The best-reviewed Ace Combat game to date, Ace Combat 8 has officially become the franchise’s fastest-selling title. It clocked in a million sold copies quicker than any in the series before it, and is on track to truly crown itself as the best of the best.
This was confirmed by Bandai Namco today via social media. The milestone comes exactly a week after the game launched globally on Oct. 2, and considering its niche genre, it’s fairly surprising to see it selling so well. I presume the game’s heavy focus on story and narrative, plus recognizable characters, gave players something to hold on to beyond running sorties and shooting down bandits and their ground installations, since few things in gaming are more gripping than a good tale.
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Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve, as I outlined in my review late last month, dares to dip its toes into the gritty reality of warfare without sugarcoating it too much. Yes, it does go for the “larger than life” approach to presenting a global conflict, but it nevertheless spends a lot of time ruminating on the nature of war, a soldier’s position in it, the meaning of combat, honor and service, and tries to philosophically deconstruct the very notion of conflicts, nationhood, and what it means to belong to a particular state.
It has a very strong theme of immigration, as Jan Cope, the game’s deuteragonist, is ethnically Sotoan despite fighting on the FCU’s side, and that comes up as a point of discussion several times in the game. Are you a traitor for fighting for the side you grew up in? Or is your ethnic background detached from your cultural upbringing and context, making you a traitor for fighting for your ancestors instead? Complicated stuff, and I loved every second of it.
In fact, I loved it so much that it has left a gaping void in my heart and soul, as I simply cannot find any game like it out there. Sure, there are Ace Combat games of the past that I could hop into, but from what I hear, none of them are as invested and deep as Wings of Theve. The only game that I found similar enough to warrant going back to is Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon. I think Wings of Theve took liberal inspiration from that game and how it approaches storytelling and philosophy, and both do it so tremendously well and unlike any other game on the market.
I’m glad to see these efforts translate into solid sales, and hope to see more of it in the future.
