Ace Combat 8 hands-on preview and interview – ‘it became real-life quite quickly’

The world’s favourite air combat simulator returns for another sortie, with a very modern take on aerial warfare and the fog (and clouds) of war.

With Red Dead Redemption 2 recently becoming the third best-selling video game of all-time it’s a constant frustration that video game sales figures are given out so inconsistently, because finding out that 2019’s Ace Combat 7 has sold a nominatively appropriate 7.5 million copies is something of a revelation. In retrospect, we’re not sure what we expected but it proves that, despite our fears, Ace Combat, and combat flight sims in general, are not quite the niche concern we assumed them to be.

Ace Combat 8: Wings Of Theve was announced in 2021 and got its first reveal at The Game Awards in 2025. We got to play several hours of the new game last month and spoke to brand director Kazutoki Kono and Ace Combat 8 producer Manabu Shimomoto. We’d met them before, prior to the launch of Ace Combat 7, and it’s interesting that despite the series’ continued success it still has no peers or rivals.

In the genre, the only thing that’s really happened in that time is that VR has fallen out of fashion – which is a real shame, as Ace Combat 7 had a fantastic VR mode – and Microsoft Flight Simulator has raised the profile of flight sims in general. Ace Combat has very little in common with that though, as while it’s a hardcore simulator, with little in the way of traditional gameplay, Ace Combat 8 is primarily an action game.

Ace Combat celebrated its 30th anniversary last year, although its lineage stretches back a few years before that, to the Air Combat series of arcade games. The modern games have three main staples: a highly complex backstory, set in an alternative world with similar but slightly more sci-fi technology; excellent graphics and a reasonable degree of realism; and amazing soundtracks.

All three elements were present and correct in Ace Combat 8, which once again takes place in the world of Strangereal. Although it is an ongoing story you don’t need to know anything beforehand, as the set-up is fairly straightforward: your homeland has been invaded and you’re part of one of the only fighting forces left, aboard a wandering aircraft carrier.

The twist is that, in the first mission you take on the callsign of Rex, a legendary fighter pilot who turns out to be a complete fabrication, used to improve morale, with the previous incumbent being a total washout. Nevertheless, you accept the role and become the *Wings of Theve* (Theve being your capital city), ready to take on the war’s most dangerous missions.

Bandai Namco is careful not to call Ace Combat a simulation, although we’re not sure whether that’s because they’re being modest about its level of realism or because they don’t want to put people off. Depending on the difficulty level you choose, you have far more in the way of ammo than you would in reality, and the game makes sharp turns easier, but otherwise it’s relatively realistic, including the danger of stalling. You can survive some mid-air collisions but if you hit a mountain or ditch into the sea, that’s it.

Naturally, things start off fairly simple and the controls are really no more complex than any other first or third person shooter (you have the option of either view). Standard air-to-air missiles require a lock-on but are not guaranteed to hit unless you catch the enemy dead to rights. Equally, while you do have a limited amount of chaff and flares it’s relatively easy to dodge incoming missiles if you keep an eye on the radar and turn sharply as they close.

Although the combat is enormously enjoyable, and the graphics almost photorealistic at times (with none of the inconsistency or reliance on streaming seen in Microsoft Flight Simulator), the real magic in Ace Combat is making the missions varied enough that you never get tired of it.

We played more missions than we’re allowed to talk about, but things start off as you’d imagine, with some simple dogfights, but this quickly evolves into land battles as well, where you use ground-to-air missiles and bombs to take out targets and, in one memorable early mission, a fleet of ships. This is best achieved with specialised anti-ship missiles, which you have a much more limited supply of, as you swoop around an island, trying to take them out before they escape, but while still fending off defending fighters.

The visuals throughout all this are stunning and while we found the first person view (with cockpit turned off) the most practical, the game records everything as you go and you can watch the whole mission as a replay when you’re done, complete with Top Gun style cinematic camera angles and some amazing rain and cloud effects.

The latter is apparently the result of a lot of hard work, with a specially designed graphics engine called Cloudy that has been added to Unreal Engine. The benefit of this is highlighted in one mission where you’re chasing implausibly gigantic flying wings but where your radar doesn’t work at long range. Instead, you have to follow contrails in the sky and pass through angry thunderclouds that threaten to destroy your electronics.

That mission is relatively easy, especially if you use the wingman controls to make sure everyone zeroes in on the same giant plane once you find it – and protects you from fighters while you’re looking for the others. There’s also a range of special weapons you can choose before you start, the most tempting being a limited use weapon that lets you lock on and fire up to four missiles at once, like you’re playing After Burner.

You can also pick which plane you pilot before you start, which has a big effect on how a mission plays out. Despite the fantasy world of Strangereal, all of the planes are real world fighters, although they all have to be unlocked from what is essentially a skill tree, using earned in-game currency. But as long as you’ve got that you can make sensible choices, like using a F-14D for air combat missions and an A-10C Thunderbolt II against land targets.

In the most extreme example of the game’s near future sci-fi element this includes a gigantic ‘land battleship’ which is treated entirely seriously and can only be taken out by following a complex plan, involving destroying its caterpillar tracks by exposing side panels for a brief window of opportunity, provided by bomb trucks on the ground and by collapsing skyscrapers into its path.

Everything about what we played of the game was impressive, with one exception. The developers made a point of saying that the storytelling and dialogue is less anime influenced than before, and more grounded, but while that’s true it’s still very clunky and awkward. It wouldn’t matter much but all your wingmates, and other allies and enemies, are constantly talking.

Some of it furthers the story but a lot of it is just meant to be immersive chatter. Even that would be fine, except the game is surprisingly reserved about pointing out mission objectives and how the battlefield situation changes over the course of a mission. Your wingmates don’t do nearly enough to help provide helpful information and even when they do say something useful it can get lost in the background noise.

It was only a minor problem during the preview though and will likely become even less of an issue once you get used to it in the main game. It’s certainly not enough to ruin what seems to be another welcome entry in the most accessible, enjoyable, and commercially successful combat flight sim on the market.

Formats: PC (previewed), PlayStation5 and Xbox Series X/S
Publisher: Bandai Namco
Developer: Bandai Namco Aces
Release Date: 2026

GC: I’m sure you don’t remember but I met you both before, eight years ago at Gamescom.

KK: There was only once that we travelled together to Gamescom, that was Ace Combat 7. That must’ve been when we met.

GC: So much has happened in the world, and in the games industry, since then. I’m curious, how have those many changes influenced you and Ace Combat 8?

MS: First of all, the universe of Ace Combat is set in this Strangereal fictional world. We take great care in making everything seem believable, but everything is based on prediction of the near future. But it’s not set in the real world, it’s very much fictional.

The production started in 2020 and we had predicted the near future at the time but the truth is, coincidentally, the current world seems to have mirrored what was predicted.

KK: With Ace Combat 8, what is depicted is very much a prediction of near future technology or information that is likely to be available very soon. But one of the elements that I have a real-life concern about is social media, because with what is currently happening it is very difficult to tell what information is true or false.

That creates a lot of confusion in that sphere and similar things are mirrored in Ace Combat 8. There is a presence – Fake Wings, that you may be yet to come across – where information regarding that is affected by the people and there are reactions against that as well. So there is that sense of information manipulation, that is depicted here.

GC: I’ve always assumed that the sci-fi elements in the game were purely to add variety and keep things unpredictable, but the future seems to be catching up very quickly, with things I never expected to see in my lifetime. How has that affected how you approach this new game and the series in general?

KK: The sci-fi element being utilised for gameplay hasn’t really changed and won’t change in the future. It is a motif to enhance the gameplay but in the Ace Combat series, because the visuals and aesthetic elements have really advanced and keep advancing.

Even though the gameplay is very enjoyable, if nothing looks realistic, visually, there is going to be a dissonance for the players. So the technologies, visuals, and information all need to align, because we don’t really want to create a completely removed fantasy world that seems unreal.

Things feeling and looking realistic is very important. So if we were to put a priority order, gameplay is most important but second is a believable sense of Strangereal, to create immediacy for the players, is very important as well.

But we don’t anticipate a great land battleship to attack a city anytime soon.

GC: Well, not this year anyway.

Both: [laughs]

KK: But that really shows that gameplay is at the forefront for us.

GC: You were wise to set the series in this alternative reality, as it’s quite disquieting to think about what all these vehicles and weapons are being used for in real-life at the moment. It’s not something a lot of people would want to celebrate and yet flying a jet fighter is undeniably fun. Nevertheless, I’ve always seen the series as having an anti-war theme, is that how you see it?

MS: This goes back to what we were discussing earlier on, about the great acceleration in the speed of advancement in the sci-fi elements and real-life technology. For example, with Ace Combat 7 drones were heavily featured but at the time it wasn’t really in our day-to-day life.

GC: Yes, that seems the perfect example.

MS: But it became real-life quite quickly. So similar things happened with Ace Combat 8 as well. At the time of the production stages it was seen as something that was out of reach and near future, but coincidentally the timing just seemed to converge.

Just as a foundation, the team is creating an entertainment product, so a sense of fun is extremely important for the players. But to really bring that onto the realistic level… to make it a lot more accessible and to make it even more enjoyable, we do create a universe that is very in-depth in detail and we do take that role quite seriously. We do really go into the details in this process of layering the story, so it’s actually great that you are asking these questions, as it shows that there is a thirst for this type of element.

GC: 7.5 million is not a niche franchise and yet there’s very few games like Ace Combat. Do you feel that customers are being underestimated in terms of what effort they’re willing to put into a game, in terms of complicated or unusual controls and concepts?

KK: In 2026 there are a surprising number of flight shooter games within the industry. So this genre seems to be thriving, especially in the independent games sector. So Ace Combat will always be at the top but it’s actually great that it’s a very active genre.

This franchise is based on a 30 year legacy and there is that core element of the players going through many different challenges to become the ace pilot. So there is a hero creation element. The perspective and angle is slightly different to a simple flight shooter; it’s very difficult to replicate for the other publishers.

GC: I wonder if Microsoft Flight Simulator has helped to raise the profile of flight sims in general, even though it’s not a shooter?

MS: Well, Microsoft Flight Simulator is a simulator, so the core focus is different to Ace Combat, because Ace Combat provides a flight shooter experience in really living through this journey of becoming an ace pilot, so there is a strong narrative attached to it – so the outcome is completely different, so therefore it tends to attract different demographics.

GC: Why is the music always so good in Ace Combat? Why do you make that a priority? It’s unfortunate it doesn’t seem to get much acknowledgement. I nominated it for The Game Awards, but I don’t think Ace Combat 7 even got through to the final stage that year.

Both: [laughs]

KK: The composers that we work with are greatly skilled in creating these melodious grand scale scores. And the songs too, fit perfectly in time with the ace pilot experience. When it’s flying it really fits with the dynamism of what the player is experiencing. So there is that aspect.

But separately, I agree, the soundtracks of the Ace Combat series are extremely popular worldwide but it hasn’t really received that official recognition within The Game Awards. The sound creators have really worked hard for Ace Combat 8 and they are aiming to get that recognition.

GC: Just to end on something that we discussed at Gamescom, but I’m a big fan of simulations of fictional vehicles, such as combat space simulators and mech games. Considering how successful Ace Combat is, would you consider making a game based on something more fantastical? While maintaining your grounded style?

MS: Because the game feel of Ace Combat is very realistic we have been approached by various companies to create something similar, including the aviation industry. However, the reality is that Ace Combat team is not large and we are fairly limited in capacity. Therefore if we do opt to create something like that we won’t be able to proceed with future content for Ace Combat.

So there are a great number of fans who are looking for future instalments and first and foremost our focus is on providing the entertainment content, so we have no plans to create a simulator-esque title.

GC: My pipe dream of a Xevious space combat simulator is doomed…

Both: [laughs]

KK: Well, you have a role to play, David. If you write a great article and Ace Combat sales greatly increase then maybe we can increase the number of projects.

GC: OK, if you win that Game Awards music category, you must promise to make that game.

Both: [laughs]

MS: [in English] Thank you very much!

GC: Thank you very much for your time.

KK: Thank you.

Email gamecentral@metro.co.uk, leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter.

To submit Inbox letters and Reader’s Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here.

For more stories like this, check our Gaming page.