u/Ferhog

I haven't had much interest in fighter planes throughout my life, but I am a huge mecha fan with over 70 Gundam model kits, so in recent years I have been feeling more of a draw to fighter plane media for basically being about mechs without limbs. I watched the first Top Gun a few months back (And didn't think it was great, mainly because I didn't find Maverick and Charlie very compelling), but for Ace Combat specifically I've enjoyed a few videos like those clips of people reverse drifting through tunnels, the Pixie dogfight with 'It Has To Be This Way' from MGR playing over it, and the Megalith and Daredevil tracks.

So when I found two Ace Combat games called Distant Thunder and Squadron Leader for a cheap price at a CEX in Cork City I thought it was a good opportunity to try the series out for myself. Before the pruchase I remember googling Distant Thunder and quickly being satisfied with the review scores, and then looking more thoroughly into Squadron Leader (I guess because it was half the price) and reading a Reddit post asking about the consensus on the game to which people said it was the weakest of the PS2 trilogy, but still good. This googling was also how I leaned that we'd gotten these games under different titles here in Europe.

I don't recall when or how I learned that these were AC4 and 5 specifically, but I must have before playing them because I specifically started with AC4. Rather foolishly I didn't start with the tutorial (Though I probably didn't even think to look for it under New and Load game) and learned most of the controls on the fly. What I was most lost on was actually finding the objectives, because the fact that I had to hold □ to expand the map was not easy to figure out on my own. I failed a few missions just by getting lost, and actually learned to pay attention to SkeyEye's instructions like "Refinery is vector 040. 4 miles." Heck, I had to figure out what vector meant based on context. It also took me a bit to realize that some missions required a minimum score to pass. Eventually I did play the tutorial and the levels became much easier to understand. I still have no idea what "yaw" means though.

Other than this early learning experince, I don't think I have to tell people on here how great AC4. The gameplay is fantastic. The music is fantastic. At first I thought the story segments were Mobius-1's backstory leading up to a final showdown with Yellow-13 before at some point realizing that you're watching one side of the war while playing the other, which is a unique kind of storytelling that only this medium can provide. I'll also say that I was surprised to learn that a lot of people don't like Tango Line. Its visuals and music were so entertainingly "jungle level" to me. In particular Tango Line and Comona sound like songs I'd here in a Sonic and Sega All Stars game. After beating the game I immediately replayed it, going from easy to normal, because like 2 of my other favourite games Signalis and Super Metroid it just felt perfectly paced and easy to play all the way through again.

Comparing AC4 to AC5 feels kinda hard because the latter went for something quite different. The core gameplay was almost the same but it was trying to be a more AAA experience with a more cinematic story, more gimmicky levels, and overall being longer. I wasn't vibing with it was much as 4, maybe just because I went in expecting a worse game based on what I'd read, but I think I also had to get used to it having a more conventional narrative with familiar archetypes like the snarky mentor, aloof female lead, and sarcastic comic relief. The game's actual biggest fault is the flight equivilant of walking simulator segments. A good few levels start with like 2 minutes of flying in a straight line while characters talk, which I'd have to experience again and again if I kept dying on difficult missions like the Hrimfaxi. But the game's heights honestly might have outdone AC4's In particular the tunnel run in the final mission is now one of my favourite gaming setpieces. Somehow I crashed twice in Megalith's straightforward tunnels yet did the AC5 tunnel run in one go despite the twists and turns, obstacles ahead of you, and Hamilton on your 6 forcing you to stay at a high minimum speed. And then I managed to do it AGAIN because I had to leave aferward and didn't realize that the level didn't save between that and destroying the SOLG. Speaking of which, that was a beatiful cinematic finale (Albeit one that also suffered from flying in a straigjt line for two minutes every time I failed to dodge debris). Also some reviewers say that your squadron is useless, but in my experience they were very good at their jobs, to the point of often stealing my kills. AC4 felt like becoming a hero, but AC5 felt like you were part of a group that became a legend.

So now that I've experienced these great games I feel very lucky to have found them when I did and I actually feel they were undervalued, especially since these games apparantly don't get re-released because of plane licensing. I suppose I could emulate AC0 but I just love the experience of finding games in the wild and playing them on console. Maybe I'll get AC7 on the Switch store if that port of the game is good.

Oh, also I felt like typing all this after just playing though AC4 a third time getting an S-rank in every level on hard mode. AC4 is REALLY good.

For this I gave myself the rule of using franchises that had at least 3 male protagonists before introducing a female one, to exclude examples like Nickelodeon's Avatar which had 1 male protagonist before its first female one, so no all-male trend was really established.

(1. Jolyne Cujoh from Jojo's Bizarre Adventure - After 12 years and 5 male protagonists, JJBA introduced its first female protagonist Jolyne in Part 6: Stone Ocean, the daughter of Part 3's protagonist Jotaro.

(2. Captain Janeway from Star Trek - "Protagonist" might be a strong word for the captains of any starfleet ship as Star Trek shows are more about the whole crew, but they are generally the face of each show, and after 31 years and 3 shows Kathryn Janeway was the captain in Star Trek: Voyager.

(3. Terra (And Celes to an extent) from Final Fantasy VI - After 7 years and 5 games each with either male protagonists or mixed-gender ensembles (Who usually get represented by a male character in spin-off games anyway) Final Fantasy VI starts with Terra as its POV character with a lot of plot importance, although in the 2nd half of the game the team is split up and Celes actually defaults to protagonist as the one who decides to get the band back together, with most other characters including Terra being optional to reunite with. Regardless Terra remains the face of FF6.

(4. Suletta Mercury from Mobile Suit Gundam - After a whopping 45 years and more installments than I can reliably count, Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury introduced the first female protagonist of a full Gundam show. There had been female protagonists in the likes of manga and online shorts, but Suletta was the first of a new main installment. Gundam also didn't stop the progressiveness train at just her gender, as they also gave her a female love interest, which I like to think is because after 45 years they just didn't know how to make a dude the focus of a romance.

(5. Eirika from Fire Emblem - After 14 years and 7 games, Fire Emblem introduced its first female protagonist Eirika alongside her twin brother Ephraim in Fire Emblem: Sacred Stones. Kurt from the mobile game Fire Emblem: Shadows also deserves a mention as the series' first solo female protagonist, and oddly enough like Suletta from Gundam is also engaged to a woman.

Examples of the first male protagonist in a previously all-female franchise are also welcome in the replies, but I have no idea if such examples even exist.