I recently played the Project Nemo version of Ace Combat 3, and did an actual spit-take when I saw the name "Kei Nagase" listed in an in-universe news report as one of the terrorists.
I thought playing Assaut Horizon Legacy would substitute for playing through AC2. I was, sorely, mistaken. Breaking through the clouds, seeing wingmen change over time, having the camera smooth over each plane you choose in your hanger, even the time limit being contextualized as fuel, all of these small details I adore. Even the soundtrack is amazing. Sunset Glow feels both bombastic and nostalgic, fire youngman and fresh youngster sound extremely Top Gun like, and Aim High reminds me back when I played Chopper Attack for the N64 AC2 really surprised me. Even after playing 4,5,0,7, and Legacy, 2 was still highly enjoyable to play through.
I still can't believe how amazing AC2 brieffing sequences, and you can just skip them and go into details of every jet and plane. When i was a kid i was always got excited when i saw a much bigger plane than me. Then in 2018, before AC7 I replayed all of the main line installments and that settled it. AC2's brieffings were the best, the speed that i could jump between the map to Brieffing to hangar is electric.
"[...] It's the kind of game that thanks you for playing it, and you thank it back." I a similar way, i thank you for this review. It tells a lot about the quality of a game when a review reads like a love letter, and it still feels grounded and factual. 10/10
The dithering effects popular on the Playstation are used to such great effect in AC2 and 3. The polygon graphics are still fairly simple due to the hardware's limits, but the dithering lends such depth to the colour of the skyboxes and ground on the average CRT that it feels like you're peering into a vision of a dream, rather than reality. A beautiful dream full of plane dogfights.
Also, regarding the cloud layer, I get the feeling that one of the reasons it was added was to cleverly obscure some of the game's limitations. As much as 2 is a vast visual improvement over 1, booting up 3 makes it obvious how much more of a cut above that game is; the draw distance for both the ground and the various objects (aircraft and ground targets) is quite a bit farther than what AC2 managed. Thus AC2 limits your vision as you rise up through the clouds, to hide the ground from view as its outer boundaries would become too obvious, and rising above, replaces the ground with clouds that you cannot climb much further above without stalling and falling back down. To the developers' credit, they totally made this technical workaround into a considered game mechanic with details like that one mission where you chase down planes flying above the clouds at high speeds. It's also fun to compare the concept with AC7 and its touted feature of volumetric clouds.
Dude, I'm at loss for words here... This review was Truly Amazing. exceeded my expectations and gone far beyond them!! This is the first time someone showed more love to a game that i myself love so very, very, very much, and then sprinkled the whole video with so much interesting details that i didn't know, like the eclipse. I gotta go and replay this game and see it for myself.
God damn. I almost had a heart attack. I couldn't find this video while searching for AC2 Review. I better get me a copy of this one, because this is my number 1 rule on youtube: "If you love something, you better download it." Many video's/series/channels were lost since 2006 on this damn platform, but some have been stored on my hard disks.
hihihh heheh i got a special thanks also, i think the thing you said, "its full with so much that they easily could have gotten away with just not doing" is the best way to describe it
Stellar video! All of your points about how rich and stylish AC2's music is are spot on. The OST just has banger after banger. The 3DS remake, even though I disliked the orchestral overhaul, still remembered to bring back 1 or 2 classic tracks for that sweet nostalgia hit.
I remember my dad got me the PlayStick - Biogrip Flight Stick Nuby NB-711 to play AC2, since i played it so much. It's a strange flight stick because the trigger is mapped to square button, which unfortunately is the map and not the gun. and doubly so, non of the top buttons are for missiles. but still so fun. but these days I'm replaying AC2 with Qanba Obsidian, an arcade fighting stick. It's really fun and doesn't stray away too much from the games incentive because AC games were always a mix of Arcade and a Simulation gameplay.
Ace Combat 2 was the first game in the series that I played on a demo disc I got around the time I got my first playstation in 1996. I think I got Gunship as my first game (see a trend there?). It was alot of fun even if it was a very basic visual presentation compared to what came later. I miss that simplistic aesthetic both aurally and visually with its nostalgia. I have been playing Ace Combat games off and on now for almost 30 years so.. Thank you for making these. They are edited well with engaging voice over and excellent writing. I hate game videos that are written poorly because I have a degree in writing and also because it is an already maligned subculture that doesn't need to give more ammo to the un-informed majority in the public. If all gaming subject matter videos had this level of writing and execution we could see many more people understand the art and impact of video games for what it truly is.
First time someone's praised me for my writing so directly. Thanks. I put a lot of effort into it. Most people say it's 'stream of consciousness,' which I've never really agreed with.
@@GizouGitai No it has a great deal of thought and consideration behind it. You touch on many of the background details throughout the games presentation and tie it up in to a coherent whole. Some of your off topic comments could be considered stream of consciousness I believe but your writing shows. Voice over doesn't occur in a vacuum. It comes from putting thought to writing and then speaking thoughts aloud. It takes alot more than many realize to make a well edited and scripted video presentation especially about something like this that is a work of fiction which is then being interpreted by us (the player, viewer etc.).
I gotta say that this series of vids got me into Ace Combat hard man, I had only played 3 as a really young kid and liked it enough especially the missions with friendlies but never knowing how much of the blood of the series would flow so well with me. I got into Ace Combat 7 and had a great time with that and am now going through 5 which is a blast so far too. Gotta get through 3 translated before your next vid too, I hear it's a banger. Beautiful stuff Gizou keep up the amazing work~
Niice nice nice. This interview is fantastic. Edit: I called it an interview. Weird. Your reviews always feel more like you're interviewing the game some how. Edit: 9:46 can we just acknowledge how in a single 3 second bit, he entirely nailed that deal?
I'm so lucky i got the Gamefan guide book of Ace Combat 2, back in 2019, it's one of my trasures. Then i got the Japanese one for fun. The really put a lot of effort into that little thing.
16:09 I think the actual explanation is that the gun in AC2 is just garbage. Even if you've put a missile into a plane beforehand it still takes what feels like hundreds of rounds to finally destroy it. Also, since the cruise missile has no collision, I've found the best way to shoot it down is trying to ram it while holding down the trigger.
I find it strange that this is my favorite game but I still never let the game to tell its story to me, unlike other games where i enjoy their stories, i don't love them as much. They are all great but you lose more if don't pay attention.
Rising like a Phoenix from the ashes of the fire- I’ve admittedly only played this game’s remake (the plus version, so I can turn off the god awful maneuvers)
Is it possible to do a proper CRT emulation on an Emulator ? the one that the footage shows in 6:2614:40 It's so beautiful, I love the grain and scanline effects. Makes me feel like there's a 1990s control room, full with important people in a dark room filled with cigarette smoke watching you. Imagine modern 90s spy conspiracy movie, and then add Patlabor movie 2 to it and it will have the effect I feel.
Your mileage may vary. I have an actual SCART CRT which I use to match visuals before I use an emulator to capture footage. I CAN capture PS1 games natively (I did in my latest video) but emulation can run without interlacing -- better for YT compression. There is no perfect Deinterlacing solution. Perhaps AI upscaling will do it one day. Scanlines add darkness to the image in emulation where they won't on a CRT for technical reasons. There's also a near-imperceptible warm flicker on a CRT that you can't replicate. Interlacing also looks perfectly fine on a CRT, and provides the illusion of a higher framerate, where it doesn't on a modern monitor. If you're after the colour bleeding effect "Hylian" (used in my footage there). It generally matches my in-person comparisons, kind of. It's meant to not degrade the visuals, but it does look more degraded than my SCART CRT setup. You're probably American, so it'll look fine. You might even want to use an S-video shader for more accuracy to your neck of the woods. emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/CRT_shaders#CRT-Hyllian CRT 'pixels' are wider than the ones on your display. The aspect resolution is actually not 4:3 but 42:30. ACE games were made for this aspect ratio in mind, so not stretching the screen slightly results in circles that look egg-shaped. In Retroarch this aspect ratio setting is a CORE setting, "Corrected," in Duckstation (recommended) you can manually assign the Aspect Ratio. (You might not want to do this on 2D games, because of pixel instability) That's all I've got for ya. I'm not an expert or anything, I just care a lot.
@@GizouGitai Cool, I just recently jumped ship from Espxe tp Duckstation, and after I left this comment I started searching and got a Reshader. that gives so many options but i don't remember how it was on my very old tv in 1999. maybe i need more tutorials to find my correct CRT aesthetic. on the other hand, i can't imagine how good Silent Hill 1 looks on your screen, I believe this one is the most difficult to implement with an emulator because, you know, It's Silent Hill 1. p.s sorry, but I'm not from the US. I'm from one distant continent, and then I lived for most of my life on another continent. yeah, english is my third language.
@@GizouGitai Update: On Duckstation using only Reshader, i added Blooming HDR, CRTHyllian, CRT_CX, Cshade_Bloom, DH_CRT, Interlaced, Checkerboard Interlacing (that last one does nothing.) it looks pretty good, maybe not a real CRT but a real one that i hold in my head as i imagine it, which is very exaggerated one based on my subjective feelings. It look pretty much like 14:40 it took me a while to get the desired effect. Looks great on Ace Combat 2 and MGS1. Maybe not too fitting for Silent Hill, that one is hard, I'm look for something very 70s-esk TV station, at night, in the woods. yeah. Sounds crazy, but i'm having fun making my own experience. I hope it'll work together with Ace Combat 3, which is the only AC game after 2 that I really was amazed at the work that they put in that game.
I know this a 1 year old video. Replaying Ace Combat 2. Fun game. I feel like Ace Combat 2 shares similarities between Metal Gear 2 Solid Snake. Both improved the aspect of early first installment weirdness, as well story got better in 2nd installment. Gameplay got improved as well. Pretty damn crazy that Japanese version Ace Combat 3 took Metal Gear Solid 1 direction. Are you going review of Japanese version of Ace Combat 3??? The game is pretty damn ambitious, sadly it got bastard localization. As a Macross fan, I wish Macross franchise took some notes from Metal Gear and Ace Combat.
![ACE Combat 3[JP] Part 1, The Happy Ending. | Gitai](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/qsTQL5g0slg/mqdefault.jpg)
![ACE Combat 3[JP] Part 1, The Happy Ending. | Gitai](/img/tr.png)
The bit about Kei Nagase really got me. I remember first looking her up on Acepedia and just going "Wait, HOW many of you are there?"
I recently played the Project Nemo version of Ace Combat 3, and did an actual spit-take when I saw the name "Kei Nagase" listed in an in-universe news report as one of the terrorists.
I thought playing Assaut Horizon Legacy would substitute for playing through AC2. I was, sorely, mistaken.
Breaking through the clouds, seeing wingmen change over time, having the camera smooth over each plane you choose in your hanger, even the time limit being contextualized as fuel, all of these small details I adore.
Even the soundtrack is amazing. Sunset Glow feels both bombastic and nostalgic, fire youngman and fresh youngster sound extremely Top Gun like, and Aim High reminds me back when I played Chopper Attack for the N64
AC2 really surprised me. Even after playing 4,5,0,7, and Legacy, 2 was still highly enjoyable to play through.
I still can't believe how amazing AC2 brieffing sequences, and you can just skip them and go into details of every jet and plane.
When i was a kid i was always got excited when i saw a much bigger plane than me.
Then in 2018, before AC7 I replayed all of the main line installments and that settled it.
AC2's brieffings were the best, the speed that i could jump between the map to Brieffing to hangar is electric.
"[...] It's the kind of game that thanks you for playing it, and you thank it back."
I a similar way, i thank you for this review. It tells a lot about the quality of a game when a review reads like a love letter, and it still feels grounded and factual. 10/10
Just binged your AC playlist in one sitting, absolute fire, young man. Hope 3 and 5 are future installments ❤
Thank you.
The dithering effects popular on the Playstation are used to such great effect in AC2 and 3. The polygon graphics are still fairly simple due to the hardware's limits, but the dithering lends such depth to the colour of the skyboxes and ground on the average CRT that it feels like you're peering into a vision of a dream, rather than reality. A beautiful dream full of plane dogfights.
Also, regarding the cloud layer, I get the feeling that one of the reasons it was added was to cleverly obscure some of the game's limitations. As much as 2 is a vast visual improvement over 1, booting up 3 makes it obvious how much more of a cut above that game is; the draw distance for both the ground and the various objects (aircraft and ground targets) is quite a bit farther than what AC2 managed. Thus AC2 limits your vision as you rise up through the clouds, to hide the ground from view as its outer boundaries would become too obvious, and rising above, replaces the ground with clouds that you cannot climb much further above without stalling and falling back down. To the developers' credit, they totally made this technical workaround into a considered game mechanic with details like that one mission where you chase down planes flying above the clouds at high speeds. It's also fun to compare the concept with AC7 and its touted feature of volumetric clouds.
Dude, I'm at loss for words here...
This review was Truly Amazing.
exceeded my expectations and gone far beyond them!!
This is the first time someone showed more love to a game that i myself love so very, very, very much, and then sprinkled the whole video with so much interesting details that i didn't know, like the eclipse.
I gotta go and replay this game and see it for myself.
This game was my introduction to the ace combat series and damn it was probably the best one to start with
God damn. I almost had a heart attack.
I couldn't find this video while searching for AC2 Review.
I better get me a copy of this one, because this is my number 1 rule on youtube:
"If you love something, you better download it."
Many video's/series/channels were lost since 2006 on this damn platform, but some have been stored on my hard disks.
hihihh heheh i got a special thanks
also, i think the thing you said, "its full with so much that they easily could have gotten away with just not doing" is the best way to describe it
Stellar video! All of your points about how rich and stylish AC2's music is are spot on. The OST just has banger after banger. The 3DS remake, even though I disliked the orchestral overhaul, still remembered to bring back 1 or 2 classic tracks for that sweet nostalgia hit.
I remember my dad got me the PlayStick - Biogrip Flight Stick Nuby NB-711 to play AC2, since i played it so much.
It's a strange flight stick because the trigger is mapped to square button, which unfortunately is the map and not the gun. and doubly so, non of the top buttons are for missiles. but still so fun.
but these days I'm replaying AC2 with Qanba Obsidian, an arcade fighting stick. It's really fun and doesn't stray away too much from the games incentive because AC games were always a mix of Arcade and a Simulation gameplay.
Underrated channel alert 🚨
Hey, this is a great look at this classic game! Really solidly well made, woth an eye for clean editing.
Ace Combat 2 was the first game in the series that I played on a demo disc I got around the time I got my first playstation in 1996. I think I got Gunship as my first game (see a trend there?). It was alot of fun even if it was a very basic visual presentation compared to what came later. I miss that simplistic aesthetic both aurally and visually with its nostalgia. I have been playing Ace Combat games off and on now for almost 30 years so.. Thank you for making these. They are edited well with engaging voice over and excellent writing. I hate game videos that are written poorly because I have a degree in writing and also because it is an already maligned subculture that doesn't need to give more ammo to the un-informed majority in the public. If all gaming subject matter videos had this level of writing and execution we could see many more people understand the art and impact of video games for what it truly is.
First time someone's praised me for my writing so directly. Thanks. I put a lot of effort into it. Most people say it's 'stream of consciousness,' which I've never really agreed with.
@@GizouGitai No it has a great deal of thought and consideration behind it. You touch on many of the background details throughout the games presentation and tie it up in to a coherent whole. Some of your off topic comments could be considered stream of consciousness I believe but your writing shows. Voice over doesn't occur in a vacuum. It comes from putting thought to writing and then speaking thoughts aloud. It takes alot more than many realize to make a well edited and scripted video presentation especially about something like this that is a work of fiction which is then being interpreted by us (the player, viewer etc.).
@@Zach_Bloomquist Agreed.
BASED
I gotta say that this series of vids got me into Ace Combat hard man, I had only played 3 as a really young kid and liked it enough especially the missions with friendlies but never knowing how much of the blood of the series would flow so well with me. I got into Ace Combat 7 and had a great time with that and am now going through 5 which is a blast so far too. Gotta get through 3 translated before your next vid too, I hear it's a banger. Beautiful stuff Gizou keep up the amazing work~
Niice nice nice. This interview is fantastic.
Edit: I called it an interview. Weird. Your reviews always feel more like you're interviewing the game some how.
Edit: 9:46 can we just acknowledge how in a single 3 second bit, he entirely nailed that deal?
That's actually not a bad way of thinking about it. Somehow.
But, also, get some sleep you silly rabbit.
I'm so lucky i got the Gamefan guide book of Ace Combat 2, back in 2019, it's one of my trasures.
Then i got the Japanese one for fun. The really put a lot of effort into that little thing.
fucking slash in the kfc plane, lmao
16:09 I think the actual explanation is that the gun in AC2 is just garbage. Even if you've put a missile into a plane beforehand it still takes what feels like hundreds of rounds to finally destroy it. Also, since the cruise missile has no collision, I've found the best way to shoot it down is trying to ram it while holding down the trigger.
Heeeeeeelllllll yeeeeeeeaaaaaaaah!!!!
I find it strange that this is my favorite game but I still never let the game to tell its story to me, unlike other games where i enjoy their stories, i don't love them as much. They are all great but you lose more if don't pay attention.
Video uploaded a week ago, only shows up to me now and i'm subscribed.... This is fucked up.
It does that for me with comments sometimes. It's a piss take.
Rising like a Phoenix from the ashes of the fire-
I’ve admittedly only played this game’s remake (the plus version, so I can turn off the god awful maneuvers)
It’s a shame that they whitewashed Slash in the remake. But I will say, he at least actually has a personality.
Is it possible to do a proper CRT emulation on an Emulator ?
the one that the footage shows in 6:26 14:40
It's so beautiful, I love the grain and scanline effects.
Makes me feel like there's a 1990s control room, full with important people in a dark room filled with cigarette smoke watching you.
Imagine modern 90s spy conspiracy movie, and then add Patlabor movie 2 to it and it will have the effect I feel.
Your mileage may vary.
I have an actual SCART CRT which I use to match visuals before I use an emulator to capture footage.
I CAN capture PS1 games natively (I did in my latest video) but emulation can run without interlacing -- better for YT compression.
There is no perfect Deinterlacing solution. Perhaps AI upscaling will do it one day.
Scanlines add darkness to the image in emulation where they won't on a CRT for technical reasons. There's also a near-imperceptible warm flicker on a CRT that you can't replicate.
Interlacing also looks perfectly fine on a CRT, and provides the illusion of a higher framerate, where it doesn't on a modern monitor.
If you're after the colour bleeding effect "Hylian" (used in my footage there). It generally matches my in-person comparisons, kind of. It's meant to not degrade the visuals, but it does look more degraded than my SCART CRT setup. You're probably American, so it'll look fine. You might even want to use an S-video shader for more accuracy to your neck of the woods.
emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/CRT_shaders#CRT-Hyllian
CRT 'pixels' are wider than the ones on your display. The aspect resolution is actually not 4:3 but 42:30. ACE games were made for this aspect ratio in mind, so not stretching the screen slightly results in circles that look egg-shaped. In Retroarch this aspect ratio setting is a CORE setting, "Corrected," in Duckstation (recommended) you can manually assign the Aspect Ratio.
(You might not want to do this on 2D games, because of pixel instability)
That's all I've got for ya. I'm not an expert or anything, I just care a lot.
@@GizouGitai Cool, I just recently jumped ship from Espxe tp Duckstation, and after I left this comment I started searching and got a Reshader.
that gives so many options but i don't remember how it was on my very old tv in 1999.
maybe i need more tutorials to find my correct CRT aesthetic.
on the other hand, i can't imagine how good Silent Hill 1 looks on your screen, I believe this one is the most difficult to implement with an emulator because, you know, It's Silent Hill 1.
p.s
sorry, but I'm not from the US.
I'm from one distant continent, and then I lived for most of my life on another continent.
yeah, english is my third language.
@@GizouGitai Update: On Duckstation using only Reshader, i added Blooming HDR, CRTHyllian, CRT_CX, Cshade_Bloom, DH_CRT, Interlaced, Checkerboard Interlacing (that last one does nothing.)
it looks pretty good, maybe not a real CRT but a real one that i hold in my head as i imagine it, which is very exaggerated one based on my subjective feelings.
It look pretty much like 14:40 it took me a while to get the desired effect.
Looks great on Ace Combat 2 and MGS1.
Maybe not too fitting for Silent Hill, that one is hard, I'm look for something very 70s-esk TV station, at night, in the woods. yeah.
Sounds crazy, but i'm having fun making my own experience.
I hope it'll work together with Ace Combat 3, which is the only AC game after 2 that I really was amazed at the work that they put in that game.
I know this a 1 year old video.
Replaying Ace Combat 2. Fun game. I feel like Ace Combat 2 shares similarities between Metal Gear 2 Solid Snake.
Both improved the aspect of early first installment weirdness, as well story got better in 2nd installment. Gameplay got improved as well. Pretty damn crazy that Japanese version Ace Combat 3 took Metal Gear Solid 1 direction.
Are you going review of Japanese version of Ace Combat 3??? The game is pretty damn ambitious, sadly it got bastard localization.
As a Macross fan, I wish Macross franchise took some notes from Metal Gear and Ace Combat.
I'm in the middle of ACE3, but life circumstances have gotten in the way quite a bit.
I'mma do it if it kills me, though.