Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve Hands-On Preview

There were plenty of moments during my time with Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve that I forgot I was playing a preview build in a dark room filled with other people. What began with an explosive, dramatic prologue that had me grinning from ear to ear without even realizing it eventually took me into some of the most intense flight combat scenarios the series has ever seen, to the point that taking my eyes off the screen even for a second would have meant my demise. Ace Combat 7 already knew how to make aerial combat exciting and accessible enough for an unprecedented demographic, but Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve makes it feel bigger, more cinematic, and far easier to get pulled into than anything the series has ever done before.

I recently attended an exclusive First-Look event for Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve at Orbital Studios in Los Angeles, where I spent nearly six hours playing seven of the game’s story missions. After finishing three of those missions, I still had enough time left to replay them several times, and I did exactly that for no other reason than I was having a blast and simply didn’t want to stop playing. But my biggest takeaway from the preview is that Ace Combat 8 feels like everything Ace Combat 7 was aiming for, which says a lot considering how successful that game was at bringing new players into the series. Essentially, Ace Combat 8 is its predecessor’s better-looking, more talented twin, and I wouldn’t be surprised in the slightest if it becomes the series’ new entry point. My time with the preview wasn’t perfect, but it came impressively close, and now I’m just waiting to see whether Bandai Namco can polish up the few rough edges I encountered before launch.

Ace Combat 8 Feels Like What 7 Was Always Reaching For

Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown deserves a lot of credit for where the series is now. It brought Ace Combat back in a way that clearly worked—as it reached a whopping 7.5 million players around the world—and its success helped prove there was still an audience for this kind of arcade flight combat game. That said, after spending several hours with Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve, it’s hard not to feel like this is the game Ace Combat 7 was always reaching toward.

That’s not because Wings of Theve feels completely different, though. In a lot of ways, it feels exactly like Ace Combat 7 and the entries that came before it. The basic rhythm of flying, lining up shots, swapping between targets, and trying to stay alive in the middle of a massive battle is intact. More than anything, it doesn’t seem like Bandai Namco is trying to reinvent Ace Combat after Ace Combat 7. It feels more like the studio taking the foundation that game laid and finally surrounding it with the kind of presentation, scale, and mission design that makes the whole thing feel much harder to pull away from.

The difference is especially clear in how much more convincing the world feels. Ace Combat 7 still felt like a video game much of the time, even when it was at its best. Ace Combat 8, on the other hand, feels closer to an actual aerial combat experience, largely because the sky, the environments, the sound design, and the way missions unfold all work together more naturally. The larger battlefields never felt empty during my preview, either. If anything, they made the missions feel more dangerous because there was almost always something happening somewhere around me.

But what impressed me most is that Ace Combat 8 seems more welcoming than Ace Combat 7 while also being much more punishing. There are some significant improvements made here that ultimately make it the more approachable of the two. However, once the tutorial chapters were over, the game became far more challenging than I expected. In Ace Combat 7, I usually felt like the clock was my biggest enemy. In Ace Combat 8, time is still a problem, but almost less of a problem than simply staying alive.

Ace Combat 8 Is More Approachable, But Also Much Harder

Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve is easier to get comfortable with than Ace Combat 7, at least from what I played, because it does a better job easing players into its world without making the opening hours feel like a long, drawn-out tutorial. The first three chapters are clearly designed to teach the basics, but they still feel like part of the campaign rather than a separate training exercise. Veterans also have the option to skip some of the basic flight tutorials, which helps keep those early missions from feeling like a slow reset for anyone who already knows how Ace Combat works.

In light of that, I would probably recommend Wings of Theve over Ace Combat 7 to newcomers, even with the increased difficulty, because there are some important quality-of-life improvements Bandai Namco made to Ace Combat 8 that its predecessor could have benefited from. Landing gunfire is easier because hit boxes are more forgiving, and the main gun can be useful from a greater distance this time around. I also noticed that flares are more reliable now. In Ace Combat 7, I would have to wait until missiles were right on my tail for flares to actually be effective, but in Wings of Theve, they’re useful from a greater distance. Those changes might sound small to someone on the outside looking in, but they lower the barrier to entry considerably, at least as far as gameplay goes.

Image via Bandai Namco

However, Wings of Theve doesn’t take long to prove that being more approachable isn’t the same thing as being easier. I played on Normal, one of the game’s four difficulty levels, and Chapter 4 was where the preview started pushing back hard. By that point, the game had already taught me enough to feel comfortable in the air, but knowing what you’re supposed to do and surviving long enough to do it are two very different things.

Speaking strictly from a gameplay standpoint, that’s the biggest difference between Ace Combat 7 and Ace Combat 8 so far. In Ace Combat 7, most of my failures came from not clearing objectives quickly enough. In Wings of Theve, I still had to move fast, but the missions I played put far more pressure on me to stay alive while doing it. There were more enemies to deal with, more threats coming from different directions, and more moments where I had to decide whether to keep chasing an objective or break away long enough to avoid getting shot down. It made each mission feel more intense without making the game feel less accessible, and that balance is a big part of why the preview left such a strong impression.

Each Mission in Ace Combat 8 Has Its Own Identity

The game’s extra challenge also worked as well as it did because the missions I played weren’t all pulling from the same bag of tricks. During my time with Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve, I played seven campaign missions in total, and each one had something specific that helped it stand apart. Some leaned harder into cinematic spectacle, some were more focused on pure survival, and others asked me to pay closer attention to the sky itself. That variety went a long way toward making the preview feel much larger than the number of missions I actually played, to the point that, as I previously stated, I was perfectly fine with replaying a few of them multiple times.

Mission 9 was easily one of the most memorable missions I played. The best way I can describe it is that it felt like trying to save Theve from Godzilla, only instead of a giant monster, the city was being torn apart by a massive land battleship. It was ridiculous in the exact way Ace Combat is known for, but its scale made the whole thing feel genuinely dramatic. It’s also one that I had to attempt several times before succeeding, and then I went back for seconds, thirds, and fourths because I wasn’t totally satisfied with my score.

Mission 11 made a completely different impression on me. Rather than sending me into another large battle where everything could be tracked through the usual systems, it forced me to find aircraft without relying on radar. I had to look for jet trails in the sky and follow those visual clues to locate my targets, which made the mission feel unlike anything else I played during the preview. It was also one of the clearest examples of Ace Combat 8 making good use of latest-gen tech, especially after the producer explained during a group interview that the team can now do more with the sky itself, including letting players read cloud shapes to understand altitude or follow jet streams toward enemies.

But that kind of scale is felt all throughout the game, and not just in certain missions. Ace Combat 8‘s battlefields feel much larger than Ace Combat 7‘s, but they never felt empty during my preview. There were usually more enemies to worry about, and dogfights felt more dangerous because the game was doing a better job of selling the chaos around me. I could feel the difference most when missiles were closing in, radio chatter was filling my headset, and I was trying to keep track of where the next threat was without losing control. Where Ace Combat 7 might have made aerial combat more thrilling, Wings of Theve makes the world around it feel more believable, from the clouds and environments to the animations and sound design.

Ace Combat 8 Sounds Incredible, Though Its Radio Chatter Can Be Overwhelming

And speaking of sound design, Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve sounds incredible across the board. The soundtrack is much more cinematic and dramatic than I remember Ace Combat 7‘s being, and even that helps the game come closer to achieving the immersion it’s clearly targeting. The sound design itself is a massive step up as well, and this is absolutely the kind of game I would recommend playing with a good pair of headphones. Ace Combat 7 still sounded like a video game to me most of the time, but Wings of Theve sounds much closer to an actual experience.

However, that intensity does come with one potential issue. There is a lot of radio chatter in Ace Combat 8, much more than I remember from Ace Combat 7, and there were times during my preview when it became genuinely overwhelming. Ace Combat has always used radio chatter to sell the drama of its missions, but Wings of Theve can have so many voices talking at once that it becomes hard to tell what conversations are actually happening.

That became noticeable enough that I had to take regular breaks during the preview, and by the end of my time with the game, I had a headache. It also made the live story moments harder to follow, especially when key characters were in danger and the game was clearly trying to create some emotional tension around that. I do think this is something Bandai Namco can adjust before launch, but as much as I loved the overall sound design, the volume and frequency of the radio chatter stood out as one of the few rough edges in an otherwise very polished preview.

Ace Combat 8’s Story Is Easier to Follow, Easier to Care About, and More Immersive

One of the bigger surprises from my time with Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve is how much easier its story is to follow than Ace Combat 7‘s and just about any entry before it. Ace Combat 7‘s story was passable, but mostly off the wall in a way that was memorable, yet not always easy to stay connected to. Wings of Theve still has some of that same strangeness, and based on what I played, it even deals with a few ideas that move beyond standard military fiction. Even so, it never felt as hard to track as Ace Combat 7 could sometimes be.

A big part of that comes down to the first-person perspective. There are plenty of cutscenes throughout the early chapters, but they didn’t feel excessive during my preview. Instead, they gave me more time to understand who these characters were and why I should care about what was happening to them. Ace Combat 7 often kept its characters at a distance, whether intentionally or not. Ace Combat 8 feels much more interested in letting players spend time with its cast before throwing them back into the sky.

That makes the story feel more authentic, even when it is still doing some very Ace Combat things. The prologue alone made a strong impression, mostly because it begins with the kind of dramatic setup that immediately makes the conflict feel bigger than a routine military operation. From there, Wings of Theve does a better job bringing more clarity to its story. I wasn’t always trying to figure out why something mattered or who I was supposed to be paying attention to. Most of the time, I felt like the game was giving me a clear enough reason to stay invested.

Ace Combat 8 Already Feels Like the Series At Its Best

After nearly six hours with Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve, I walked away feeling like this is probably going to be the Ace Combat game I recommend to people first. That’s not because Ace Combat 7 suddenly looks bad by comparison, because it still deserves a lot of credit for bringing the series to where it is now. Wings of Theve just feels like the more complete version of that same idea. It’s easier to settle into, harder to survive, and much better at making its world feel like something I wanted to stay in.

There are still a few things I hope Bandai Namco cleans up before launch, especially the amount of radio chatter happening during missions, because that was the one part of the preview that regularly pulled me out of the experience. Even with that, though, I had a hard time putting Ace Combat 8 down. I finished the missions I was given, went back and replayed several of them just because I wanted to, and left the event thinking about how soon I could play more. For a game I already expected to like, that is about as strong of a first impression as it could have made.

Released

October 2, 2026

ESRB

Teen / Blood, Language, Mild Suggestive Themes, Violence, In-Game Purchases, Users Interact

Developer(s)

Bandai Namco Aces

GameRant was provided travel and lodging support for this preview coverage.