Sid Meier’s Ace Patrol: Pacific Skies

this game has decently thrilling battle engagements. The dogfights are intense and demand strategic maneuvering, with every encounter feeling like a high-stakes chess match in the sky depending on the difficulty you play on lol. The game strikes a balance between accessibility for newcomers and depth for veterans, ensuring that players are consistently engaged. While the missions can occasionally feel repetitive, the excitement of outmaneuvering enemies and delivering precise strikes keeps the adrenaline flowing. It's a must-try for fans of aerial combat rts games.

As good as the original. A few more options. Must buy at it's price.

compared to Ace Patrol, Pacific Skies really leaves a lot to be desired, there's more bugs and if anything less features. Also it seems in Pacific Skies damage is linked to the difficulty whereas in Ace Patrol it isn't. this manifests in pacific skies as downing planes in a single attack vs having to make a few passes in Ace Patrol. (this may be a reflection of the technological advancement between ww1 and ww2 however for gameplay purposes it's a miss)

I came here immediately after Ace Patrol, and I was expecting a marked improvement. I did get some of that, but this one has mostly been a miss for me for a few reasons.

First, mission selection is out. The game tells you what you'll be doing, and the only way to get around that is by saving before you check the new mission, return to the main menu and reload the save. I think I recognize intent to allow players to jump right into the action, but I personally would've preferred to be able to look at my options and make a decision on my own.

While I appreciate the concept of managing and mitigating persistent damage, it wasn't a necessary improvement to make. There should have at least been an option to turn this off or make it more manageable than sticking it out until the end of a battle, and it makes choosing pilot nicknames largely trivial because only 'Grease Monkey' is going to have any lasting value, seeing as it's the only thing outside of completing a battle that allows you to repair between missions.

Disappointingly, upgrading planes seems to be mostly pointless. Upgrades previously persisted across subsequent unlocked planes because they were technically made to the pilots flying them, whereas upgrades are made to the planes in this game instead. Consequently, losing planes in this game means that the upgrades made to them are also lost.

Pacific Skies feels like it's trying too hard to be "more advanced" than it's predecessor. I really do appreciate other aspects of it, like the litany of new maneuvers and the fact that a lot of them can only be executed in certain energy states, but I really could only recommend this to die-hard Ace Patrol fans.

Pros
- Lots of fun missions with scores for replayability
- touchscreen support and touchpad on Steam Deck works great although the icons on the screen are just a little too small
- cloud support
- great music
- Can play as the Japanese or Americans with real/realistic missions based on WWII
- The pilots have voice acting
- You can choose to have males or both genders which is a nice touch
- injuries carry on to the next mission
- Even if you fail the mission you continue to the next because failing missions becomes part of your lore/campaign

Cons
- When it comes to upgrading, choosing pilots, and maneuvers, I have no idea what I'm doing
- Running on a desktop requires compatability mode for Windows 8

Ripped out the code from the first air patrol and put out this trash which doesn't even work correctly half the time. just play the first one.

Nice little game. Screen is small when you load it up, but you can maximize it. I had some trouble with it not starting, but verifying my files in steam fixed it. Nice to just take a quick fight, for a break, but beware you may find that "just one more dogfight" kicks in and you have played an hour or more.

Love all of
Sid Meier's games

Simple butfun

game crashes a lot. I like the first one more because it doesn't crash all the time.