I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS Every Ace Combat game has at least one legendary track, and this is Ace Combat 6's. It's also the first track from the series I properly fell in love with as I was old enough to fully appreciate it when I played Ace Combat 6. The first mission in the game is called Invasion of Gracemeria and features the same core melody, but with a far less heroic sound as you're desperately trying to defend the capital from the invasion. This version plays in the 3rd to last mission, The Liberation of Gracemeria, where you finally get to go back to where it all started and liberate your capital. It's an extremely cathartic moment and getting a heroic rendition of the same melody really elevates it to another level. Also to add to your question about the various composers, Ace Combat 2-4 were mainly scored by Tetsukazu Nakanishi and Hiroshi Okubo. Ace Combat 3 especially is very worth taking a look at because it's *completely* different to the rest of the series in almost every way, not just musically. Keiki Kobayashi only entered the picture with Ace Combat 4, and did such an amazing job (Blockade and Megalith especially impressed) that he got to be music lead on 5 and has stayed there in every game since. However, Ace Combat has always had an insanely talented group of composers working on it. Magic Spear I, for example, was composed by Ryo Watanabe. Mimic was composed by Mitsuhiro Kitadani. A lot of the more guitar heavy tracks in the series are traditionally composed by Junichi Nakatsuru. tl;dr, Namco has always had a top of the line sound team for Ace Combat and with Keiki Kobayashi they really hit the absolute jackpot, but there's also a larger sound team behind the music we all know and love that deserves plenty of recognition.
Ace Combat as a series is a special experience to me, you often spend the game building up from a no name pilot to an integral pillar of morale for your armed forces. Then towards the end of the games you get teacks like this blasting triumphantly and intensely in the background while you zero in on the enemy ace with focused intent, all while your allies come over the radio cheering you on as your dogfight will decide the battle. Enemies come over the radio often cursing you as your allies cheer and support you, but it's all just noise as in the moment you are dueling, only you and them and no one else matters. It's a crazy feeling I havent really experienced in other franchises.
One of the focus-features of AC6 was having distinctive units on the battlefield that you interact with in each and every sortie, and when you've helped them complete their mission objective they become available to lend you aid through the rest of the operation. The _massive_ buildup in the opening of this song is essentially the space made for their "introductions," mission briefs, and dramatic inspirational lines over the radio as the entire force moves to retake their capitol city. The song itself is made up of a bunch of motifs from throughout the game to represent the culmination of efforts throughout the game, which is an Ace Combat (and thereby a Project Wingman) staple.
I've never played or even seen Ace Combat, but I've always said that an amazing soundtrack can make a game more enjoyable. It seems to be even more effective on mediocre games.
man it's a shame you didn't react to the live anniversary version, near the end of it there's a part where keiki kobayashi himself, who is directing the orchestra, turns around, instructs the audience to clap on beat, and they all finish the song like that, it is awesome
Keiki Kobayashi's own site lists many non-flight games, such as Tekken (from 4 onwards), the Idolmaster games, Street Fighter V, Super Smash Bros. 3DS, and the FFVII Remake (?).
omfg he composed F.A.N.G's theme from SFV, aka the best song from that game. What the helllllllllllllllllllllllllll ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-vvOm2m-1wfw.html
I made this comment on another reaction to this track, but I want to again. :P It seems like the music always seems to line up perfectly with the action as you're playing. From about 4:55 in this video, imagine... That soaring, majestic score playing over a looping dogfight against swarms of planes while you're covering the Steel Gunners tank assault on the airfield, then the "Ghost Eye" AWACS calls out "Warlock Battalion is down to about 30% of their forces, give them some cover." So you pull a high-G turn and strafe across an F-4's path, then climb as you look around. This operation is going well, so you hit the afterburners and set your course for Warlock's position. As you fly across the war-torn city, the sombre, reflective horns play, and you see your flagship, the Marigold, sailing under the collapsed bridge across the harbour entrance. You see the smoke rising from the city, and you can't help but think back over the path that lead you here. Then up ahead you see the countless markers of enemy tanks, artillery, helicopters and aircraft. The drums take over in the music and the battle begins again. You see the beleaguered Warlock battalion, and beyond that Quox battalion faring not much better. To the right you select a target cluster, and your wingman fires four missiles. To the left you select another cluster, and fire four of your own. The drums of war pound as your jet screeches in at Mach 2, and two more missiles down a pair of helicopters hovering near Warlock. You pull into a steep climb as the strings return, reaching past the clouds in seconds, only to swing around and unleash another barrage of missiles at the occupying forces while nosediving straight toward the ground. You pull up at the last second, and bank sharply to cut your flight in between two skyscrapers, in a move that realistically should have shattered every window in the financial district. The music pauses for a split second, and that's when you realize you haven't taken a breath in about a minute. At least, that's my experience. :D
It is backwards compatible on modern Xbox consoles, so if you still haven't played it, you could do it that way! =D But looks like it only is compatible with a disc copy, since the Xbox website doesn't list a purchase price.
I've never played 6, but I love each game that I have played. Primarily 4 and 7, with bits of the others. To me this sounds like a heroic mid - late game mission near the ocean where you feel like the king of the sky as you coolly and calmly shoot down target after target. Meanwhile everyone on the radio, enemy or ally, is commenting on how awesome or fearful you are. I wonder how close I am. Playing these games is definitely some kind of power fantasy haha
11:10 I think at that time you were testing Ace Combat Infinity; yes, it is a F2P online game on PS3. Back then, the franchise started to decline after Ace Combat Assault Horizon, PS3, 360 Gen, received one of the worst receptions in both gameplay and story (OST was very solid). This game was heavily influenced by Call of Duty and stereotypes of Hollywood military action and set in the real world, while the main series was set in a fictional world called "Strangereal." Ace Combat Infinity was possibly the game that saved the franchise, but it has not found its root yet. While it has some bad sides of F2P, like limited playtime, grinding, expensive items, etc., it is a game that tries to move in the right direction, like borrowing characters and references from "Strangereal" and spinning with the real world. It uses the same engine and reuses some assets from Assault Horizon, improving the flight model and removing the Close Range Assault (CRA), which is the core gameplay that some fans don't like. Ace Combat 7 was also in development hell, but in the end, it returned to its roots and success.
I personally still want a 'rebirth' of infinity without the P2P coin op monetization. That was the one thing about infinity that bothered me, was that you literally couldn't play more than a few matches a day without either spending real money, or saving up for a few weeks to binge on your freebie stockpiled fuels.
For a free-to-play game, it was very generous with giving you enough fuel to work with. I rarely found myself wanting to play more than a couple of missions anyway, as half an hour of playing Infinity every 12 hours was plenty for me.
The story and writing in most ace combat games tend to be decent if not good a few have been kinda lame but thats something that holds true for any franchise. From my experience most of the ones you hear people talk about have simple but good stories that help drive the plot with context and world development between missions, the missions themselves tend to be quite the spectacle with smaller personal arcs and personalization of cast making it easy to get captured and immersed in the setting. Also helps if you like planes and explosions.
that part at 5:45, right before the slow part with electronic percussion on the extended anniversary version they added 2 electric guitars going back and forth too, overall I'd say it is just the best version of the song, longer, more complete, more dynamic
you should hear the live performance version. As outrageous as this sounds, this theme is amateur hour compared to that glorious anthem. As to how it doesnt get stale-the powerful stories & music are part of it, but also AC has the unique spin of scifi superweapons like Arsenal Bird(flying fortress with shields & lasers) being present throughout the frachise
Ace Combat 6's soundtrack is normally very "atmospheric" and blends in a lot more with the gameplay, which means I don't listen to most of it outside of the game itself, and you shouldn't expect many other requests for this game. The Liberation of Gracemeria is a fan favorite because it still has some of that, especially in the beginning, but has a lot more action going on. Personally, I think this track is overrated because of that slow burn, cuz when it drops, it doesn't really drop that hard for all of that buildup. It almost feels like a letdown for me. Most remixes and live performances I've seen, I much prefer over the original. The most recent live performance of this track was super cool because they added a random guitar solo into it xD Since you asked, Ace Combat 6 released in 2007, and we've had a few Ace Combat games since then, including Ace Combat Infinity, which was the one you did QA on. Ace Combat 7 is still the latest game, but there's a new one in the works. I'm still planning on doing a video on the progression of the franchise because there's a very clear line between them, but the story progression is: the first two Ace Combat games had no story. The second game didn't sell as well as the first one, and this was in the 90s around Final Fantasy and Zelda's insane successes, so Ace Combat 3 had an insanely involved story. That game also didn't sell well (which led to the story getting cut internationally), so Ace Combat 04 had a less involved story and focused more on the gameplay. It sold extremely well, but now we're in post-9/11, so Ace Combat 5 had a _very_ involved story about peace in the face of pure evil. It also did well, but they held the player's hands a little too much, so the next game, Ace Combat Zero, struck a balance with gameplay and story. 04, 5, and Zero are considered the Holy Trinity or Holy Trilogy because they were all PS2 games and had incredible mixes of story, gameplay, music, graphics, etc. and they're the ones the fans remember the most. The franchise kinda went all over the place after that: Ace Combat Advance on the GBA (a top-down shooter that came out before 5, it was very generic), Ace Combat X on the PSP (also very good and deserves to sit next to the Holy Trinity), Ace Combat 6 on the Xbox 360 (expanded the battle areas and gave you an army to command [press D-pad to win, basically]), Ace Combat: Joint Assault on the PSP (went to the real world for the first time, doesn't play very good), Ace Combat: Assault Horizon on multiple platforms (also went to the real world and changed up the gameplay to make it more Call of Duty-like), Ace Combat 3D: Cross Rumble on the 3DS (sold internationally as Ace Combat: Assault Horizon Legacy because they thought Assault Horizon would do well, it's actually a sneaky remake of Ace Combat 2), and Ace Combat: Northern Wings on Java phones (also top-down like Advance, also very generic). Zero released on the PS2 at the end of the PS2's life cycle, so it sold badly. 6 was the first Xbox game, and Xbox is a laughingstock in Japan, so it's the worst-selling console Ace Combat game of all time. Assault Horizon's changes to the story and gameplay alienated too many fans; it didn't sell badly in comparison to the other games, but they didn't recoup the costs they put into it, like Ace Combat 3, so it was a death knell. This was the point in time where the company asked, "do people like Ace Combat anymore?" In a Hail Mary toss, they made the free-to-play Ace Combat Infinity, which was also in the real world but borrowed a lot of elements from the older games, to answer that question. Infinity did so well with the fans that, a year into its service, Ace Combat 7 was greenlit, and the rest is history. Now Ace Combat 7 has blown 04 out of the water to be the best-selling Ace Combat game ever by a landslide, 5 million sales compared to 2 million. So we're in a good position now.
It always Keiki that di music since AC4 but now he leave Bandai Namco (Ace combat developer) and have his own project called Cakeproject (Japanese often pronounce Cake as Cake-ki so it is pun on his name Keiki ) so I was worries than How next Ace Combat will do with the music. and as you say, Story is main Selling point for AC series, for the gameplay it not change that much from 1 game to the next.(Except that 1 spin-off that they try new things , story based in real world instead of AC world. New style of gameplay and many player don't like it )
You should react to cyberpunk 2077 music next it is extremely varied from radio station to station some that I would recommend would be Rebel path (Johnny silverhand’s theme) City of dreams Night city Chipin in Resist and disorder Been good to know ya Who’s ready for tomorrow Suffer me Ponpon shit Night city Circus minimus Phantom liberty (credits theme) And I really want to stay at your house
Ace combat 6 was my least favourite from the series BUT this is the best track i have heard in all the ace games, and there are some strong contenders.
