While Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve is far from a simulationist approach to jet fighting, the title certainly has its fair share of depth hidden underneath what would otherwise appear to be arcade-y gameplay. To help you get a better handle on truly earning the title of ace, here are 15 tips and tricks to keep in mind when going through the campaign of Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve.
Basic or Expert controls
Along with the difficulty options, the first choice presented to players is whether they want to go with a simplified “Basic” control scheme, or if they would prefer the “Expert” controls which offer a lot more freedom of gameplay. While the Basic option might seem preferable to those new to the franchise, it’s difficult to recommend due to how heavily it hampers your general maneuverability during intense dogfights. Rather, regardless if your experience level, I would heavily recommend going with the Expert option, since even the finer controls it offers begin to feel quite intuitive after spending just a few minutes of gameplay.
Unlock as many Parts as possible
While the Aircraft Tree has plenty of juicy new jets and weapons to unlock, having a large arsenal of Parts is just as important, and can play a surprisingly major role in making your preferred jet feel even better. Having as many Parts unlocked as you possibly can also goes a long way in boosting the capabilities of certain weapons or aircrafts, making even otherwise boring-looking choices start feeling a lot more enjoyable.
Don’t be afraid to repeat levels to grind for currency
Since there are more than 30 jets to unlock throughout the Aircraft Tree, along with extra weapons for each, a variety of Parts, and even the need to buy extra jets for your squad mates, you might find yourself going broke quite frequently. To counter this, don’t be afraid to repeat missions you’ve already completed. While you won’t get the first-time completion reward for repeated playthroughs, successfully completing missions that offer opportunities for high scores will still end up giving you more MGP than you’ll know what to do with, making the idea of unlocking that F-22A Raptor a less daunting prospect than it initially seemed.
Go deeper (not wider) into the Aircraft Tree
Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve offers plenty of options for unlockable jets and Parts right off the bat, between bombers, dogfighting specialists, and even stealth jets. However, it is worth keeping in mind that going deeper along the tree can often give you the chance to unlock much stronger jets and Parts. If you want the best Sukhoi, for example, you should focus on going along the MiG and Sukhoi line along the bottom of the tree rather than divert your attention with the Mirage or F-16 in the tree’s other parts. Similarly, if you want that F-22A, stick to the top path, only spreading your MGP spending around if you need to get some other Parts along the way.
Master the High-G Turn
Missions throughout Wings of Theve, especially once you get deeper into the campaign, can often be harrowing experiences thanks to the sheer number of targets you have to deal with while also avoiding things like homing missiles, difficult terrain, and agile enemy jets. One of the most important tools you have to deal with these situation is the High-G turn. Pulled off by hitting break and accelerate together while pitching your jet up or down, the High-G turn allows you to quickly turn around by sacrificing a bit of speed. As you will quickly learn, the High-G turn is an invaluable technique that is bound to save your life just as often as it gives you new openings to take out some enemies.
Clouds can be your biggest enemies
The impressive cloud tech used for Ace Combat 8 has also led to the unfortunate side effect of making clouds even more difficult to see through, which in turn makes fighting and flying through them quite challenging. Aside from effects like icing up your jet or reducing the homing capabilities of your missiles, clouds can also just simply be disorientating, and even I ended up suffering from many crashes because I couldn’t see an incoming mountain while flying through stormy weather.
Clouds can also be your best friends
On the flip side, however, clouds can also prove to be quite useful, especially in longer missions against enemy jet squadrons. Many of the effects you are forced to suffer when flying through clouds also apply to your enemies, which means that not only can you get the drop on your targets by sneaking through cloud cover, their offensive capabilities are also reduced due to missiles losing much of their homing capabilities.
Utilize your squadron
The squadmates in Ace Combat games have traditionally been fairly useless, opting to simply fly around and offer the enemies targets besides yourself. However, Wings of Theve goes a long way in making them useful by giving you four distinct commands that they can execute on: focused attacks, dispersed attacks, use of SP weapons, and cover. The last two tend to be especially useful during frantic battles since they can effectively use their more powerful-yet-limited weapons to help you complete objectives, and can cover your rear so enemies don’t sneak up behind you and take you down with a couple of missiles.
Accelerating all the time is a bad idea
Speed control is an important aspect of gameplay in Ace Combat 8, and just slamming the throttle down to the max is far from the best idea. While speed can be quite useful, especially when you’re trying to chase down a fleeing enemy jet, you’ll need to decelerate just as often, since it can be quite easy to overshoot your target and find yourself needing to make a sharp turn to target them again. This becomes especially useful when dealing with some of the boss encounters, since slowing down to stay behind your target can often yield better results by giving you more time to shoot them down than simply zipping by them would.
Not all jets can take off from everywhere
One of the hardest lessons I learned about haphazardly unlocking a cool new jet that I was hoping to use in subsequent missions was that it could only launch off an actual airfield with a runway, and the next few missions took off from an carrier. This meant that I had to go through quite a few missions before finally getting to fly that F-16 I had been waiting for. Keep this in mind when being excited to unlock a new jet, since the Aircraft Tree clearly denotes whether a jet can take off from a carrier, and you can avoid suffering through this heartache during your own playthrough of the campaign.
Mission briefings are important
Along with sprinkling in details about the overall lore of the Strangereal and the current geopolitical happenings, mission briefings play an incredibly vital role in Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve since you don’t really get much guidance on what you’re supposed to do once you’ve sortied. Paying attention to the mission briefings is incredibly vital for any potential ace pilot, since you also don’t get any mid-mission log that tells you what your objectives are going to be, and the briefings also provide some hints about what kinds of unique challenges you can expect in any given mission.
Multi-target Missiles are Very Situational
While multi-target missiles tend to look incredibly cool, especially when you are able to hit 8 enemies with a single pull of the trigger, they also tend to be quite situational owing to the fact that you never really get multi-target missiles that can target ground and aerial opponents; you’ll have to pick between one and the other, which massively brings down its general utility in some missions where, for instance, you need to destroy some SAM sites. For more general-purpose SP weapons, high-velocity missiles or bombs tend to make more sense, since any gaps left in your offensive capabilities can be filled in with your standard missiles.
Standard missiles are your most versatile weapons
Speaking of which, standard missiles will be your bread-and-butter weapons throughout Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve. Not only can they be used on aerial and ground targets, you also won’t be running out of them over the course of a typical mission. If you do happen to run out, standard missiles slowly regenerate over time. They might not be as flashy as a railgun or multi-target missiles that can hit eight jets at the same time, but what they lack in flair they more than make up for in being reliable.
Tailor your jet’s Parts to the mission’s needs
Aside from picking your SP weapons, the biggest decisions you tend to make before sortieing into a mission tends to be your jet’s parts. Depending on your aircraft, you get a number of slots to fill on across body, weapons, and miscellaneous categories, giving you plenty of freedom to focus on certain aspects of your jets and weapons. The Parts you choose can also help shore up gaps in your offensive capabilities by, for example, improving the damage of your bombs or allowing you to carry more standard missiles for particularly long missions. While sticking to a single Parts loadout might seem more convenient, tailoring your choices to the needs of the mission will help you get through your objectives and get high scores for that coveted S ranking more reliably.
Jets being expensive doesn’t mean they’re the best
While standard progression logic would indicate that the jets at the far right of the Aircraft Tree might be the best ones in the game, it is worth noting that they still tend to have their own pros and cons. Since each jet can only equip certain SP weapons, you might find yourself missing out on bombing or rocket capabilities despite flying your high-end Sukhoi or F-22A. Aside from balance considerations, this also helps to ensure that your older aircrafts never really fall out of favor, since you might end up going back to a more basic F-16 just because it offers better handling at medium speeds than the F-22A.
