Since Ace Combat X gets decent reviews by me I'm excited to play Ace Combat Joint Assault but my excitement is cut short... here how it goes. When first starting the game it let you select who to be your broadcaster; two guy and two woman. The guy is one from USA and the other is British, the woman is from Finland and Japan if I'm not mistaken. This is odd, it never happen in any AC series here, something is weird so I just select the chick with 'a sweet voice' because why not. During mission briefing it plays AC3 mission briefing music, another odd one since usually AC series have theme for each of their series, they all sounds unique and when you listen to it you immediately know which one. It's like they try to play with nostalgic feelings for some reason, I already raised my eyebrow at this point.
Then when I actually get in the mission and I try to roll and get the feel of the plane but...like what the fuck why wont it...oh God no this gives HAWX and ACAH (Assault Horizon) PTSD because the control is set to Normal. This won't allow you to roll the aircraft. I select to Expert quickly and try to forget such setting ever existed. Then I come to another that ruins the fun, camera is very janky idk how to describe it it's like it won't turn fast enough (like HL2 weapon sway). It also sometime changing focal length depending on speed of aircraft and the vicinity of the enemy. It's very distracting.
I always pick hard difficulty, but the hard setting here feels like pu**y setting. It's unbelievably easy, everything feels and moves like in slow motion in a weird way. First aircraft is the usual F4E Phantom that been given QAAM (quick maneuver air-to-air missile). Out of any AC series the QAAM in this is very VERY good. Only one missile shot trashed out of 20 missile I shot throughout 4 missions. It usually A LOT lower like 1 trashed out of 3 or 5, as this isn't a super weapon. Another let down in the second mission it mentions Japan. Wait, what? this isn't in strangereal?
Music in-game is the final nail in the coffin. It sounds like CoD or MoH, and on mission 6 in Egypt, the first part of the mission plays the typical desert soundtrack, it's alright but the second part after you get ambushed all of the sudden rock music with vocals comes out. It's sound so out of place and after this mission I already lost my will to continue playing. Why...WHY must it comes to this??
