Not Spaceghost
Spaceghost
Ace Combat Assault Horizon Legacy for the 3DS is honestly a game that deserved more attention, unfortunately bamco decided that the best way to give the game more attention was to re-release it for the n3ds with the only new features being amiibo support and uh nintendo themed planes. Not gonna lie though the Bowser A-10 looks sweet.
Legacy+ was a disappointing re-release, almost no content and at full price to boot. So I am pretty sure it was totally ignored, which is a huge shame because I'd love for people to take notice of how awesome Legacy actually is.
The game is essentially a full remake of Ace Combat 2. In fact I think the only deviations from Ace Combat 2 are the plane selection and the fact that your pilot is called Phoenix and not Scarface, oh and the game adds more "special squadron" battles kind of like the ones you fought in Ace Combat 5 and Zero.
Mechanically though the game is very different, but in a good way. While it retains the classic Ace Combat feel it manages to spice things up with the Maneuver system which I personally think is absolutely amazing, and what the Dogfighter mode in Assault Horizon should have been, although I guess they each had their own goals, DFM was a cinematic thing to show off the planes, while the Maneuver system is designed to make dogfighting a bit more reactive.
The way the Maneuver system works is simple. You have 3 types of maneuvers that you can perform, the high G turn which you do by slamming the thrust and the brake down at the same time, this lets you do some insanely tight turns at the cost of speed, which means if you hold the turn for more than a second you'll likely begin to stall. Then you have offensive and defensive maneuvers which are mapped to the Y button.
The offensive maneuver is simple but really great. Basically as you pursue an enemy a meter begins to fill up, when it reaches half way you perform a stunt that puts you behind the enemy, if you fill it half way you'll end up in their general rear area, which should give you a solid lock on solution, but it might be at too wide of an angle so your missile will miss without you correcting your position a little. If you get hit or the enemy shakes you then meter resets. Now if you let the meter fill up to max, you do the same stun except your next 2 missiles get enhanced tracking and will rarely miss unless your angle of attack is truly awful.
Offensive maneuvers in essence achieve the feeling of being able to get up close to an enemy to shoot them down without resorting to dumb as hell on rails segments that DFM did in Assault Horizon. While DFM was required to kill certain opponents in assault horizon in legacy offensive maneuvers are almost entirely optional, I say almost because there are certain enemies that are insanely fast and agile so if you don't want the air duel to take 20 minutes you'll probably wanna use offensive maneuvers.
The defensive maneuver is my favorite by far though and it opens up the game nicely. When the enemy has missile lock and they've fired a missile some arrows appear on either the left or right of the screen, push that direction + Y and you'll do a defensive maneuver, dodging the missile completely, however you'll lose your pursuit angle as it forces you to continue straight during the animation. If you do a series of these in a row and the enemy is closely following you the game will basically do a cobra type maneuver for you where you let the guy over take you and then you get full lock, letting you go in for the kill.
What's awesome about the defensive maneuvers is that they add a more tactile sensation to dodging missiles, and on the harder difficulties the game compensates by making the maneuver input window a lot tighter. This is scary because missile that are close enough to be dodged this way are usually fatal if you fumble the input or the on the Ace difficulty.
The other cool thing that Legacy does is increased plane customization, each plane has 3 possible special weapons to choose from at take off, as well as custom parts to choose from. These parts are the engine, the cockpit, the wing and armor.
The engine directly affects your speed, but a heavy engine can impact your maneuverability and stability while a light one could improve them.
The cockpit boosts your offensive stats and can give you a special "skill" like increased lock on range or auto firing the vulcan when it's in range .
The wing improves your maneuverability and stability but it can also have additional effects like an extra hard point for more special ammo or better brakes.
Finally your armor boosts your defense stat, you can select the lightest armor possible giving you big gains in speed and maneuverability, or you can be a tank in the sky at their expense additionally some armors come with stealth coating which makes it harder for enemies to track you and get a hard lock.
It's a cool system because you can modify planes just enough that it's interesting but not so much that the system feels very important, for example you can take that fishbed and boost it's speed to ridiculous levels so it really does feel like a pilot-able missile, or maybe you wanna take one of those fast fighters on a ground mission because your attackers aren't good enough dog fighters for the first half of the mission so you can outfit it with a cockpit that boosts air to ground capabilities and throw on some air to ground missiles and extra hard-points on the wings, it's generally a really fun system to mess around with. I can't remember if any other games in the series that do this though I think Joint Assault on the PSP had something like this.
So really Ace Combat Legacy has new mechanics in place that make it a wonderful iteration on the franchise, it adds just enough to make the game feel refreshing without feeling like the new stuff overpowers the game so much that it erases the classic ace combat gameplay that fans know and love.
Legacy+ was a disappointing re-release, almost no content and at full price to boot. So I am pretty sure it was totally ignored, which is a huge shame because I'd love for people to take notice of how awesome Legacy actually is.
The game is essentially a full remake of Ace Combat 2. In fact I think the only deviations from Ace Combat 2 are the plane selection and the fact that your pilot is called Phoenix and not Scarface, oh and the game adds more "special squadron" battles kind of like the ones you fought in Ace Combat 5 and Zero.
Mechanically though the game is very different, but in a good way. While it retains the classic Ace Combat feel it manages to spice things up with the Maneuver system which I personally think is absolutely amazing, and what the Dogfighter mode in Assault Horizon should have been, although I guess they each had their own goals, DFM was a cinematic thing to show off the planes, while the Maneuver system is designed to make dogfighting a bit more reactive.
The way the Maneuver system works is simple. You have 3 types of maneuvers that you can perform, the high G turn which you do by slamming the thrust and the brake down at the same time, this lets you do some insanely tight turns at the cost of speed, which means if you hold the turn for more than a second you'll likely begin to stall. Then you have offensive and defensive maneuvers which are mapped to the Y button.
The offensive maneuver is simple but really great. Basically as you pursue an enemy a meter begins to fill up, when it reaches half way you perform a stunt that puts you behind the enemy, if you fill it half way you'll end up in their general rear area, which should give you a solid lock on solution, but it might be at too wide of an angle so your missile will miss without you correcting your position a little. If you get hit or the enemy shakes you then meter resets. Now if you let the meter fill up to max, you do the same stun except your next 2 missiles get enhanced tracking and will rarely miss unless your angle of attack is truly awful.
Offensive maneuvers in essence achieve the feeling of being able to get up close to an enemy to shoot them down without resorting to dumb as hell on rails segments that DFM did in Assault Horizon. While DFM was required to kill certain opponents in assault horizon in legacy offensive maneuvers are almost entirely optional, I say almost because there are certain enemies that are insanely fast and agile so if you don't want the air duel to take 20 minutes you'll probably wanna use offensive maneuvers.
The defensive maneuver is my favorite by far though and it opens up the game nicely. When the enemy has missile lock and they've fired a missile some arrows appear on either the left or right of the screen, push that direction + Y and you'll do a defensive maneuver, dodging the missile completely, however you'll lose your pursuit angle as it forces you to continue straight during the animation. If you do a series of these in a row and the enemy is closely following you the game will basically do a cobra type maneuver for you where you let the guy over take you and then you get full lock, letting you go in for the kill.
What's awesome about the defensive maneuvers is that they add a more tactile sensation to dodging missiles, and on the harder difficulties the game compensates by making the maneuver input window a lot tighter. This is scary because missile that are close enough to be dodged this way are usually fatal if you fumble the input or the on the Ace difficulty.
The other cool thing that Legacy does is increased plane customization, each plane has 3 possible special weapons to choose from at take off, as well as custom parts to choose from. These parts are the engine, the cockpit, the wing and armor.
The engine directly affects your speed, but a heavy engine can impact your maneuverability and stability while a light one could improve them.
The cockpit boosts your offensive stats and can give you a special "skill" like increased lock on range or auto firing the vulcan when it's in range .
The wing improves your maneuverability and stability but it can also have additional effects like an extra hard point for more special ammo or better brakes.
Finally your armor boosts your defense stat, you can select the lightest armor possible giving you big gains in speed and maneuverability, or you can be a tank in the sky at their expense additionally some armors come with stealth coating which makes it harder for enemies to track you and get a hard lock.
It's a cool system because you can modify planes just enough that it's interesting but not so much that the system feels very important, for example you can take that fishbed and boost it's speed to ridiculous levels so it really does feel like a pilot-able missile, or maybe you wanna take one of those fast fighters on a ground mission because your attackers aren't good enough dog fighters for the first half of the mission so you can outfit it with a cockpit that boosts air to ground capabilities and throw on some air to ground missiles and extra hard-points on the wings, it's generally a really fun system to mess around with. I can't remember if any other games in the series that do this though I think Joint Assault on the PSP had something like this.
So really Ace Combat Legacy has new mechanics in place that make it a wonderful iteration on the franchise, it adds just enough to make the game feel refreshing without feeling like the new stuff overpowers the game so much that it erases the classic ace combat gameplay that fans know and love.
