you know the difference between plagiarism and a love letter ? how it feels to play. a plagerised game copies the surface elements of its source but just wrong enough that when you play it you can tell they tried to copy something without understanding it. a love letter on the other hand may have difference on the surface but the core feels just like the inspiration, when you play it you know the devs understood the orginal and used it to create a whole new work. PW is undeniably a love letter, the story isn't 1 to 1 with any ace combat but feel like an ace combat story, the OST feel like an orchestra full of ace combat fan that were bored one afternoon and just had fun, the gameplay is basically a reponse to when ace combat fans where joking about being only able to take one SP weapon per mission even when there's still free visible hardpoints on the plane. PW may not be an official ace combat game, but it sure as hell feels like one, and really good one at that.
2:52 The soundtrack was stated by Pavli to NOT be based on Ace Combat but was requested by the devs to be inspired by Nier Automata. Compare the track "Calamity" with Neir Automata's "Alien Manifestation". Pavli explains in his "Making Of" videos on his channel. Story wise it does seem to take a lot from AC: Zero, with Crimson 1 being a sort of anti-Pixie. There are even videos where Pixy's lines get edited into the video in such a way as to banter back and forth. There are even a few lines from Crimson 1 that are direct shots at Pixy while some of Pixy's lines can be a direct response to such lines. Crimson 1: What's it like to not have a country; to not have borders to define yourself against the world? Pixy: Can you see any borders from here? What have borders given us?
It's inspired from Nier Automata? I absolutely adore that soundtrack but I did not get that vibe at all. Now that I'm listening to those tracks you mentioned, uh, I have to say that "inspired" isn't quite the right word.
The guy whom you will gift your VR headset is here. As a die hard PW fan here are my thoughts about this video. Great video lol. If hard is hard, you should have seen mercenary. Remember that mission 9 (Stepping Stone) that you hated? Same mission, harder AI, with a bunch of big airships (Littorias and 205s from what I remember. Tho you said "Hard difficulty adds more enemies" so maybe you were refering to Merc difficulty. I low key love the lack of no checkpoints. Surely I have shouted some "nice words" at my screen after dying in mission 7 (Eminent Domain), mission 19 (Red Sea) and mission 20 (Persidia). In Ace Combat, whenever I knew I passed a checkpoint, I would sometimes crash my plane on purpose to replenish ammo and health and Idk how PW would have turned out with this mechanic. Especially during my first playthroughs Mission 12 (Midnight's Light) was hard cus the railguns slowly take away from your health before u r finished by French woman. The mechanic I talked about earlier would have taken away that challenge. Tho I should say I feel really discouraged to play after dying in an especially long mission (MISSION 7 I HATE U) so it isnt perfect. Imo conquest mode is a great gamemode in its idea but it isn't perfectly executed to say the least. I myself plan to talk about this in the future in a video (sorry for self advertising but the topic is really worth talking about). In terms of dialogues, I would like to reference Max0r, "Your radio will be filled with yapping 24/7 that even the characters in game beg for silence." I believe by the "subtle stories on ground" you mention the dialogue between Wild Boar and Galaxy about the SOS calls from ground in mission 5 (Sirens of Defeat). OH MY BROTHER! It is not C1 that shot Captain Flowers in mission 15 (Consequence of Power), it was Commander of Peacekeepers in Cascadia. They different accent, voice. They are totally totally different people.
@@PanmyxiaYT This topic has been discussed in the subreddit for many times and the general agreement is that they are different people. Tho if you focus on the dialogue, you can notice the difference between C1's voice and the Commander's voice. Also it doesn't make sense for C1 to be adressed as the "Commander of the Peacekeepers in Cascadia". He is just his squadron's leader. From Frontline 59, we know that there were many Peacekeeper squadron's in Cascadia.
I wonder how many folks who've had negative experiences with the game played on console. I played it first on a One X and it dropped frames *hard* whenever you had cordium effects or railguns firing, and you couldn't get past about level 25 in Conquest because the single digit frames would start to cause your missile volleys not to connect. Still enjoyed the game, but having recently rerun it on PC, it's clear that it just had a bad console port and, for its surprisingly meager file size, the game demands a lot of graphical processing power that eighth gen consoles don't have. Conquest was good fun and immensely satisfying to beat. I don't know if the roguelite feel would fit AC, but I'd love to see some Rainbow Six terrorist hunt style of ways to replay maps or missions with randomized mission objectives, start locations, and enemy types. It would keep things fresh outside of replaying story missions, especially if Project Aces keeps with the tighter mission times of 7 and not the luxurious limits from basically everything before it. 7 got me into the franchise so going to 6 was such a breath of fresh air to not be in a constant rush, and it allowed for more player experimentation. In lieu of that, I think it'd be a great way to encourage player retention so you can get your daily fix of Ace Combat without just playing a mission I've played 20 times already. Hopefully with another game in town, AC and PW can coexist to keep fans of the genre eating well for a while. I expect both will continue to inspire the other to innovate
Remixing missions is an interesting idea I hadn't considered, I think that'd fit AC pretty well. Also interesting that the console version of PW is not up to par - on my previous PC, it'd sometimes drop frames if I decided to go all gun pods, the explosions were too much. Maybe it's an optimization thing?
@@PanmyxiaYT it's likely just that. There's also some UI glitches with the Conquest hiring den, and the game doesn't remember any changes to input bindings. A bit annoying, but forgivable for an indie game for effectively no money in practical terms
Hey man, I'm a long time fan of AC. My dad's a pilot, I'm now a pilot myself. Dad never liked video games but he brought ac04 home one day from the Best buy bargain bucket in the hopes we could play it together. We did, and I developed a lifetime love for the series. I've had my eye on PW for a while, and always intended to play it when I got time (not only does it look amazing but I want to throw the developers gobs of money for building something to scratch the AC fix). Your video has finally sold me on it. It's looks incredible and it's top of the list now. Great review, thank you.
Also, I really really hope the guys who made the game have at the very LEAST made their money back. I don't know anytime about the commercial success of the game, but I do know I still see new videos like this about it years later.
I want to add one thing, the Merc difficulty is for psychopath and sadomasochists, not only is it more difficult because of the AI, but it also adds more and more varied enemies, including random ace squads, it's a totally different experience from the base game, i'm already play it 3 times now in merc, with glasscanon (You do x2 damage, and recieve x6 damage) and doble time (Double the number of enemies, even the BOSSES) for more suffering and this game could give you real physical damage, It's a carpal tunnel machine, cause you need to abuse the aoa and the crimson 1 fight is SO long, even with doble damage, he tanks a lot and one shot you even with the small missiles, 10/10 game, totally recomended if you feel that AC isn't a challenge anymore
I myself started playing the AC franchise 3 months ago, and after finishing all the titles (besides that funky Java game) I picked up PW. It's indeed quite impressive, and it feels more like AC7 than AC7 did. I mean, AC7 doesn't feel quite like an evolution from previous titles (which AC6 did, despite the meh story it had), it feels like they played it safe with a lot of things since the last mainline game was from 12 years prior and the last "big" game was from 7 years pior (Infinity is debatable). So they had to accomodate new people with no experience in the franchise in order to make it appealing. It did succeed in that regard, so I hope AC8 can be bolder.
I’d love to see a video for comparing AC7 and PW front line 59, if there’s much differences. Although there’s VR modes which I’ve only gotten to play on PW
Absence of checkpoints is hardly an artistic decision - even AC series lacked those until the 6th installment, so I guess that's skill and tech issue rather than a choice.
@@PanmyxiaYT here we go... What I'm saying is that I would love to have some checkpoints as well, but it seems that it's not that easy to implement them from the technical standpoint, considering Project Aces themselves only managed to do so six games and three console generations into.
@@evilbabai7083 yeah, I see what you mean, and that's kind of what I meant. I can forgive PW if it was technically infeasible to implement checkpoints, but it's still a valid criticism imo.
if you have a PS5 you should give Project Wingman Frontline 59 a try. It's basically the base game, plus an additional 6 mission campaign where you play as a Federation reserve pilot
Mentioned this in another comment, but I probably won't be playing F59 anytime soon. PSVR is expensive and there isn't much support for it. It's a "go play it at a friend's house" situation.
8:56 im not sure if that is crimson 1. i cant tell since when fighting him he has that radio static so its hard to tell since it dosent have the static
I know 1k views isn't a lot in general, but it's pretty damn good for me. Thank you to everyone who watched this and for the comments.
the adopted stepchild of AC beloved by all fans of the Janner
its simple if you like the ace combat you will like the project wingman
"War is hell. But in this game, war is fucking O R A N G E" - Max0r
I miss old Max0r
It's imperative that WE.GET.THE.BOAT!!
you know the difference between plagiarism and a love letter ? how it feels to play.
a plagerised game copies the surface elements of its source but just wrong enough that when you play it you can tell they tried to copy something without understanding it.
a love letter on the other hand may have difference on the surface but the core feels just like the inspiration, when you play it you know the devs understood the orginal and used it to create a whole new work.
PW is undeniably a love letter, the story isn't 1 to 1 with any ace combat but feel like an ace combat story, the OST feel like an orchestra full of ace combat fan that were bored one afternoon and just had fun, the gameplay is basically a reponse to when ace combat fans where joking about being only able to take one SP weapon per mission even when there's still free visible hardpoints on the plane.
PW may not be an official ace combat game, but it sure as hell feels like one, and really good one at that.
2:52 The soundtrack was stated by Pavli to NOT be based on Ace Combat but was requested by the devs to be inspired by Nier Automata. Compare the track "Calamity" with Neir Automata's "Alien Manifestation". Pavli explains in his "Making Of" videos on his channel.
Story wise it does seem to take a lot from AC: Zero, with Crimson 1 being a sort of anti-Pixie. There are even videos where Pixy's lines get edited into the video in such a way as to banter back and forth. There are even a few lines from Crimson 1 that are direct shots at Pixy while some of Pixy's lines can be a direct response to such lines.
Crimson 1: What's it like to not have a country; to not have borders to define yourself against the world?
Pixy: Can you see any borders from here? What have borders given us?
It's inspired from Nier Automata? I absolutely adore that soundtrack but I did not get that vibe at all.
Now that I'm listening to those tracks you mentioned, uh, I have to say that "inspired" isn't quite the right word.
The guy whom you will gift your VR headset is here. As a die hard PW fan here are my thoughts about this video.
Great video lol.
If hard is hard, you should have seen mercenary. Remember that mission 9 (Stepping Stone) that you hated? Same mission, harder AI, with a bunch of big airships (Littorias and 205s from what I remember.
Tho you said "Hard difficulty adds more enemies" so maybe you were refering to Merc difficulty.
I low key love the lack of no checkpoints. Surely I have shouted some "nice words" at my screen after dying in mission 7 (Eminent Domain), mission 19 (Red Sea) and mission 20 (Persidia). In Ace Combat, whenever I knew I passed a checkpoint, I would sometimes crash my plane on purpose to replenish ammo and health and Idk how PW would have turned out with this mechanic. Especially during my first playthroughs Mission 12 (Midnight's Light) was hard cus the railguns slowly take away from your health before u r finished by French woman. The mechanic I talked about earlier would have taken away that challenge.
Tho I should say I feel really discouraged to play after dying in an especially long mission (MISSION 7 I HATE U) so it isnt perfect.
Imo conquest mode is a great gamemode in its idea but it isn't perfectly executed to say the least. I myself plan to talk about this in the future in a video (sorry for self advertising but the topic is really worth talking about).
In terms of dialogues, I would like to reference Max0r, "Your radio will be filled with yapping 24/7 that even the characters in game beg for silence."
I believe by the "subtle stories on ground" you mention the dialogue between Wild Boar and Galaxy about the SOS calls from ground in mission 5 (Sirens of Defeat).
OH MY BROTHER! It is not C1 that shot Captain Flowers in mission 15 (Consequence of Power), it was Commander of Peacekeepers in Cascadia. They different accent, voice. They are totally totally different people.
Eh, my headcanon is that Crimson 1 personally launched those missiles. Hard to tell it's a different guy in the middle of everything happening.
@@PanmyxiaYT This topic has been discussed in the subreddit for many times and the general agreement is that they are different people. Tho if you focus on the dialogue, you can notice the difference between C1's voice and the Commander's voice.
Also it doesn't make sense for C1 to be adressed as the "Commander of the Peacekeepers in Cascadia". He is just his squadron's leader. From Frontline 59, we know that there were many Peacekeeper squadron's in Cascadia.
I wonder how many folks who've had negative experiences with the game played on console. I played it first on a One X and it dropped frames *hard* whenever you had cordium effects or railguns firing, and you couldn't get past about level 25 in Conquest because the single digit frames would start to cause your missile volleys not to connect. Still enjoyed the game, but having recently rerun it on PC, it's clear that it just had a bad console port and, for its surprisingly meager file size, the game demands a lot of graphical processing power that eighth gen consoles don't have.
Conquest was good fun and immensely satisfying to beat. I don't know if the roguelite feel would fit AC, but I'd love to see some Rainbow Six terrorist hunt style of ways to replay maps or missions with randomized mission objectives, start locations, and enemy types. It would keep things fresh outside of replaying story missions, especially if Project Aces keeps with the tighter mission times of 7 and not the luxurious limits from basically everything before it. 7 got me into the franchise so going to 6 was such a breath of fresh air to not be in a constant rush, and it allowed for more player experimentation. In lieu of that, I think it'd be a great way to encourage player retention so you can get your daily fix of Ace Combat without just playing a mission I've played 20 times already.
Hopefully with another game in town, AC and PW can coexist to keep fans of the genre eating well for a while. I expect both will continue to inspire the other to innovate
Remixing missions is an interesting idea I hadn't considered, I think that'd fit AC pretty well. Also interesting that the console version of PW is not up to par - on my previous PC, it'd sometimes drop frames if I decided to go all gun pods, the explosions were too much. Maybe it's an optimization thing?
@@PanmyxiaYT it's likely just that. There's also some UI glitches with the Conquest hiring den, and the game doesn't remember any changes to input bindings. A bit annoying, but forgivable for an indie game for effectively no money in practical terms
Hey man,
I'm a long time fan of AC. My dad's a pilot, I'm now a pilot myself. Dad never liked video games but he brought ac04 home one day from the Best buy bargain bucket in the hopes we could play it together. We did, and I developed a lifetime love for the series. I've had my eye on PW for a while, and always intended to play it when I got time (not only does it look amazing but I want to throw the developers gobs of money for building something to scratch the AC fix). Your video has finally sold me on it. It's looks incredible and it's top of the list now. Great review, thank you.
Also, I really really hope the guys who made the game have at the very LEAST made their money back. I don't know anytime about the commercial success of the game, but I do know I still see new videos like this about it years later.
Pretty sure they made their money back, PW has an active fanbase evangelizing the game. Glad you found my review helpful.
How does a pilot know when they've met another pilot?
LOL
I want to add one thing, the Merc difficulty is for psychopath and sadomasochists, not only is it more difficult because of the AI, but it also adds more and more varied enemies, including random ace squads, it's a totally different experience from the base game, i'm already play it 3 times now in merc, with glasscanon (You do x2 damage, and recieve x6 damage) and doble time (Double the number of enemies, even the BOSSES) for more suffering and this game could give you real physical damage, It's a carpal tunnel machine, cause you need to abuse the aoa and the crimson 1 fight is SO long, even with doble damage, he tanks a lot and one shot you even with the small missiles, 10/10 game, totally recomended if you feel that AC isn't a challenge anymore
Quite a good video. Have an engagement comment
Thanks bud, glad you enjoyed
I myself started playing the AC franchise 3 months ago, and after finishing all the titles (besides that funky Java game) I picked up PW. It's indeed quite impressive, and it feels more like AC7 than AC7 did. I mean, AC7 doesn't feel quite like an evolution from previous titles (which AC6 did, despite the meh story it had), it feels like they played it safe with a lot of things since the last mainline game was from 12 years prior and the last "big" game was from 7 years pior (Infinity is debatable). So they had to accomodate new people with no experience in the franchise in order to make it appealing. It did succeed in that regard, so I hope AC8 can be bolder.
I agree, really hope PA is taking notes
I’d love to see a video for comparing AC7 and PW front line 59, if there’s much differences. Although there’s VR modes which I’ve only gotten to play on PW
FL59 requires PS5VR, which ... Isn't really something I wanna spend money on, lol. Nobody's made a VR comparison?
@@PanmyxiaYT that’s fair, AC is only playable on psvr1 and PW on psvr2 so that’d be quite the investment. I never even bothered with the first one
@@GenErik253 I've seen some wishful thinking that FL59 may not be PS5 exclusive forever, maybe there's something to that, but who knows.
@@PanmyxiaYT It is not mandatory. U can play F59 without VR. You can play F59 in PSVR but cant play normal campaign in PSVR.
@@8th_Sparrow_Sqn that thing is retailing for 400$ and that's on *sale*
Honestly I'd love to experience F59 but the price is too steep.
Absence of checkpoints is hardly an artistic decision - even AC series lacked those until the 6th installment, so I guess that's skill and tech issue rather than a choice.
I disagree - although I do concede that it could be a tech issue in PW's case, it's just irritating to not have the option.
@@PanmyxiaYT here we go... What I'm saying is that I would love to have some checkpoints as well, but it seems that it's not that easy to implement them from the technical standpoint, considering Project Aces themselves only managed to do so six games and three console generations into.
@@evilbabai7083 yeah, I see what you mean, and that's kind of what I meant. I can forgive PW if it was technically infeasible to implement checkpoints, but it's still a valid criticism imo.
if you have a PS5 you should give Project Wingman Frontline 59 a try. It's basically the base game, plus an additional 6 mission campaign where you play as a Federation reserve pilot
Mentioned this in another comment, but I probably won't be playing F59 anytime soon. PSVR is expensive and there isn't much support for it. It's a "go play it at a friend's house" situation.
@@PanmyxiaYTit’s not required for you to use a psvr headset
@@Nordaritan I was gonna keep this a surprise but I figured that out recently and guess what I'm recording now
never played AC but really like PW and i hope there will be a sequel.
You'll like Ace Combat, most probably.
8:56 im not sure if that is crimson 1. i cant tell since when fighting him he has that radio static so its hard to tell since it dosent have the static
It apparently isn't, I assumed it was because it just makes sense that he'd be the one to push the button
very nice