Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve Takes Flight to Near-Unanimous Critical Praise

Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve launched on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC this Friday to strong reviews, though its monetization model raises some questions.

Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve officially launched this Friday, October 2, landing on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via Steam. It's the first mainline entry in the series in seven years, built from the ground up in Unreal Engine 5 by Bandai Namco Aces, and anyone who grabbed the Deluxe Edition had already been flying since early access kicked off on September 29.

The campaign puts you in the cockpit of a pilot who inherits the legendary 'Wings of Theve' callsign after its previous holder dies, leading the Joker Flight squadron through the occupation of the Federation of Central Usea by the Republic of Sotoa. It's the kind of story the series has always handled well: fictional politics, cultural identity, and the human cost of war, without turning the pilots into poster heroes.

On the gameplay side, there are 30 main missions that, according to reviews, take somewhere between 15 and 20 hours to finish, with another 20 to 30 hours of extra content in mission variants, operations, and free-flight challenges. The game ships with two control modes (standard and expert), reworked squad mechanics for directing your wingmen more precisely, and native DualSense support with trigger haptics during dogfights.

Critics liked it: Metacritic sits at 88, OpenCritic lands at 87 with a 99% recommendation rate, TheGamer gave it 4.5 out of 5 stars, and Push Square scored it 8 out of 10. Praise centers on the mature narrative and the sheer amount of content. On the downside, the difficulty spike in the late game dogfights is rough, the audio mixing needs work in places, and the pile up of place names and factions makes the plot confusing at times.

What stands out, and what none of the reviews really dug into, is the monetization model. A full seventy dollar price tag plus a seasonal Ace Pass with exclusive aircraft feels odd for a franchise that's historically built around a solo campaign. People who've stuck with Ace Combat for years aren't here for a battle pass, they're here for the rush of a well scripted dogfight, and layering that structure on top of such a well reviewed single player game says something about where the industry is heading, whether you like it or not.

Anyone who's followed the series since Ace Combat 7 will feel another sting: no PSVR2 support. That game's VR mode was one of the standout features of the last generation, and its absence here is noticeable. On the upside, the multiplayer is the biggest in franchise history, with cross platform support for up to 100 players at once, which at least shows Bandai Namco is thinking big for the post launch plan.