While films like Top Gun have popularised the thrills of soaring through the air in a fighter jet while engaged in dogfights, video games have taken it to the next level, allowing gamers to be the virtual pilot in an immersive cockpit environment. And while such games can be complex and rather niche, it is still a highly popular genre with no shortage of titles to choose from.
The genre itself is mostly split into two schools of flight, with the more realistic Microsoft Flight Simulator dominating the simulator space on one end, and with the more arcade-styled air combat games, like Project Wingman, on the other. And among both, Bandai Namco Entertainment’s Ace Combat franchise has made its mark by combining the best of both worlds, and this perfect middle ground is exactly what makes it one of the longest-running arcade flight action franchises in the gaming world.
With seven mainline titles and numerous spin-offs under its wings since 1995, one would think that the franchise has expanded its arsenal of innovations by now, but this is hardly the case, as with Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve, the franchise is soaring towards the modern gaming generation with some neat gameplay tricks in its arsenal.
We’ve already gotten a glimpse at what this upcoming title will bring to the table following our previous exclusive interview with the development team back in December 2025, but now, thanks to a lengthy four-hour hands-on preview session with the game, we got to experience a peek at what the game has to offer, and one thing was clear – Ace Combat is back and at the top of its game!
Our preview session kicked off right from the beginning, dropping us into the first five missions of Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve. While the war between the Federation of Central Usea (FCU) and the Republic of Sotoa continues to wage on, players will embody a fighter pilot rescued by the Endurance, an outdated FCU aircraft carrier that’s a remnant of its former glory, now reduced to nothing but an overcrowded refugee vessel.
The war has taken its toll, one that the FCU is losing… badly. But even in the darkness, there’s one shining ray of hope – the Wings of Theve, an elite squadron of ace pilots who are single-handedly turning the tides of the war, one sortie at a time.
But here’s the kicker – it’s all a lie. The legend of the Wings of Theve is nothing but propaganda, a lie built to keep morale alive as Sotoa slowly but surely takes over. But this is all set to change thanks to the player, who takes on the mantle of squad leader, armed with the experience of someone who has actually been in dogfights.
Herein lies one of the immediately noticeable changes in Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve, which sees the return of the wingman “buddy” system last seen in 2007’s Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation. This means that players will take to the skies in squadrons once more, and not fly solo like in 2019’s Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown, issuing orders to their squadmates on the fly (hah!) using the D-pad like attacking a specific target, dispersing to attack foes at will, defending the player, or even switching priorities from using basic missiles to special weaponry.
Of course, the three wingmen are merely there to provide assistance, and it will still fall to the player to do most of the heavy lifting. Returning players from past Ace Combat games will immediately feel at home here, with the game providing two main control styles – a “Standard” scheme for casual players or newcomers, which steers the plane automatically to where a player’s cursor is pointing, and an “Expert” mode for veterans, which requires players to manually roll and pitch their aircraft with the left stick.
As always, the game will provide no shortage of aircraft to choose from, some specialising in air dogfights, others with better air-to-ground functionality, or ones that are a balance of both. Players will also be able to equip additional Special Weapons to complement their basic missiles and machine guns, and this time, Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve will allow players to equip two different Special Weapons concurrently, although at the cost of having reduced ammunition for each.
Once in the air, moment-to-moment gameplay offers the same rush of battle, just like before. The core combat loop remains a test of balancing a player’s speed in the air, as enemies won’t just fly straight and let players land hits without a fight, instead zipping left and right in an effort to flank a player. To gain an upper hand, players will need to outmanoeuvre their foes by circling around them, finding breaks in between their movement patterns in order to fire off a well-timed missile, rinse and repeat.
To do this, players will need a way to effectively get behind their opponents in the shortest time possible, and that’s where the High-G manoeuvre comes, a system introduced in Ace Combat 6. Essentially, think of this as a way to do a “drift” but in the air, allowing players to perform a sharp turn by dropping their speed. This move does come at a cost, as slowing down to a certain threshold comes at the risk of stalling your aircraft, so one mistake can ultimately lead to a watery, or fiery, crash.
In fact, this familiar core feeling of combat was something that the development team was adamant about maintaining, with Ace Combat brand director Kazutoki Kono (Ace Combat Assault Horizon, Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown) and game producer Manabu Shimomoto (Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown) explaining during a post-preview interview session that the goal was to make the game a “deepening of the franchise rather than an evolution”.
“The Ace Combat series has always been about players enjoying the vast expanse of the sky, a playground where they can have fun destroying their opponents’ aircraft,” explains Kono. “To this end, we didn’t set out to evolve the series, but make it deeper.”
“We tried to maintain the same feel throughout the series,” adds Shinomoto. “That being said, although the feel is still being maintained, there are now a lot of finer background details and calculations being made to make this title different from the ones that came before.”
These calculations come into play during the game’s new “Chain Reaction” system. In past games, dogfights simply ended with either the player’s or the enemy’s planes being destroyed, and that was that, but here, plane debris left behind can also become an additional threat.
In Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve, certain enemies can have multiple points on their bodies that a player can target, be it their wings or propellers. By focusing fire on these points, enemy planes won’t simply explode into nothingness when destroyed, but these parts might actually break apart, raining down in a hail of destructive debris as it falls to ground, potentially crashing into other aircraft – or yours, if you’re not careful – and cause a damaging chain reaction.
This effect is best seen in the game’s many air battles against gigantic enemy war machines. One mission in our preview, for instance, tasked us with destroying not one, but six enormous enemy air transports, which look similar to the Arsenal Bird bosses in Ace Combat 7. Due to their massive size, the fiery mess of parts left behind when these planes are destroyed will completely obliterate any unlucky aircraft flying beneath. With this in mind, adding to the fact that these war machines appear in groups flying in close proximity, there is also the potential that they would crash into each other to literally kill two birds with one shot, but unfortunately, we weren’t able to witness this first-hand in our gameplay session.
Another mission in our preview saw us going up against a whole different beast, this time an equally massive ground-based land battleship, a hulking weapons platform outfitted with rail guns, near-impenetrable armour, and the ability to spawn countless waves of unmanned drones. This battle took place against the backdrop of a sprawling metropolis, so apart from avoiding missiles and drones, players also needed to dodge skyscrapers while performing risky low-altitude manoeuvres. And in order to counter its overwhelming defences, players are also tasked with dealing with the problem by dropping a literal building on it to stall its advance. It’s all pretty intense stuff.
And intense was pretty much one way to surmise the entire preview session, as it was clear early on that missions won’t simply be just about mere one-on-one dogfighting, as Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve always found some way to throw a spanner in the works. From the aforementioned boss battles to a full-scale invasion of enemy-occupied territory, all done while trying not to get hit by long-ranged enemy railgun blasts, the game knows how to get a player’s pulse racing, and is exactly what fans have been yearning for for years.
All this, and we haven’t even spoken about the game’s visual upgrades, and more specifically, its new ‘Cloudly’ weather rendering tech. Past entries in the franchise already had realistic weather simulations, such as clouds that interfered with aircraft systems when flying through them or lightning strikes that could mess with HUD distortion when hit, but now, it’s turned up a notch.
In Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve, entering heavy cloud cover can help in stealth situations, but can also be a death trap if a player isn’t careful. This is because clouds now interfere with an aircraft’s systems much faster, with players feeling a slight loss of control due to turbulence almost instantaneously. To make matters worse, missile auto-targeting systems are rendered nearly useless within heavy clouds, and the condensed water that accumulates on the aircraft can also lead to icing issues, which might force the plane into a stall.
“We also incorporated different types of clouds in the game,” adds Shinomoto. “When it’s raining, for example, clouds will not just be lower, but also thicker and more concentrated, whereas they will be thinner and more spread out on a sunny day. This not only adds to the visuals of the game, but also the functionality too, as players need to manage their playstyles depending on the time of day.”
The improvements to Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve’s engine and visuals affect the player in other, more subtle ways too, particularly when it comes to aiding the process of locating foes during the times when radar isn’t available. During the same mission against the six flying warmachines, the enemy sortie included radar jammer aircraft that obscured their positions on the map. Instead of aimlessly searching the seemingly endless skies, what players could do was to look out for the distinctive condensation trails (contrails) left in the air in a plane’s wake and follow them to their target. Additionally, Shinomoto adds that sunlight can also be reflected by enemy plane canopies, further helping to pinpoint their location.
With just a handful of starting preview missions alone, it’s already clear that Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve is ramping up not just its visuals, but also the overall intensity of air combat. There’s no doubt that the game has far more surprises in store, and we can’t wait to see them play out first-hand when the game launches for the PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC on 2 October 2026.
Kevin is a reformed PC Master Race gamer with a penchant for franchise “duds” like Darksiders III and Dead Space 3. He has made it his life-long mission to play every single major game release – lest his wallet dies trying.
Si Jia
