Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown did pretty well for itself. If Wikipedia's numbers are accurate, the game sold around seven million copies across multiple platforms and was well received by critics. With sales like that, a sequel was inevitable, and after a seven-year wait, we now have Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve.

The campaign is set in the relatively near future of Strangereal, where turmoil has returned. After an invasion by the struggling but somehow military-rich nation of Sotoa, the Federation of Central Usea is no more. Almost all of the nations once allied with the FCU have either severed ties or declared neutrality, leaving behind a scattered military force. You play a pilot rescued at sea by the nation's Navy and immediately assigned to navigation duty for Rex, a pilot being propped up as a hero for an impoverished nation. When the mission goes wrong, you assume Rex's identity and become the leader of the legendary Wings of Theve flight group. Meanwhile, the deceased airman lives on as a ghost in your subconscious.

The story follows the tone and approach of previous games in the series, particularly the entries that made cut scenes a major part of the experience. For newcomers, the game tries to offer more than an excuse to blow things up with a plane. There's the familiar story of stopping an invasion and reclaiming your country, along with the camaraderie that develops between you and your squadron as you learn their backstories and share their tragedies and triumphs. There's also Cole, the deceased pilot whose voice remains in your head as he sees the world through your eyes and reflects on life as a pilot and the inevitability of fate. The most interesting idea is the attempt to uphold a myth for the sake of giving people hope. It's not explored as deeply as the other elements, but masquerading as a legendary hero for an entire population is a fascinating premise for a modern war story and one the series could have explored further.

Wings of Theve occupies a genre that's fairly niche these days. It plays like an arcade flight-combat shooter with some elements borrowed from combat flight simulators. The controls are gamepad-friendly, with yaw and leveling out your plane being about as complicated as things get. Everything else is intuitive enough that a tutorial barely feels necessary. The arcade sensibilities show up in subtler ways. You can absorb quite a bit of missile damage before exploding, and while ammunition for your guns and missiles is limited, there's usually plenty available, so running out is rare. Fuel works similarly, with only a few missions making it an active concern. At the same time, the game borrows some mechanics from simulators. Ice can form on your plane if you remain in cloud cover too long, and climbing too steeply can cause a stall. Flying through an exploding plane may look cool, but it damages your own aircraft in the process.

If you're coming from Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown, most of this will feel familiar. The game retains both a full cinematic replay system with interchangeable camera angles and the radar-style replay system found in older entries. The Aircraft Tree also returns, along with an extensive selection of planes and modifications. The pick-up-and-play design remains intact, making it easy for anyone to jump in, while missions continue to deliver relentless waves of aircraft and ground targets.

There are a few notable additions. The first is wingman commands. You can tell your squadmates to cover you, attack, and perform other general tasks, but the AI is smart enough that these commands can make a meaningful difference during a sortie. The second is mid-mission refueling. Although refueling is difficult in real life, here you simply maintain a certain speed and align horizontal and vertical markers until you establish a connection. Aircraft-carrier landings use the same basic controls, while takeoff requires little more than holding acceleration until you leave the runway. These mechanics make the sequences less stressful than they probably should be, but they're entirely optional, so you can skip them without penalty.

Overall, the campaign is rock solid. The story moves at a good pace, with a strong balance between cut scenes and missions. The cut scenes even include simple interactions with your crewmates, such as shaking hands or responding to questions. The 30 missions offer a broad range of objectives, and multiple checkpoints keep them from becoming a slog because dying doesn't mean restarting the entire mission. It's an enjoyable campaign that stands comfortably alongside those in previous entries.

The developers have made a big deal about multiplayer, and with good reason: It's been practically overhauled from previous entries. That starts with character creation. There are plenty of facial features, colors, and body types to choose from, although creating a fully rendered pilot initially seems strange when you'll spend most of the game inside a cockpit. It makes more sense once you enter the multiplayer lobby, which takes place on a fully rendered airfield. You can still navigate menus normally, but the game encourages you to walk around, interact with different characters to access multiplayer options, watch other players emote, and even watch a bird mascot dance on stage. With Tekken 8 doing something similar a few years ago, this feels like the direction Bandai Namco wants to take online modes in its larger games.

The multiplayer customization options are extensive but familiar. You can change your pilot's appearance and customize the planes in your hangar, both aesthetically and in terms of their weapon loadouts. You can create around five plane presets for quick selection during matches, and you can set up your own squadron if you'd rather not rely on randomly assigned players.

Wings of Theve also takes another page from Tekken 8 with its shop. Premium currency and money earned through play can be used to purchase chat emotes, gestures, pilot and plane cosmetics, and new aircraft. There's also a season pass with free and paid tiers containing additional cosmetics. Each pass lasts two months, but the promise that its aircraft will eventually reach the shop significantly reduces the sense of FOMO.

The game even borrows from something outside Bandai Namco's lineup. An arcade mode lets you play some of the company's classic games. The closed multiplayer session available to the press only included Pac-Man, but Bandai Namco has promised more classics at launch. Familiar games such as Galaga are scheduled to appear alongside less frequently re-released titles such as Rally-X and Dragon Spirit. It's easy to see the influence of Street Fighter 6's arcade-style lobby. The feature is welcome if the games rotate regularly. Considering that most people associate Ace Combat with consoles and PC despite its arcade origins, the feature feels more naturally suited to a franchise like Tekken, which still has a strong association with arcades.

The actual multiplayer modes are varied but presented in an unusual way. Only two are permanently available. Co-op Assault is a PvE-versus mode in which two teams of four pilots take on waves of enemy aircraft and ground targets in a timed score battle. Co-op Warfare turns the same basic concept into PvP. Other players become targets, while individual performance has a much greater impact on the score. Players who survive longer and earn more points eventually receive an ace designation, making them high-value targets. Shooting one down can dramatically shift the match's score. Both modes work well, but Warfare is more exciting because its scoring system produces plenty of close matches.

The other four modes appear periodically at random intervals. None are particularly unusual on their own. Team Deathmatch is essentially Co-op Warfare without the CPU-controlled enemies, while Deathmatch is an eight-player free-for-all. Scramble puts four players against a CPU squad of four at a higher difficulty. Emergency Sortie is the mode longtime fans will probably find most interesting: Eight players team up against large bosses from throughout the series. Eight players should make these fights manageable, but the short time limit means victory isn't guaranteed. Unless all eight pilots have fought the boss several times and know its patterns, there's still a good chance of failure. Having these modes appear periodically makes them feel more special, but it would have been nice to have the option to play them whenever we wanted.

Taken together, the multiplayer feels like an attempt to revive the spirit of Ace Combat: Infinity rather than simply adding an online component to a single-player game. There's enough to support a stand-alone title, while the season passes, shop, progression system, and XP earned regardless of whether you win or lose all feel like holdovers from the online-only PS3 game. Even the lack of Achievements tied to multiplayer reinforces the idea that the online mode is intended to stand on its own. That helps explain one change that negatively affects the experience: Campaign progression no longer carries over to multiplayer.

Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown gave players a strong incentive to complete the campaign because the unlocks transferred to multiplayer, providing a substantial head start. In Ace Combat 8, only emblems are shared between the two modes. Players therefore have to complete more online sorties to build a multiplayer hangar that matches the campaign's aircraft roster.

Performance during multiplayer was generally good. Gameplay was relatively lag-free, and cross-play provides a much larger player pool thanks to the series' popularity on consoles compared with PC. The game also does a good job filling matches with CPU players, although the four-hour press session wasn't long enough to determine whether a completely CPU-filled match can occur when nobody else is searching. A more general search option covering all match types would also be useful. Having to navigate through the menus to search for a specific mode can be cumbersome.

The series has always had strong presentation, and Wings of Theve is no exception. The audio evokes the feeling of a good aerial combat movie, while the voice acting strikes a good balance between genuine emotion and the melodrama of the script. The cast is easy to enjoy, particularly the wingmen, whom you bond with quickly. Cole can be a bit of a downer, but given his circumstances, that's understandable. The sound effects are crisp and powerful, while the soundtrack follows the series' tradition of jumping between genres. One moment, you'll hear a bombastic track worthy of a high-budget action movie; the next, rock music will blare over a country's anthem. It's chaotic, but the music fits the campaign's various story beats surprisingly well.

Graphically, Wings of Theve looks gorgeous without being dramatically different from its predecessor. The planes are highly detailed, the environments look excellent, and there's little sign of low-resolution texturing. The biggest change is the addition of ray-traced effects, which can be subtle. Lighting and shadows have more convincing bounce, while reflections on the plane canopy are particularly noticeable during mission replays. Despite the added technology, the game can maintain 60fps and above with capable hardware, although quick transitions can briefly cause the frame rate to dip.

Given the requirement for a GPU with hardware ray tracing, it's almost surprising that the Steam Deck can run the game at all. It runs at the device's native resolution with TSR upscaling set to Balanced and every graphical option at its lowest setting. For the most part, the result looks good when you're flying through clear skies. Smoke effects and the plane itself hold up reasonably well, with performance hovering near 30fps and remaining mostly playable. Explosions and large numbers of aircraft expose the limitations of the upscaling, producing the familiar smearing associated with low-resolution images. The frame rate also dips periodically, but rarely enough to make the game unplayable. Because the environments vary so much, battery life averages around 90 minutes, although calmer missions can stretch that to roughly two hours.

Everything above applies to the campaign. Online play is a different story, although our testing was limited to a special four-hour press session. We weren't able to test multiplayer on a Linux desktop, but we did try it on a Steam Deck and were later told the device isn't officially supported. We could enter the main lobby and perform almost everything else, but the game crashed when attempting to start an online match. We'll have a clearer picture of Linux compatibility after launch, but for now, the game appears best suited to offline play on Linux devices, with online options useful mainly for preparation and customization.

Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve is a very good flight-combat game. Its story has surprising depth while still delivering the series' signature dose of action. The arcade-focused controls remain approachable, and additions such as wingman commands, midair refueling, and takeoff and landing sequences give simulation fans a few more mechanics to appreciate without making the game significantly more intimidating. The lengthy campaign is complemented by a multiplayer mode with plenty of staying power, even if its rotating game types can be frustrating. Add in the excellent presentation, strong audio, and impressive visuals, and Wings of Theve delivers an experience that should keep Ace Combat fans occupied until the next entry arrives.

Score: 8.5/10