Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War (PS2)
Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War is the story of the Demon Lord of the Round Table, and appropriately enough considering the game’s title, it is a tale told in retrospect. Reporter Brett Thompson’s efforts to track the origins of the mysterious mercenary pilot who distinguished himself in a the Belkan War serve as the structure for the game’s 18 mission story, this presentation style and a mix of footage with live action actors doing interviews about the Demon making this aerial combat game’s story a bit more interesting than just a war story.
The player takes on the role of the Demon Lord, but he doesn’t start with such an imposing title. Beginning with the codename Cipher, you’re just one of many mercenaries hired as part of an evolving conflict around the fictional nation of Belka. New nations are formed after various territories secede from Belka, one of which being the nation of Ustio that hires Cipher to bolster their fledgling air force as Belka attempts to reclaim their land. After this initial setup, most of the player’s activities will involve military skirmishes trying to defend Utsio or push the fight back to Belka to take out their bases and weaponry, the actual events of the war feeling mostly like a framework for interesting mission designs. Cipher remains a voiceless enigmatic character throughout, but your wingmen do have a bit of personality and end up being the ones to pontificate on the war and the life of a mercenary. This does end up having more purpose than background chatter so it does prove itself meaningful in the long run, but perhaps the most intriguing element of the story is that you are able to influence its course some with your behavior.
Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War is an action game, but the way you fight while in your fighter jet does impact certain events in the story and can even lead to certain elements of a mission unfolding differently. The player’s performance during a mission constantly impacts their Ace Style. During missions there are enemy targets and objectives you are meant to destroy to clear them, but there are also neutral targets like important structures or even wounded enemy aircraft that are beginning to flee. The game marks neutral targets in yellow, but if you devote your time to destroying these, the game will recognize your ruthlessness and give you points towards the Mercenary Ace Style. If you remain devoted to the mission and avoid unnecessary damage or casualties, you’ll instead be marked as a Knight. In between these two styles exists the Soldier Ace that doesn’t lean too strongly either way, and depending on which of these three alignments you are at a certain time, you can see different outcomes. The plot’s course doesn’t shift but characters speak about you differently, a more ruthless player will likely earn more money to buy extra aircraft and weapons, but the more chivalrous Knight Ace will find they’re facing tamer foes. On certain missions enemy Aces will appear to challenge you and the exact ones you face are determined by your Ace Style and even which planes can be purchased will be impacted as well, but they all feel like valid paths and knowing there’s value in the system can lead to new considerations when tackling some of the game’s missions.
Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War lets you pilot your plane in either first-person or third-person as you prefer and features a bit of a learning curve when it comes to the aerial movement. The lack of a tutorial can make more advanced dodging maneuvers take some time and testing to learn, but once you have the flight mechanics down, it is a satisfying system that gives you the flexibility needed for frequent dogfights and doing sweeps targeting grounded foes. The missions of the game’s story mode do actually allow you to sometimes pick which targets your fighter craft will need to focus on, and admittedly, ground foes are far simpler to tackle. There are anti-aircraft guns, surface-to-air missiles, and other dangers to worry about like needing to make low precise sweeps so they’re not completely unopposed bombing runs, but they do feel a bit like a way of managing your difficulty beyond the game’s broader difficulty settings. Regardless of your chosen tasks in the more flexible missions, there will often be a mix of grounded and aerial foes and some missions do focus in exclusively on battles with other planes where a stronger focus on weapon use and skillful maneuvering come into play.
No matter the jet you choose to fly, all of them have two attack options standard. You have machine guns to pepper targets, but your real bread and butter will be the homing missiles. Missiles deal heavy damage and can more reliably be lined up since aerial battles often involve a good deal of distance between you and a target and your guns are inevitably less accurate when there’s more time to avoid them. A missile has a better chance of landing, but you’ll need to make sure to keep a lock-on reticle on the opponent well enough for the missile to land. This means you and an enemy jet can be found weaving around the air as you try to get that right angle to fire the rocket and then hold your reticle on it long enough for the heavy damage projectile to do its work. The missiles straddle an effective line between necessary but not entirely reliable, the ground forces usually easy to hit with them (hence the difficulty difference) but your enemies in the air are the more compelling challenge to land your shots on. You are able to acquire additional special weapons in the post-level shop, the player rewarded credits for the enemies they take down during a mission, and these weapons can consist of variations on missiles like one that can be fired more rapidly and follows your reticle rather than trying to home in on a target or you can invest in bombs if you want to make slightly less risky sweeps. Missile action can get you through many missions even if you don’t find any special weapons to your liking though, and there is a nice selection of different mission types so they don’t end up feeling like a sequence of similar dogfights and bombing runs. The longer missions where you need to earn points by destroying things across a large battlefield can drag some, especially since a mid-mission death requires a full level restart, but on occasion it whips out some inspired ideas like a giant aircraft that you need to break apart piecemeal.
One somewhat unusual but appreciated choice Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War makes is how it treats some more immersive elements of the experience. Mostly the game leans into the excitement of fictionalized aerial combat, but on certain missions you will be asked to take off, land, or even do a mid-air refueling. These unfold the same across the game and aren’t too challenging and they do slot into some understandable situations like when you might want to go back to base to restock missiles in the longer missions, but the game lets you skip them without penalty since otherwise these could get repetitive in their simplicity otherwise. It just feels like a nice touch there for those looking for it, like how the enemy pilots you shoot down all have profiles to read or how you have the ability to instruct your wingman. Usually you can get by as the one-man army, but your wingman can be told to fight on their own, protect you, or focus on the same targets as you.
Perhaps most surprisingly though is the robust split-screen multiplayer mode that doesn’t just settle for a standard set of dogfights. There are options to fight against another player in jet vs. jet combat that unfortunately boils down to the common aerial combat problem of circling stalemates. However, there are options for an aerial race, a battle between players backed up by a squad of AI allies, and races to kill more valuable targets, a player better able to show off their flight skills when they aren’t going to be reduced to defensive play like in one-on-one fights. This approach to the supplemental multiplayer shows the degree of thought put into Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War’s aerial combat so it isn’t too plain or prone to bland tactics, which does make a good deal of sense considering this is the sixth mainline entry in a long running franchise.
THE VERDICT: It may take a bit to get a feel for Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War’s flying, but once you settle into its systems, the mission diversity and the Ace Style related difficulty adjustments born from your mid-mission choices help bring this game together into something worth experiencing. A multiplayer mode with some put thought into how you can compete with other players rounds out the package, this Ace Combat title entertaining and challenging because it properly stages moments to make use of your maneuvers and simple weapons to earn satisfying wins.
And so, I give Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War for PlayStation 2…
A GOOD rating. While a death, potentially even an instant one from a crash, setting you back to mission start can be disheartening, it might be a useful tool in keeping the game’s sorties exciting. It comes at the cost of the longer missions that require you to be a bit too thorough in earning points by eliminating targets, but enemy aircraft are far more fearsome when you know you walk a thin line between success and failure. Your missiles do their job well though, giving you the means to overcome the full range of movement enemies exhibit but they require some of your own efforts to properly home in on their targets. The story could have done more to increase your investment, the player often sent on missions that aren’t massively important to the war effort despite being clearly helpful, but there is still a good enough range in how you approach the missions from a gameplay standpoint and it is a nice touch that you can sometimes pick your preferred targets for a mission. The Ace Styles are a nifty system as well, the player able to earn more credits with more optional activity but also asked to consider if they want their story and missions to go down the path of a more ruthless mercenary. Keeping the impact of this ever shifting allegiance minimal but appreciable was likely the wise choice as well, the player not locked into unfortunate routes or feeling like they miss too much but still given different equipment and elite opponents to match the path they’re on.
Perhaps more emphasis should have been put on weapons beyond the missile or the ground forces could have had more tricks to make them more dangerous when they’re in focus, but just like with the multiplayer modes, the current shape of the broader experience feels purposeful. Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War won’t force you to do landings and take-offs nor will it demand you constantly get embroiled in even dogfights, the player given some control over their fate and able to find the experience that they’ll best enjoy in this aerial combat action game.