Ace Combat

Ahhh, sorry for the missunderstanding.

Say, within the Strangereal universe, who would you say is the superlative Ace Pilot among all of the Ace Pilot protagonists, if we're supposed to go primarily by the narrative storyline (including in-mission dialogue) and ignore any in-game discrepancies that could handwaved by limitations within particular (usually earlier) installment' gameplay systems? (e.g. The fact that wingmen and allied pilots in AC6 are a lot more competent and score much more kills than those in previous games.)

I'm personally torn between Mobius 1 from AC04, Blaze from AC5, and Cipher from AC0, while not sure if Talisman from AC6 stacks up well next to them.

edited 19th Apr '15 1:30:55 PM by MarqFJA

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

Mobius 1, by far is the Ace to end all Aces.

Galm 1 may be my favorite, but no one compares to the hype Mobius gets.

edited 19th Apr '15 1:30:48 PM by Imca

'd.

I dunno... Blaze has one thing on Mobius 1: He managed to fly through a long and dangerously narrow tunnel at high speeds, with an astonishingly stubborn enemy super-ace on him and his wingmen's tail firing missiles aplenty (extremely hard to dodge in such a narrow space), scores of other enemy aces shooting at him with both guns and missiles from 12 o' clock very often (sometimes alone, sometimes in pairs or trios), and trying to outrun the doors that are threatening to close his only escape route (namely, going forward) from the explosive death trap that said tunnel has become after he and his flight blew up their target.

edited 19th Apr '15 1:35:39 PM by MarqFJA

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

If I had to order them

Mobius gets the most in series hype, so he goes at the top here.

Blaze, nothing in the series has ever made me feel quite as good as the amount of freaking out the enemies do when Razgriz squadron shows up from the dead. "HOW CAN WE KILL THEM, THERE ALREADY DEAD?!?!"

Then Talisman, he also did a trench run, which IIRC you do not do in Zero, but I may be remembering wrong.

Galm had the best story involvement IMHO, I loved the game and the setup, there my favorite out of all of them, but they just cant stack up.

If we're talking in-universe, I think we have to eliminate Blaze because his fame and credit is shared heavily with Wardog/Razgriz Squadron, the rest of which seems to get equal respect to Blaze himself. Hardly anyone is crapping themselves that Blaze is here like they do when The Ribbon or the Demon Lord of the Round Table arrives, no they crap themselves that the entire Wardog/Razgriz Squadron has arrived. The three wingmen might be pretty useless in-game, but in-story, they get nearly as much credit as Blaze himself.

Cipher and Mobius 1 seem pretty equal to me, with Mobius getting bonus points for becoming a bonus boss in future games and Cipher getting bonus points for the sheer number of aces he took down, including the Morgan and all of its superweapons.

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I just finished up All-Ace-S-Rank in ACZ, and it does have a trench run. In fact, it has two in one level. Both the approach to Avalon Dam and the attack on the V2 control facilities therein are trench runs.

edited 19th Apr '15 1:44:14 PM by Balmung

I would honestly argue that that is a bonus point for in universe, not a detractor.

You know what is worse then one super ace? 4 of them with impressive team work.

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Damn, forgot about those, it has been a few years since I last finished Zero, thanks for the correction.

edited 19th Apr '15 1:44:04 PM by Imca

The thing is, we're comparing the super-aces themselves, not their entire squadrons. If we are doing full squadrons, that makes ACZ awkward because how do you count Galm Squadron? Just Cipher? Cipher + Pixy? Cipher + PJ? Cipher + PJ + Pixy?

I didn't count Galm against Cipher's standing and fame like I did Wardog/Razgriz for Blaze because ACZ makes it a clear point that Cipher becomes better and more famous than Pixy, who was a feared ace in his own right, even before the game started, and that the enemies are always terrified of which specific pilot they're facing (early on, Solo Wing, and later, the Demon Lord). On the other hand AC 5 makes it clear that it's all about the entire squadron gaining their fame and respect at the same time, and I don't even recall an enemy specifically recognizing just one member of the squadron, only the squadron as a whole.

edited 19th Apr '15 1:53:29 PM by Balmung

You cant exist in a vacuum though, even if your just comparing them amongst themselves, the people they have on call should be a valid consideration.

No one has singlehandedly won a war, I am not saying to compare the squadrons to each-other directly, but I feel "Connections" so to speak should be a valid thing to worry about with the aces.

Which is not a category Galm is gonna do well in, IIRC you were a merc in that game.

And despite being a mercenary, there are only two points in ACZ where Cipher flew alone: Mission 12, after Pixy's betrayal, and Mission 18, after Pixy pewpewed PJ, and he seemed to have the respect of both of them.

If anyone's hurt by the connections criteria, it's Mobius One, who never actually has any wingmen.

Technically, Mobius One does get a whole flight's worth of wingmen in the final mission. The gameplay system just didn't include controllability of said wingmen.

Well, in Zero's penultimate mission, you have to speed through a rather long valley while maintaining a low altitutde, because the entire airspace above said altitude is covered by more AA guns and SAMs than you could ever hope to dodge, so much that your superiors still find it necessary to send scores of other pilots as a suicidal diversion to distract enough of those defenses from you and your wingmen to give you two a reasonable chance of success.

Except that those same three wingmen's own dialogue includes several comments on how Blaze's performance outstrips them by a significant margin, with one even saying in the final mission "He's the one, no doubt, the ace of aces!" after you finally "shoot down" enemy super-ace Hamilton in the first portion of the mission.

edited 19th Apr '15 1:59:31 PM by MarqFJA

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

Does anyone think that Scarface One 'Phoenix' might have a shot in these standings? Going by Assault Horizon Legacy's updated retelling, he's kind of like a fusion of Mobius 1 and Cipher.

Out of universe, he also has the distinction of being probably the most recurring player character (Air Combat, Ace Combat 2, and ACAHL) and in Joint Assault, being the last ace you face in the mandatory Brutal Bonus Level, even after Mobius 1.

I don't think he quite stands up to his PS 2 counterparts, but he still has a pretty impressive record to his name, too.

Assault Horizon Legacy is just a remake of Ace Combat 2, though, isn't it? It's not actually a new addition to the plot.

Personally, I have to agree with people saying that Mobius is the most hyped pilot in the Ace Combat continuity. He's the only one who goes through the entire campaign completely without wingmen (even the Mobius squadron in the final mission is said to be made up of rookies, and they accomplish basically nothing in both gameplay and plot terms), and he reappears in Ace Combat 5's arcade mode, where it's mentioned that an analysis of his performance found him to be roughly as effective as an entire air wing all by himself.

After that, going mostly by how big of an effect they had on the conflict they were involved in, I'd go with Blaze as the number two (given that the Wardog/Razgriz squadron more-or-less singlehandedly changed the course of the Osea/Yuktobania war), then Cipher (who took out an absurd number of enemy aces over the course of the Belkan war, and Talisman (who was certainly an ace, and instrumental in both downing that goddamn Nosferatu above Gracemeria and taking out the Chandelier, but is largely portrayed as just one pilot among many). Poor Talisman gets screwed by the fact that Ace Combat 6 had some of the best mechanics of the series, where your allies (not just your wingmen, but the rest of the pilots in the airspace as well) were something other than completely useless.

And I just noticed that I ended up putting the pilots in reverse-release order. Ace Combat 04 first, then 5, Zero, and 6. Huh.

edited 19th Apr '15 8:00:56 PM by NativeJovian

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

Assault Horizon Legacy is something of an expanded remake, adding things like ACZ style ace fights and, I believe, additional voice acting, as well as tying itself more closely to the Strangereal continuity, which wasn't really firmly established when AC 2 was released.

edited 19th Apr '15 8:27:09 PM by Balmung

Can someone refresh my memory on if Ace Combat 04 QAAMs are as OP as the wiki pages make them out to be? Since I'm much more used to Ace Combat 5 and Zero, my recollection is that they're mostly disappointing and only occasionally make hits regular missiles wouldn't.

On the flip side, the most absurdly powerful air-to-air weapon I recall using is the SASM, which basically goes "fuck you and everyone near you" and plays all kinds of havoc with ace pilots' fancy dodging.

edited 19th Apr '15 9:42:59 PM by Balmung

I'm not going to go pick sides, but I will say if Mobius One is Michael Jordan or Muhammed Ali or Babe Ruth then Galm, Blaze, Cipher and Scarface are easily the Larry Bird/Vince Carter/Shaquille O'neal/John Stockton of pilots, or Micky Mantell/Barry Bonds/Alex Rodriguez/Willy Mays, or Mike Tyson/George Foreman/Jack La Motta/Anthony Mundine. Thing with, say, Jordan is other players might be better than him at some things but none of them can scare like Mike, so said a basketball writer on the best ever. Garuda, War Dog/Razgriz, Galm, Scarface, as good as they are don't scare like Mobius does.

However I do have a candidate for best pilot: Kei Nagase. Edge. She went from overthrowing a coup, then became a commercial pilot, then flew with Osea and drove back the Grey Men, then joined NATO and flew against Russians invading America, then was a member of the 19th Task Force ACES, and later defected. That's a resume any pilot could only dream of.

Currently reading up My Rule Fu Is Stronger than Yours

Problem: Ace Combat 5 Kei Nagase is 23 in 2010, while Ace Combat 2 Kei Nagase is 17 in 1995.

I'm more inclined to think that there are just a lot of people with the name Kei Nagase running around Strangereal.

Maybe they're sisters, with "Kei" being simply written with different kanji for each one?

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

Possible, or maybe there are just a lot of Nagases with names starting with "K" who use "Kei" as a nickname.

Also, dug out my copy of AC 04 and oh, yeah, QAAMs are exactly as OP as stated. I still think they're overhyped in any mention on the AC 5 and ACZ pages, since those games have pretty worthless QAAMs. "Four free kills" on the ACZ F-5E my ass.

I know, if you wanted a serious or in game story for it then...when does Legacy take place? Still 1995? Well at the time also various other pilots who probably shouldn't be there are in game, in Zero's Boss Rush mode. But realistically, Unsung War, Kei doesn't go on to fly with the 19th for example, see below.

On a more meta level Edge is the series Legacy Character. She appears in the second game, in Electrosphere she makes an appearance for fans to go, "Well that's interesting," we get a flight officer named Nagase in Shattered Skies, of course we know why. Unsung War, Legacy and the web site for Assault Horizon where she makes several cameos and the novel on the 19th Task Force flesh out her character, or at least interpret how the character might be.

My reasoning is much the same as that basketball writer, it was in Jammin magazine I think in 1995 when he was called out for saying Jordan, Bird, Hakeem Olajuwon and Charles Barkley were the best players ever, rationalizing that Bird has a better outside shot, Hakeem is a better shot blocker, but Jordan scares the best. We could settle that Garuda utilized allies better, Galm was better in one on many, Mobius had that fear factor, ect. He settled that Magic Johnson is the best because he played well all positions, and that's my rationalization with Edge. She flew with Scarface, helped Mobius out, flew with Razgriz, Warwolf, and is with the squadron ACES. It might not be the answer you're looking for, but there it is.

Currently reading up My Rule Fu Is Stronger than Yours

On another note, it's always been my headcanon that Kei Nagase has two older sisters: One was that flight officer in 04 (in which case, the flight was an Osean airliner), and another is a former race queen turned famous motor racer (due to a Noodle Incident).

edited 20th Apr '15 2:42:46 AM by MarqFJA

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

HELLO EVERYONE

I didn't realize we had an Ace Combat thread. So I'm here to make everyone groan and wish I hadn't found it.

I just finished Assault Horizon a few days ago, after letting it languish on my shelf for ages. I was not impressed, for reasons that have already been elaborated by people more eloquent than I.

Mobius 1 is far more badass than any of the other protagonists. ISAF explicitly acknowledges that he is more effective than an entire squadron. Need anyone really say more?

Pretty much all of the aces get such praise, whether directly or indirectly. Cipher is informed that "Head Operations has recognized you as an indispensable component in this war." - in a large, multinational force, a single mercenary is being recognized as a critically valuable war asset. In Ace Combat 5, the Circum-Pacific War goes from Osea curbstomping the Yukes to a stalemate almost the moment the 8492nd take Wardog Squadron out of the picture.

Just because the ISAF is the only group who directly said it doesn't mean that it wasn't clearly also the case for the other Ace Combat player characters.

edited 23rd Apr '15 2:11:29 PM by Balmung

No, but that's the only time anyone ever stated it outright. And also deliberately sent Mobius 1 into a campaign by himself because they knew it would be more effective than sending an entire squadron.

Telling the hero he's a Badass is nothing new, but explicitly quantifying them as being more effective than an entire squadron is quite another.

There is also the fact that when he shows up in Zero....

He is the only bonus boss you fight alone.