Ace Combat HDWA Challenge - Day 6: Ace Combat 3 - US Version (PS1, 2000)
1HDWA = Hardest Difficulty, Worst Aircraft.
RULES
1) Beat the game at the highest difficulty using the worst aircraft available.
2) Cheats, intentional glitches and bugs are forbidden.
3) Savestates are forbidden.
4) This is not a speedrun! Take your time and try to achieve a good score if possible.
5) Choose any emulator you want.
ACE COMBAT 3 – INTERNATIONAL VERSION
PREREQUISITES
None.
HARDEST DIFFICULTY
Hard.
WORST AIRCRAFT
EF-2000 Typhoon 2.
HDWA CHALLENGE DIFFICULTY: 9.5/10
ADDITIONAL CHALLENGE
Get a good rank whenever possible.
DESCRIPTION
This is the western version of Ace Combat 3.
Game mechanics, graphics and soundtrack are the same as the Japanese original, however they butchered the content (probably for budget reasons) and cut out many details.
They changed the Academy Awards worthy original plot: they kept some parts of it and changed the ending with a more generic “AI gone rogue” trope.
There are no voice acting, no secondary characters, no anime, and there’s only one ending.
Here you can only play as UPEO, and it’s impossible to switch sides.
In some missions the game forces you to use a given aircraft, but, unlike the Japanese version, you can fly the EF-2000 until the very end.
Additionally, they lowered the difficulty to a reasonable level: here dodging missiles is easier and their trajectories actually make sense.
Unlike in the previous games, in Ace Combat 3 you can’t buy aircraft.
The game decides when and which jet to give you, but you can obtain aircraft from all factions, and even unlock Aurora and the Night Raven.
There are some annoying things about this version of Ace Combat 3.
Let’s start with the minor annoyances:
Apparently you can’t switch to the metric system (this is the US version, so...ok, I guess);
You can’t fire during dialogues;
Medium annoyances:
The physics engine: they wanted to make it realistic, but it feels weird and it takes time to get accustomed to it. From time to time I crashed my plane because of miscalculations;
The target pointing system: it just sucks.
Some words about the missions. In the international version there are “only” 36 missions instead of the original 52, but you get to play all of them in one sitting, instead of playing 10/12 for each faction.
This means that a normal non-speedrun playthrough takes about 3-4 hours.
For this reason, I’ve treated the Japanese and International versions of Ace Combat 3 as two separate games.
During my challenge frustration increased to hellish levels in the last missions: the experimental aircraft out-maneuvered my EF-2000, so it took me hours to beat the game (it took me more than a hour just to beat “Night Raven”) – and I admit that I can’t really complain, because the game gives you top-tier fighter jets to use, and it was my choice to take part to this tortu...challenge.
This is the hardest Ace Combat HDWA challenge so far, it took me almost six hours and countless deaths.
Emulator used: DuckStation.
SHORT REVIEW
Plot: 6.5/10
Graphics: 8/10
Soundtrack: 9/10
Controls: 7/10
Game difficulty (besides my challenge): 7/10
Frustration: 10/10 (because of my challenge; otherwise 7/10)
Overall score: 6.5/10 – ruined because they discarded the original storyline.