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I haven't read a news site review in years, but I heard either IGN or Kotaku docked it because it was "too hard". Seriously? While it had some frustrating moments, it was certainly not the most difficult. Like you said, go back and do the Pasternak fight, which is probably the crowning achievement of the series as far as intense dog fights. The dog fights were less intense in this one. They did require a little bit more out of your piloting skills... although I can see the canyon spotlights being easier with the novice controls... I have no idea how you'd do the final mission without the pro controls. I haven't used the beginner controls since Air Combat. I remember quite a few times previous Ace Combat games made you resort to finishing up enemies with the main guns because you just weren't going to ever get a clean lock on harder modes. This game has crazy special weapons, along with buffs to homing, lock on speed, and damage, you can pretty much always rely on them so long as you can control your aircraft and keep the enemy on your TV screen. The only time I got my ass handed to me truly was because I was being super lazy with the A-10, and it caught up with me on the Stonehenge mission. Trying to evade Arsenal Bird's missile barrage along with the drones protecting it presented an interesting challenge when trying to take out the propellers within the time limit. Being that slow, made me regret my choice.. I had a bad habit of looking at the air and ground target breakdown pre mission and being like "A-10 time!" The mutli ground target missile special is just great, and the F-35 has an even more powerful version of it which is nuts. Like you said about the constant missile warnings, I pretty much made it a thing to take out all the SAM and XSAMs I'd find just to ease my ears of that damn alert. That Fleet destruction mission was indeed annoying because of the time limit, I think I came up short by 2-300 points twice and started getting irritated. I eventually figured out that I needed to target the main ship, and ignore all of their SAM and guns. Even with a strafe run (WARNING PULL UP PULL UP PULL UP 🙄) and missile and bomb barrage all at once, some of those ships were damn beasts when it came to damage intake. The frigates and destroyers went down fast but the ships with the missiles, I think it was VAL or something, took 2 runs of perfect barrages... which was a little much. The Aircraft carrier, I understood since it was worth an ass load of points. But once I got that down, I could take out the first eastern fleet with plenty of ammo to spare and about 8 minutes left.. even then I'd still go to replenish because it was the closest to the base. As long as you took out that whole fleet, it would get you a little more than half way there, after that I took out the smaller array of ships on the way to that base that looked like a massive oil rig.. I guess they both did, but the one out in the open water. That would push me over, but I still think I was down to about 2 minutes or less by the time I was done. They did a good job of tucking some ground targets in places where the standard missiles would hit the ground or wall they're in. Don't get me started on having to manual ID in that night city escort. As much as I loved that mission overall because of how it looked, damn they made some annoyingly placed targets to ID and then take out. The aircraft tree was nice, but you're right, the aircraft unlocks should have not been apart of it. Plus half of the upgrades you didn't really need. Like the Queen's touch, or any of the performance enhancers... yeah they were good on lesser fighters, but for the better ones, you're better off going with capacity and weapon upgrades. Thats one of the reasons I didn't go the F-15 route, the ice up part i felt, and found out was completely useless. I never wished I had it at any point in the game... the only time it remotely became a thing was when you're out flying to avoid the radar zones on the way to the space elevator near the start of the game. I think I iced up one time chasing fighters into heavy clouds... the only upgrade I could have used, if it exists was a lightning strike resistance.. that was kind of annoying when it happened.