YMMV / Air Force Delta

• Anticlimax Boss: The final mission of the first game is a dogfight against the enemy commander over the ocean. Though he does fly the best plane in the game, his AI isn't especially more intelligent or aggressive, and the area you fight him in is completely featureless, so downing him is rather easy. Made even worse in the New Game Plus, where you'll eventually accrue enough cash to buy the Harrier jump jet, whose plane can easily outmaneuver the boss and provide you with some laughably optimal time to lock him on with your missiles.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: For all that the original Airforce Delta is an incredibly obvious ripoff of Ace Combat 2, the mission where you shoot down a satellite before it can fall back to Earth and destroy a city is a surprising amount of originality. That Ace Combat returned the favor and ripped off that for the final mission of Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War is the cherry on top.
• Game-Breaker: Some of the Konami legacy craft, such as the Vic Viper, are this because of their great stats, weapons loadout, and in the case of the Vic Viper, very strong onboard guns. The only issue is that you have beat the game multiple times to get some of them.
• Older Than They Think:
  • For all the fans that deride Airforce Delta for being a ripoff of Ace Combat, there are elements that were introduced before later Ace Combat titles had them.
  • Aircraft like the MIG-1.44 and the SU-30MKI made their debut in Airforce Delta years before Ace Combat 5 and Ace Combat 7 respectively.
  • Working VTOL aircraft were playable in Strike before Assault Horizon and Infinity.
  • Piston fighters as playable aircraft were first introduced in Strike, years before Joint Assault.
  • As noted in the Hilarious in Hindsight trope, the mission where you destroy a falling satellite first appeared in Airforce Delta, years before Ace Combat 5.
  • The legacy ships from Konami's earlier games in Storm and Strike predates the Sky Kid Guest Aircraft seen in Ace Combat Infinity.
• Scrappy Mechanic: Strike suffers heavily from this.
  • Checkpoint Starvation is prevalent later on in the game, as missions have no checkpoints whatsoever. For reference, if you fail a mission, you have to start over; crash or get shot down, and you have to buy the plane back or load from a previous save then start over again. The later missions are no cakewalks, which can lead into frustrating and time wasting moments.
  • Unlocking aircraft is archaic. While you can earn aircraft in a traditional way, unlocking character specific aircraft is troublesome unless you know that characters are in specific poses for a certain mission.
  • Getting to hidden missions is this, as unless you have a walkthrough on hand, you never know when you missed a secret mission or not. Which leads to...
  • Pilot medals. Some are straightforward, such as destroying targets, but others require you to have completed all missions as a certain character. Ken gets it the worst unless playtime is focused as him, as he has the hidden The Confront mission, which requires that he save Ellen. Another headache inducing medal to earn is the skull medal, earned by getting shot down thirty times. And you need to earn all medals as a pilot to unlock one of the Konami legacy aircraft.
• That One Level: Strike contains several:
  • The train Escort Mission, where you have to destroy multiple obstructions along a train's path. Gets scrappy because it is very early in the game and includes chase cars that attack the train from behind after you've decided to push ahead to clear the train's path.
  • Operation Racoon Hunt, which requires you to fly into the eye of several artificial tornadoes to blow up the vortex generators
  • In "The Robbers," you have to destroy several airships that repeatedly dive below the clouds (you can't chase them) and shoot a lot of missiles at you while you can't target them.
  • Operation skyscraper: You have to destroy parts of a rising orbital elevator platform to stop it from escaping, without running into any of the columns, protrusions and other large, solid objects. Sounds rather easy until you realize how difficult it is to stabilize your aircraft when flying vertically.
  • Stampede Campaign 2, where you have to escort a Humongous Mecha that is under constant attack from bombers, fighters, and smaller mechas.
  • Stampede Campaign 3, where you have to fly into underground bunkers and shoot your way out four times.
  • Navarone Campaign 1: Fly through a tight, twisting canyon filled with rock protrusions and giant exhaust fans powerful enough to push your plane sideways. Oh, and you're being chased by two high ranking enemy aces the whole time.
  • Metro: Fly loops through an absurdly spacious subway, destroying various enemy tanks, trains and VTOL aircraft.
  • Navarone Campaign 2: Fly into the barrels of active and shooting guns, avoid the gigantic shells. Of course, thanks to a glitch in the game when using the ML-ASM, you can destroy the railguns without having to go into the weapons themselves.