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Ace Combat 2 - TV Tropes

  • ️Fri Jun 17 2011

Ace Combat 2 (Video Game)

Return a second time for more air to air combat.

The second game in the Ace Combat series. Released in 1997. You fly as the leader of the Special Tactical Fighter Squadron "Scarface" to thwart a rebellion across the continent of Usea.

Received a remake in 2011, Ace Combat: Assault Horizon Legacy, known in Japan as 3D Cross Rumble.

Tropes found in the game

  • Arrange Mode: The Extra Mode is unlocked after completing the game once, and has a mostly-different plane roster from the base game.
  • As You Know: Crops up in a pre-flight briefing.
  • All There in the Manual: More like "All There In The Remake", but the foreign country Usea attempts to sign a peace treaty which was later confirmed to be the Osean Federation, and the Z.O.E. AI fighters are also confirmed to have been created by North Osea Gründer Industries, with Z.O.E. being an acronym for "Zone of Endless". The other nation the Rebels attempt fire their ICBM at from Fortress Intolerance was also confirmed to be the Union of Yuktobanian Republics.
  • Attack Drone: Five AI-controlled Z.O.E. planes.
  • Badass Back: The Z.O.E. Commander's FALKEN can fire missiles backwards. Truth in Television: Some of the latest AAMs, like the Python 4/5 or AA-11/R-73, have a 360-degree targeting capability.
  • Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: In-Universe. Ace Combat 2 had the series' first two superfighters, the ADF-01 FALKEN and the XFA-27. Neither were noticeably important to the plot at all: the XFA-27 would unceremoniously become available for purchase in an Extra mode playthrough at the same point the F-22 would be unlocked the first time around, and while the FALKEN was treated as the True Final Boss (with the player only getting the chance to fight him if they shot down all the other Z.O.E. planes across the campaign to gain access to the last two missions), it was ultimately still an optional boss which was only set apart from any other enemy by its extreme aggressiveness (being, like the other Z.O.E. planes, one of the only five in the entire game to actively hunt down the player) and an ability to launch missiles backwards it rarely actually takes advantage of.
  • Bowdlerise: One of the "bonus" tracks in the OST opens with a section backed by the briefing message from the final mission. For reasons unknown, a part from the end of the message, "go out there and give 'em hell", is changed into "go out there and give 'em all you've got".
  • Curb-Stomp Battle: The True Final Boss of the game, the ADF-01 FALKEN flown by the Z.O.E. Commander only takes two missiles to bring down, same as every other enemy fighter in the game. This lends itself to a rather underwhelming final duel compared to later games in the franchise.
  • Early-Installment Weirdness: Though some of the oddities of the first game - primarily the open-ended nature of that game and having the number of planes you've bought double as a "lives" system - were removed for this game in favor of systems much more familiar to modern fans, there are still a few weird things about this game too.
    • This was the game that properly introduced the concept of "superfighters", fictional planes that generally outperform everything else in the game, but in its case it set itself apart primarily in its ability to launch four standard missiles at a time rather than just two.
    • Moreover, in your first playthrough, the only superfighter you encounter is the Final Boss, who himself is the first enemy in the series who can launch missiles backwards, something nobody else in the series could do until the Gelb Team in Zero, four games and eight years later. The playable one doesn't make an appearance until a second runthrough of the game on the unique-to-this-game "Extra Mode", which makes some planes available earlier and replaces several others with entirely different craft, which would be removed in later games in favor of a more standard New Game Plus.
    • This game includes its own version of an extra-large fictional bomber craft, further paving the way for the large aerial fortresses later games would be known for after the first game ended with one, but uniquely to this case the bomber in question, the XB-10, isn't a unique, one-of-a-kind plane: depending on the route you take near the end of the game you end up destroying five of them, one in its hangar in one mission and another four mid-flight in a different mission.
  • Guy in Back: One of the few Ace Combat games to feature the guy, even when you're not flying a plane with a second seat. He talks incessantly during missions, pointing out bogeys and praising your for your kills.
  • Heroic Mime: Only very slightly subverted - Scarface One talks, but only when requesting assistance during landings.
  • Just Plane Wrong: Your RIO will warn you that there's a "bogey on our tail"... even if you're in a single seater aircraft and have no RIO. Also, it's not a "bogey" if you know it's hostile - in that case it's a bandit.
  • Mook Maker: Some enemy bases do this.
  • Multiple Endings: The game can end at any point starting from mission 19 depending on what the player does:
    • If the Z.O.E. craft is not shot down before all other targets are destroyed in mission 19, the game ends there with the liberation of St. Ark, and the player is treated to a credits roll of the squadron flying over the city.
    • If the Z.O.E. craft is shot down, the game continues to mission 20, where the player tracks down one of the Dragonet-class subs and then has to chase one of its cruise missiles before it impacts St. Ark. Failing to shoot it down treats the player to a Non-Standard Game Over of the missile separating and destroying the city, getting a message that the rebellion was successfully stopped but at a heavy cost, before immediately taking the player back to the main menu.
    • If the cruise missile is shot down, the game moves on to the final mission, where the player wipes out the last of the rebel forces at Fortress Intolerance, getting a different credits roll of the squadron flying over the ocean and then a bonus attract mode of Scarface One flying through a canyon as the game displays how quickly you completed every mission.
  • N.G.O. Superpower: A continent-wide rebellion.
  • Non-Standard Game Over: In the late-game, failing to stop a MIRV from hitting the city of St. Ark results in a unique cutscene and mission failure.
  • Nuclear Weapons Taboo: The first game in the series to start hinting at this, where the rebels are a threat because of missiles launched from submarines that can level an entire city - which the game takes care to mention are simply "Extra Powerful Cruise Missiles" and not nukes.
  • Optional Stealth: In the mission "Dead End", you're supposed to stay low to avoid radar contact, but you don't fail the mission immediately if you fly too high. The upside to staying stealthy until you reach the base is that you catch them off-guard and can kill some of the enemy planes before they can, or as they're attempting to, take off, including a pair of cargo planes that lead you to an alternate mission if you shoot them down.
  • Shout-Out: The cast of named enemy aces the player encounters are named after various grindhouse and genre films:
    • Two of the enemy aces early on are "Tallman" and "Metal Sphere".
    • Another two are "Max" and "Goose".
    • Another squadron of aces are named after Death Race 2000.
    • The very first ace encountered in the game is named after Superfly.
    • Another is named "Ricochet".
    • A trio of aces that appear in one mission are named "Dao", "Jian" and "Xiao", referring to the 1994 Hong Kong wuxia film Dāo Jiàn Xiào (also known as The Three Swordsmen).
    • A group of four aces are named "Fox Force Four", which recalls the "Fox Force Five" mentioned in Pulp Fiction.
      • Additionally, the group all have a shared pattern for their paint scheme, but differing colors for the individual planes, green, yellow, red and blue - all of which match up to the colors associated with the Star Fox team (this game releasing just a month after Star Fox 64 did).
    • The semi-fictional F-15S in the game bears a noticeable resemblance to the F-15J Kai+ from Patlabor 2: The Movie.
  • Soundtrack Dissonance: Some of the songs qualify, though not intentionally. It's still an arcade game through and through, but some of the mission's music sound a little too cheerful and peppy for the situation. Almost J-Pop type music.
    • On a meta level, several of the games tracks do not line up with the missions which they are named for. For example, the songs "Bear Tracks" and "Rising High" do not play over the missions they share their names with in-game.
  • Talkative Cover: Three-Dimensional Flight Shooting Game "ACE COMBAT 2".
  • The Revolution Will Not Be Vilified: Averted. You're fighting for the government.
  • Video Game Remake: Ace Combat: Assault Horizon Legacy.