Ace Combat/YMMV

• And the Fandom Rejoiced: Say what you will about Assault Horizon, but a lot of fans were pleased when they found out that the Sukhoi PAK-FA would be included in the game.
• Awesome Music: Way too many instances to count. Tetsukazu Nakanishi, and Keiki Kobayashi are some of the best composers in the industry. Pretty much every level features a unique background track that will make audiophiles wet themselves. Please list examples on the Crowner Page.
• Broken Base: It took all of 10 minutes for the fan community to start tearing itself apart when the teaser for Assault Horizon was released.
• Complete Monster: Very rare in this game, as each side is presented as having honorable men fighting for what they believe in. The Grey Men who secretly controlled the development of Belka and the surrounding nations would easily count for dropping nukes in their own country without any regard for it's people's lives. The Hamlet Unit in X also counts for launching a biochemical attack on a city that held no strategic purpose for the war... just because they could.
• Disappointing Last Level: The US and EU release of Electrosphere suffers from this and Ending Fatigue (For what little storyline there is... try wrapping your head around that one.) The last 7 or so levels are still the same quality and design as the rest of the game, but each level keeps ending with "To Be Continued", leading to the next level without a chance to save, and the player begins to wonder when it will finally end.
• Funny Aneurysm Moment: The WTC shows up in the Japanese release of Electrosphere.
• Game Breaker: Ohhh Boy, where do we start?
  • The X-02 Wyvern from AC4 qualifies, as it has the highest number of long-range air-to-air missiles and QAAMs, as well as the best stats in the game with no significant weaknesses.
  • The ADF-01 Falken in AC5 and ACZ has its Tactical Laser System that instantly destroys any plane within a second or two, lasts about 10 seconds after firing, and pierces through armor and multiple targets.
  • The ADFX-01 Morgan from ACZ has a prototype of the Tactical Laser System that provides an even bigger laser, but has half the shots and a shorter duration, and Multi-Purpose Burst Missile, a giant missile that can level a small town and can be fired against any target in the air or ground.
  • The Fenrir Advanced Fighter in ACX has the Long-range Shock Wave Missile, which pretty much has the same effect and blast radius of a high yield nuclear bomb without specifically being called a nuke, though you can only use it twice per mission.
  • The CFA-44 Nosferatu from (AC6) has a railgun that instantly hits any target it shoots (The tactical lasers of the above planes still take a second to initially reach an enemy when first fired) and the ADMM missiles that can destroy twelve targets simultaneously per shot (with as many shots as the railgun.
  • In any form of online or multiplayer combat, QAAMs are the prefered weapon of choice to spam against your enemies. in AC6, the Nosferatu can be flown, but most players will instantly hate you for it, and the game automatically disables the ADMM as a weapon choice so it cannot be selected or used.
  • As noted on the CMOA page, the F-22 Raptor can actually break or at least bend the game. The final battle in The Unsung War before destroying the superweapon is supposed to last around a minute. If you're skilled enough you can end it in the time it takes to launch four XLA As, turn and fire again. The battle speech continues long after doing this, and there's another long pause after your pilots share their thoughts.
• Goddamned Bats: Normal mook planes and SAMs when fighting aces at the same time. The ballistic missiles in Ace Combat 04 are just really annoying to shoot down. If you watch the flight path replay at the debriefing, you'll notice they goes side to side and up and down in a sawtooth pattern. Even the Game Breaker QAAM missiles have a hard time with this one.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Gault One's reference to a Sleeping King, in light of certain Lyrical Nanoha events that would follow, prove to be... amusing. (S)he was a fighter pilot they called Solo Wing Pixy...
  • Also, look at the Hey, It's That Voice! associations for PJ and Pixy.
• Holy Shit Quotient: Rises dramatically once you see the second trailer for Assault Horizon. Just watch.
• Memetic Mutation: Gag Subs (unfortunately in Japanese) of the Zero trailer.
  • Amongst other examples is the one combining The Idolmaster and Ace Combat Zero.
• Moment of Awesome: When Wardog Squadron flies into an Unstoppable Rage over Chopper's death the enemy chatter indicates just how panic stricken the enemy is.
  • Mission 10 in Zero is one of the game's many such moments. Basically, the Belkan Air Force is easily defeating the Osean Air Force over the Round Table. Galm Team alone is sent to help, and they turn the battle around pretty much on their own.
  • Mission 13 in 6, with the whole you destroying countless Estovakian planes, tanks, etc. in order to liberate Gracemeria. You even get to face the CFA-44 Nosferatu for the first time. Also, the Big Damn Heroes moment in Mission 12, and the ending of Mission 15, with you flying down the BARREL of the Chandelier, shooting at its core and flying out of the fireball, having saved your country..
    • The Big Bads of Unsung War? The ones who set the two countries against each other? Doing the last mission on Ace difficulty and killing them all with the F-22 Raptor in the time it's taken for you to read this.
    • Doing the above with the FALKEN and destroying them by the time it took you to read "The Big Bads of Unsung War."
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • Ace Combat Zero, mission 12. Looks like a normal bomber intercept mission at first, just a midgame-planes version of "Glacial Skies" (or "Sitting Duck" in 04, or "Vitoze Aerial Defense" in 6). And then there's a GIGANTIC FLASH that causes everything on your plane to go haywire, a bogus missile alert appears and your entire Heads Up Display goes red, and the objectives become simply: "Survive." The music STOPS. Oh, and then your wingman starts trying to kill you (there's a reason FAQs tell you to give him the large unguided bomb), along with a few more waves of fighters. Oh, but isn't that a lovely sunset...wait, that isn't a sunset!
  • Screw your nukes. Seeing "Drone" appear in Ace 6 is a much more terrifying experience.
  • Watch the Chandelier fire and stare at the pretty colors and distortions made by the rail gun. Then listen to the radio chatter from back home and imagine what Gracemaria must look like now.
  • Then there's ACZ's Excalibur, which is pretty much Frickin' Laser Beams turned Up to Eleven.
  • And then you get the dubious honour of doing a suicide bombing run at the damn thing... After you deal with four jamming stations and several rail-mounted anti-air defense lasers first. While Excalibur is taking free shots at you.
  • Hearing the despair of the Redshirt Army through the radio chatter can get unnerving.
  • One mission in AC5 lets you listen in to the chatter of soldiers in an underground munition dump that you are currently bombing. It starts with them giving damage control orders... then panic as various stocks of explosives begin catching fire... then towards the end of the mission, it's nothing but incoherent shouting and screaming as the entire complex goes up.
  • "It's a fighter...a fast one!" And then, after the ominous music starts, "Missiles approaching at high speed! Multiple missiles approaching, evade!!"
• Player Punch: The games love reminding you that the enemy aces were people with friends and families before you killed them, particularly the death in AC4 of Yellow 4, who goes down in one shot because her plane was badly maintained. You will feel like a total bastard after killing her.
  • While the punch in 4 comes more directly, the hardest goes to Zero, no contest: While each game usually features one hidden ace in each mission plus a few boss aces, Zero contains 169 named enemy aces, and each and every one leaves you with their unlocked biography after you shoot them down. While a good many of them are merely shot down rather than killed in action, seeing names, ages, and life stories attached to each and every YY/ZZ/1995 - OPERATION X: KILLED IN ACTION is devastating, especially given that hardly a single one of them could be framed as a villain in any way other than that they took off from a different air field that day. Well, aside from Schwarze squadron, the Escapee Killers.
  • In Zero, Mission 12 is bad enough as it is. If you played 5 though and paid attention to dates, you saw it coming. What you don't see coming is when the wingman you had been flying with for every mission up to this point, Solo Wing Pixy, takes a shot at you. That is one of the most personal betrayals in the entire series.
• Ruined FOREVER: Some people had this reaction to 6 being on 360 rather than PS3.
  • Joint Assault and Assault Horizon aren't set on Strangereal. RAGE!
    • It doesn't help that Assault Horizon is being heavily criticised for taking inspiration from the Modern Warfare lineup of Call of Duty games--and it shows, if anyone has the nerve to write a checklist of takes from MW.
• Scrappy Level: Any level in the later parts of any of the games that required the player to fly into enclosed areas or shot them down if they flew above/below a certain height were usually reviled by players and often reviewers.
  • Let's not forget the U2 level from 04. An utter crapshoot with a time limit.
    • The one where you have to escort two cargo planes at different altitudes was worse. For some reason, the pilot of the plane that hasn't been damaged won't climb down a few thousand feet, forcing you into a vertical climb when you have to defend that plane after defending the other one.
  • "Four Horsemen" from 5: timing your attacks can be a bit tricky since Edge is counting down to target destruction, not firing, and missiles require time to fly. Also, this may be the only time in the series when it's important to fly at a specific speed (600 knots, give or take a bit). The PlayStation 2 has analog controls so you can control the throttle, but players might not notice that feature.
• That One Boss: Varies depending on the game. In general though it's one thing to realize that at least the solitary bosses in Zero and 6 are each flying a "superfighter" which is a Game Breaker once you acquire it yourself, but when enemy ace pilots fly planes roughly equal to or inferior to yours better than you can... (Espada 1 in Zero flies a starting plane!)
  • The 8492 squadron after Fortress in 5. If you do decide to take them on then be prepared for undoubtedly the hardest part of the game, period.
  • Ofnir from the same game, primarily since you're forced to stay in the canyon, while they can go as high as they want.
  • Ilya Pasternak, my goodness... while he thankfully doesn't use the Nosferatu's ADMM all that much, dozens of super-agile UAVs will spawn with him, and both he and them can avoid missiles simply by accelerating. He's vulnerable only when he slows down to provide ESM for his drones, but within 5 or so seconds after that he'll jam your radar and fly so fast as to instantly vanish from the screen. Can go from fun to tedious really fast.
  • Sulejmani from JA. For most of the battle he has a rear mounted machine gun forcing you to use the machine gun and once it's destroyed, you're still better off using the gun because he moves so erratically that most of you're missiles would miss anyway. All the while you're trying to avoid his missiles, which sometimes are being launched at point blank range.
  • The second battle with Markov in Assault Horizon. Details are already on the relevant YMMV page.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks: Many hardcore AC fans are already declaring that the series is dead upon finding out that Assault Horizon and Joint Assault take place in the real world instead of Strangereal one.
  • A lot of fans are also complaining about the new Close Range Assault gameplay mechanic, despite the developers' claim that the "classic" AC gameplay is still intact and the new features are optional.