Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve

The headline systems are built for spectacle with a tactical brain. A new cloud engine turns towering cloudscapes into cover — dive into a cloud bank to shake a missile lock, track enemies by their contrails, and watch weather shape every engagement. Over 30 licensed real-world fighter jets from makers like Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Dassault, and Saab are available at launch, each with selectable loadouts, and for the first time you can damage hostile aircraft by hitting them anywhere, without hunting for weak points.

Online is the series’ biggest swing yet. A persistent Air Base virtual hub holds up to 100 pilots across platforms, with cross-play between PS5, Xbox, and PC. Modes include Co-Op Assault, Co-Op Warfare, limited-time emergency missions, and PvP events — plus a seasonal Ace Pass reward track. Everything runs on Unreal Engine 5 with proprietary Bandai Namco Aces tech.

The reception landed where the series has rarely been. Metacritic: 87 on PS5, 90 on Xbox Series X, 86 on PC, with OpenCritic at 88 — franchise-best territory, and the highest-rated Ace Combat of the modern review era. It also became the biggest Steam launch in series history, nearly peaking at 50,000 concurrent players, topping Steam’s US Top Sellers chart on Deluxe Edition early access momentum. The honest footnote: Steam reviews also carry complaints about performance issues and crashes, so check your rig against the specs before takeoff.

Editions run $69.99 Standard, $89.99 Deluxe (three-day early access, Premium Ace Pass Plus, cosmetic set), and a $149.99 Joker Flight Pack with a 208-page artbook and two-disc vinyl soundtrack. Pre-orders included a modern port of 2006’s beloved Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War — a license-limited bonus that could not be sold separately afterward. New to the series? The story is a clean entry point: a new war, a new squadron, no homework required. Veterans get the most ambitious Ace Combat yet — and the sky is finally full.

The seven-year wait was not an accident — it was the math. Kazutoki Kono, who has steered the series for three decades, has been candid about why the gap between Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown (2019) and this game stretched so long: player expectations have diversified, and Project Aces’ small core team simply could not build the sequel it envisioned alone. The solution arrived in 2022, when Bandai Namco and ILCA — the studio behind Pokémon Brilliant Diamond/Shining Pearl, whose involvement was first reported by IGN back in 2021 — partnered to form Bandai Namco Aces. The game was properly revealed at The Game Awards 2025, and by the June 2026 State of Play season the release date was locked: October 2, 2026. Everything runs on Unreal Engine 5 layered with Bandai Namco Aces’ proprietary tech, which is where the cloudscapes — and those towering storm walls the series is suddenly famous for — come from.

The story plays with the idea of a legend. Set in the fictional world of Strangereal in 2029, roughly a decade after the events of Ace Combat 7, the campaign follows the Federation of Central Usea as the invading Republic of Sotoa overruns the capital of Theve and neutralizes regional naval defense. Operating from the aging aircraft carrier Endurance, you take up the identity of a fallen legendary pilot whose callsign — “Wings of Theve” — has become a propaganda tool to keep public morale alive. Thirty missions unfold across 15 to 20 hours, with four difficulty tiers from Beginner to Elite, and reviewers have noted the campaign’s geopolitical edge: one outlet traced loose inspiration to the Ghost of Kyiv legend, the early-days-of-the-war myth of an ace pilot who became a symbol of resistance. The framing is deliberately cinematic — cutscenes that present REX as an active participant, with character-driven beats owing as much to Top Gun: Maverick as to the series’ own lore.

That is the context that made the reception matter so much. Military aviation games have been in slow decline for decades, and Ace Combat is now the only mainstream franchise still flying the genre — a position of both privilege and pressure. The reviews answered it: Metacritic 87 on PS5, 90 on Xbox Series X, 86 on PC, and 88 on OpenCritic with 98 percent of critics recommending it. DualShockers handed it a 95, calling it “a love letter to combat aviation in all its forms”; The Guardian gave it five stars; PC Gamer (US) went 92; Metro GameCentral and GamesRadar+ both hit 90, with the latter calling it “one of the best entries in this beloved series yet.” The more measured notes — Push Square’s 8/10 praised the most accomplished game in the series while flagging muddled story beats and modest base-PS5 visuals — only made the consensus more credible. And on Steam, the launch became the biggest in franchise history, peaking near 50,000 concurrent players and topping the US Top Sellers chart off Deluxe Edition early-access momentum. The honest footnote stands: Steam reviews also carry complaints about performance and crashes, so check your rig against the specs before takeoff. Seven years of runway, and the series landed its best-reviewed flight ever.

More on Previously: the Games hub, Star Wars: Galactic Racer, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, and our launch coverage.