[Autohummer]

In the meanwhile: got all MP achievements and finished the single player.
Unfortunately the achievement for the take off, refueling and landing sequences didn't unlock which means I might have skipped one without noticing while repeating one of the early missions, dang.

IIRC you also can't skip landings and takoffs if you went and use the return line. Don't worry, I think it remembers which mission you did all the stuff on so you don't need to finish the entire campaign to get it if you did the rest. I got mine in the middle of my 2nd playthrough.

I played a lot of Infinity and, even though I hated its F2P features, it is the only AC in which I can mod the Typhoon into something more agile than an F-22A and faster than a MiG-31 (4500 km/h max speed, friend says it flies like a rocket and has no problem chasing and crashing into the Comona rocket when it launches.) I haven't started MP yet, but I think we can start a Hard Light Squadron of something if players are scarce.

Apart from joystick problems (solvable with x360ce) I am glad to report AC7 is a solid instalment to the series. Though I think the last 5 missions should have been expanded to around 15. The fall of the satellite network seems to me more like a mid-plot turning point (Ala 8492 in AC5) that leads to us leaving the chain of command and finding and fighting the "true" enemy. The last 5 mission seems to be rushed to me.

Mage 2 Mage 2 Mage 2

[Det. Bullock]

In the meanwhile: got all MP achievements and finished the single player.
Unfortunately the achievement for the take off, refueling and landing sequences didn't unlock which means I might have skipped one without noticing while repeating one of the early missions, dang.

IIRC you also can't skip landings and takoffs if you went and use the return line. Don't worry, I think it remembers which mission you did all the stuff on so you don't need to finish the entire campaign to get it if you did the rest. I got mine in the middle of my 2nd playthrough.

I played a lot of Infinity and, even though I hated its F2P features, it is the only AC in which I can mod the Typhoon into something more agile than an F-22A and faster than a MiG-31 (4500 km/h max speed, friend says it flies like a rocket and has no problem chasing and crashing into the Comona rocket when it launches.) I haven't started MP yet, but I think we can start a Hard Light Squadron of something if players are scarce.

Apart from joystick problems (solvable with x360ce) I am glad to report AC7 is a solid instalment to the series. Though I think the last 5 missions should have been expanded to around 15. The fall of the satellite network seems to me more like a mid-plot turning point (Ala 8492 in AC5) that leads to us leaving the chain of command and finding and fighting the "true" enemy. The last 5 mission seems to be rushed to me.

Mage 2 Mage 2 Mage 2

The achievement did unlock when I repeated one of the early missions, why in the hell did I skip the sequence there is anyone's guess.

MP can be incredibly frustrating at times, I stopped the moment I got all the medals.

[StarSlayer]

I'm getting more comfortable with the MP, matches are quick and it's the most efficient way to grind out the trees.  I find Team Battles are the more dynamic of the two modes since teammates allow you to break out of the furball and extend, which again leads me back to the devs needing to add objective based matches for long term diversity.  I've have a few different fighter setups that work well for me and cover the different Tiers, but a lot of planes just don't have competitive configurations for the furball meta.  Just having some stuff to bomb would give strike packages a reason to exist and spread the combat out across the map. 

I also wish the F-16 wasn't saddled with being the trash starter plane, a Viper would be able to **** on a lot of its competitors in the Merge but instead it has bottom barrel garbage stats.

[Det. Bullock]

I finished the Ace run, mission 19 on that difficulty is a bit of a pain but according to google you have to clean out the UAVs before taking out the arsenal bird, I didn't try it because I thought they respawned and it would take too much time.
In the end I cleaned out all the UAVs and with the 8AAM missiles the arsenal bird was easy to bring down, got even a S rank right away, same with the final mission.
Now the issue is getting the S rank in the few missions I got an A, mission 9 always drives me crazy on Ace.

[Det. Bullock]

Mission 9 proved to be impossible to S rank for me on Ace, after twenty or so tries I decided to uninstall the game because it had become a bit of an obsession, a rather stressing one I might add and byt this time I put an inordinate amount of hours into the game and unlocked all achievements but two plus a bunch of medals in-game and all the aces.
I’ll probably try again later on in a few weeks or months but for now better let it rest.

[StarSlayer]

Whelp for 2500+ no special weapons matches, this is my best bird.

[Scourge of Ages]

yeee, carry much?

[Det. Bullock]

I'm quite surprised the enemy team didn't gang up on him, that's what usually happened to me when I got at that score range.

[Mobius]

Does anybody know how to get the Mobius and Scarface logos?

By the way, I have the Strangereal Edition of the game ever since day one, it features codes for downloading a couple of extra planes and paint schemes, it has pins and patches, the Aces at War sketchbook and a scale model of the Arsenal Bird.

I played through the main campaign six times already. Earlier today I completed my guns-only run in order to get one of the three challenge medals (the other two being no-damage and speedrun in less than four hours). I've taken out all of the featured aces except one (Bogen from Giant's Step).

I haven't played the MP mode yet.

My opinion about the game? Well, considering how disappointing Assault Horizon was, I'm glad to have what really seems like a true Ace Combat game. As a guru of the series I find all of the references to other games very intriguing, pieces of a puzzle that gets closer to completion episode after episode, and there's a number of interesting references to AC3 which takes place in Usea some 20 years after AC7.

When I first read the names of some of the fictional places featured in AC7, I was like 9 years old and playing AC2. I find this amazing.

[Autohummer]

I was also about that age when I first played AC2. One of my persistent memories is flying a YF-23 in the mission "Calvary" while eating pizza-flavoured pretz, then noticing a similarity between the red pixels being thrown out by the plane's engines and the red specks of food colouring/flavour on the biscuit stick.

[Scotty]

Picked this game up, finished it, liked it.

Stonehenge was probably my favorite set-piece to ply around in.  The mission with the canyon ****ing sucked, please make that like a solid minute shorter next time.  Arsenal Bird felt properly intimidating.  Good game.

[Det. Bullock]

Picked this game up, finished it, liked it.

Stonehenge was probably my favorite set-piece to ply around in.  The mission with the canyon ****ing sucked, please make that like a solid minute shorter next time.  Arsenal Bird felt properly intimidating.  Good game.

That was one of the easier ones for me, what drove me insane was trying to get the S-rank in the one with the satellite missiles.

[Colt]

Picked this game up, finished it, liked it.

Stonehenge was probably my favorite set-piece to ply around in.  The mission with the canyon ****ing sucked, please make that like a solid minute shorter next time.  Arsenal Bird felt properly intimidating.  Good game.

That was one of the easier ones for me, what drove me insane was trying to get the S-rank in the one with the satellite missiles.

Ugh, not looking forward to doing that one.

[Scotty]

There are a few missions I'm not looking forward to S-ranking, mooooost of them were missions I expected to have a lot more ground attacking where I took an A-10 and that was just not fast enough to do get anything resembling a time bonus, or otherwise made intercepting things on different corners of the map a giant pain.  Like First Contact.

Hoo boy was the A-10 a mistake on that mission.

[Colt]

Oof, I feel you there. First time playing, nearly went with the A-10 for Lost Kingdom. Contemplated about it when considering the castle's name and what to expect, so I went with an F-35. Dodged a bullet there (literally!)

I've probably S-ranked all the missions on one difficulty or another. Then again I'm an SU-57 Pulse Laser noob 

[Scotty]

I'll be going back through with an Su-37 here pretty soon, I think.  Having multi-AAMs is so stupidly useful in bossfights.

[Autohummer]

I made an irresponsible F-22 QAAM truck with all the sp missile upgrades as a backup in my ace difficulty s rank run. My main is the Typhoon, though. The A-10 is seriously nerfed in this game by the big maps, time bonus, weakened brrt and somehow, the A-10 became surprisingly fragile too. I almost never fly attackers in this game, a fast multirole or fighter with UGBs is strictly better in ground attack missions.
The Su 47 got seriously nerfed too, but it is the best bomb truck in the game. I used that for pizza delivery.

[The E]

Bombs are great, but have you tried the Rafale and its cruise missiles

[Scotty]

I am a big believer in the Su-37's LASM on Fleet Destruction.  That mission is definitely my favorite to just fly around on.  There's something ridiculous (and ridiculously satisfying) about sinking a carrier and multiple cruisers in a matter of seconds that's just fantastic.

[Autohummer]

Bombs are great, but have you tried the Rafale and its cruise missiles

Yeah, too bad I tend to shoot two per ship out of muscle memory and waste my LACM supply. I managed to nail the arsenal bird with them and is surprised it still takes four to blow the props and the explosion radius was still not enough to blow the aams on its back.
If I am not under pressure to get a s rank, I use Typhoon 8AGM/HCAA in fleet destruction. I usually end up spending a lot of time shooting at disarmed ships with the gun.