're overthrown off-screen in a Coup D'etat (aside from Dvornik, who you personally shoot out of the sky during the Chandelier raid as he tries to escape if you're playing on Hard).
  • Lorenz Riedel from A World With No Boundaries also helped build and fund the Aigaion project based on the Hraesvelgr, which lead to the construction of the Aigaion and her escorts, the Generals' victory in the civil war, and the events of the game. However, he only appears in one mission and has no onscreen impact on the story whatsoever.
• Harder Than Hard: Ace Of Aces mode. It's only available after you've purchased it as DLC, and it loves to insert multiple Nosferatus, support airships, and even Pasternak into levels where they wouldn't appear normally.
• 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.
• Hopeless Boss Fight: The first mission, after the cruise missiles start hitting, has you up against the original twelve Strigon Squadron. They're flying mid-game Su-33's and have more health than usual, while you're flying the standard F-16. This helps cement the fact that Gracemeria is lost. If, however, you're skilled enough to actually hit them, or playing a New Game Plus, they can be shot down, and will respond accordingly.
• 100% Completion: Ace Of Aces was DLC, so it's kind of like a Kaizo hack.
• Hyperspace Arsenal: The most outlandish example in the entire series. Missiles for each plane numbered from 50-80 in the previous installments. They can now reach up to '200' depending on the plane. Considering the far larger scale of the games' missions this was probably necessary.
• It's Raining Men: A few missions combine this with Tank Goodness by way of airborne tanks.
• 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. Complete certain ops quickly enough, and you can call for an airstrike on the target area.
  • 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.
• I Will Find You: Melissa and Ludmila are both journeying to Gracemeria to search for a missing loved one - a daughter for the former and a fiance for the latter.
• Jack of All Stats: The DLC Gryphus Emblem F-22 literally breathes this trope. So much, that on the stat chart it looks like a perfect hexagon.
• Just Plane Wrong: No, not every plane in the game SHOULD be able to perform High G turns... Or perhaps, maybe they should, given that it's a game.
• Language Barrier: Between traveling companions Melissa (Emmerian) and Ludmila (Estovakian), which is why the latter comes across as The Quiet One most of the time. Though this makes their eventual friendship all the more touching.
• Leitmotif: During the first mission, "Invasion of Gracemeria," the background track is a stripped-down version of a heroic theme, with long sustained string notes underlined with percussion to emphasize the tension as the Estovakian forces overwhelm Emmeria's defenses, forcing a retreat from the nation's capitol. Twelve missions later, during "The Liberation of Gracemeria," we get the Triumphant Reprise of the same theme: modulated up, with trumpets on melody underlined by punchy orchestra stabs, declaring to all and sundry that Talisman is here to Set Right What Once Went Wrong.
• 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 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.
  • This game's interpretation of the Rocket Launcher also counts, as it is much more powerful and accurate than its counterpart in the PS2 era. So much so that, with good aim, it can be used to destroy the Heavy Command Cruiser with relative ease. And it's available on the Su-33, which is awarded for the mission prior.
• Memetic Mutation: In universe. 'Go dance with the angels' was originally an in-joke in Melissa's family. But after her daughter used it to give the proverbial middle finger to an Estovakian propaganda broadcaster on national radio, it spread like wildfire through the allied forces.
• 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.
• My Girl Back Home: A variant in that the girl back home is not prepared to just sit around and wait for her man to return to her, and instead chooses make the trek to Gracemeria to be by his side.
  • Shamrock has a family too. They don't make it through the game.
• Mythology Gag: The F-16C and Su-33 both have "TYPE ACE2" DLC paint schemes replicating Scarface One's paint scheme for their respective planes... and they come with no special weapons whatsoever, because those didn't exist in AC2, and like the Eurofighter "TYPE ACE3", cannot perform high-g turns as high-g turns did not exist prior to 6.
• Not Quite Dead: Shamrock.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Ilya Pasternak - the new Strigon Team Leader - is this according to Strigon 12/Toscha Mijasik. Victor Voychek is one too, willing to learn more about Emmeria in his time there.
• Redshirt Army: Played straight at first. In 6 your allies only become useful after you've earned the right to call in their help, after which it's averted with a vengance. When you do call on them, they can clear the entire screen in seconds.
• The Republic: Emmeria.
• Say My Name: Your AWACS after Shamrock is shot down during the last mission.
  "Shamrock! Respond! Marcus! MARCUS!"
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: Shooting down the Estovakina aces in Expert Mode will unlock not just their paint schemes, but their profiles as well. The short bios inform that the the pilots often had a reputation as an elite flier to uphold or regain, and in their recklessness several of them either got themselves killed, captured, and/or court martialed for disobeying a direct order and dishonorably discharged.
• Shout-Out:
  • The DLC paint schemes for 6 include pictures of iDOL@STER girls.
  • Also, Sky Kid is named after an old Namco arcade game (which has had shout-outs throughout the series) and his wingmen (Red Baron and Blue Max) were the playable characters.
  • The subplot of McKnight and his crew pulling a behind-enemy-lines bank heist with their tank and ending up liberating the Golden King (and presumably the trapped kids who'd "acquired" him) is straight out of Kelly's Heroes, complete with using a tank cannon to breach what they initially believe to be the bank vault.
  • Some of the allied ground battalions are named after Namco arcade games ("Dragon Busters", "Quox", "Steel Gunners").
• Soft-Spoken Sadist: The operators of the Chandelier in the final mission.
• Stupid Sacrifice: Downplayed but still present with Shamrock's performance in the last mission. His sacrifice wasn't completely stupid, as he managed to get valuable telemetry data on Chandelier's core, but sacrificing his plane to do so proved to be somewhat redundant when Talisman runs the exact same gauntlet that he did in order to destroy the core (following it up with a run down the barrel of Chandelier itself) without getting fatally damaged. His behavior, however, is somewhat understandable given that Shamrock was still in grief over his perceived failure to protect his family and likely felt that he had the least to lose anyways..
• 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). Garuda, your squadron, follows the names of lucky charms (Talisman, Shamrock), which is fitting considering your status as the Hope Bringer.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: Zig-Zagged, which is a rarity in this series.
  • On one hand, enemy aces like any named targets and the Strigons, and even normal targets like bombers, can dodge your missiles like it ain't no thing, especially the Strigons and bombers because they can use chaff to render your missiles useless—even radar guided missiles.
    • All of the enemy airplanes can follow you with precision, regardless of what you do, that would make any Blue Angels member proud.
  • On the other hand, your wingman is metric tons more useful than in other games because he can actually bag kills and use certain SP weapons better than you can,^note He can fly freely with the Radar Guided missiles, something that requires the player to keep in a circle, and can rapid fire the Electro Magnetic Launcher, while the player can only fire one shot at a time. and when you ask your allies for attack or cover support, they will be all over enemies like a bad headache, as their missiles are more accurate than even radar guided missiles!
• 13 Is Unlucky: Strigon 12 believes this. Ironic, because his best friend died in the 13th mission.
• Unknown Rival: Pasternak to Garuda Team, and Talisman in particular. He enters the plot specifically on a mission to hunt down and kill Garuda 1 after the latter shot down the Aigaion. However, he then spends the rest of the game very pointedly not trying to kill Talisman, and the first and only time he squares off against Garuda Team, during the Liberation of Gracemeria, he is handily defeated and dies when his CFA-44 Nosferatu explodes over Gracemeria Bay. To the point where his The War Has Just Begun speech to Garuda Team is even interrupted by Shamrock practically going "Wait, who are you supposed to be?"
• Violation of Common Sense: Lampshaded during the Tunnel operation in Mission 10.
  Bird Eater: Aircraft flying through tunnels? THAT'S never been done before!
• War Is Hell: 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.
• Wartime Wedding: Strigon 12 and his sweetheart pull a Type 3 (marrying right after the war ends) in the epilogue.
• What the Hell, Hero?: During the mission in the Moloch Desert, Shamrock disobeys direct orders from your AWACS Ghost Eye to cease fire and retreat in order to do battle with the Strigon squadron. Of course, this gets both you and Shamrock grounded until your next mission.
  AWACS Ghost Eye: You've made a huge mistake. There's no getting around a penalty for this.
• Whole-Plot Reference: A nameless Ace Pilot single-handedly turns the tide of the war between his home country, the Fantasy Counterpart Culture of the Invaded States of America, and a fictionalized USSR/Russia, after the latter has conquered most of the former within days to gain resources after the devastation caused by the Ulysses 1994XF04 planetfall. His Arch-Nemesis is the leader of an elite enemy squadron who sees him as a Worthy Opponent and has A Father to His Men attitude to make you feel sorry for having to kill him. Meanwhile, on the ground, some unrelated individuals act out the War Is Hell routine in the intermission cutscenes. Now, is this Ace Combat 6 or Ace Combat 04? Also, some of the most striking mission overlaps:
  • "Vitoze Aerial Defense" (02) = "Sitting Duck" (01). The standard Ace Combat routine of "Destroy all incoming bombers before they reach our last line of defense".
  • "Anea Landing" (05) = "Operation Bunker Shot" (09). A take-the-beach-type of mission that marks the beginning of taking back the mainland.
  • "Heavy Command Cruiser" (09) = "Shattered Skies" (08). The big-ass air-to-air battle splitting the game in two.
  • "The Liberation of Gracemeria" (13) = "Siege of Farbanti" (17). The grand battle for the capital, culminating in a dogfight against the leader of the nemesis squadron. Also, "The Liberation of Gracemeria" (13) = "Emancipation" (15) in that you're liberating a major city from enemy occupation.
  • "Gracemeria Patrol" (14) = "Breaking Arrows" (14). Enemy fires cruise missiles, you have to shoot them down before they hit.
  • "Chandelier" (15) = "Megalith" (18). The Final Battle to destroy the last remaining giant superweapon of the enemy, complete with the remnant of the nemesis squadron and a Tunnel Flight inside said superweapon.

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