Ex's 2016 beat list:
55. Ace Combat: Joint Assault|PSP|2010|flight combat|6h 26m|4/10Ace Combat: Joint Assault takes everything Ace Combat X: Skies of Deception did right, and does it entirely wrong. Released four years after Ace Combat X, Joint Assault does not aurally or graphically improve upon its predecessor. Rather it focuses on the two complaints people had with Ace Combat X, that ACX was too easy and too short. So in order to make itself more difficult and longer, Joint Assault uses copious asinine artificial difficulty methods to cheat the player of a fair experience.
The best planes are locked behind New Game+, the best parts are locked behind required grinding of previously beaten missions. The rate at which you can acquire upgrades is laboriously slow and unrewarding. Halfway through the campaign, each and every mission becomes a chore to complete. This is due to mission designs hinging on gimmick concepts like constantly dodging a rail gun, flying a 747 through a mine laden canyon, or destroying continued variations of the same stupid air fortress. Boss battles are infuriating due to bosses themselves having no regard for realistic aerial physics whatsoever. Especially the final boss who in a standard jet, can stop mid-air, and shift back and forth dodging missiles like a ninja, without stalling. None of your own jets can even remotely do that. Disregard if you hit the boss with a missile it magically doesn't hurt him. Also most of the missions are balanced for co-op play, with no regard to auto-adjusting to the single player experience. Which means playing these missions single player is just nightmare after nightmare.
Without going into truly excruciating further detail, Ace Combat: Joint Assault is a disgusting mess of a game. And I'm saying that as someone who's beaten six other Ace Combat games before this one. The plot is junk, you never get to fly with AI wingmen, missions are way too long, etc. Joint Assault has zero regard for actually entertaining the player or offering a fair challenge, but rather goes out of its way to be inconvenient and frankly not fun at all. (Seriously, once you reach mission 14, just call the game done. The long march of crap to finish mission 21 just isn't worth it.) Joint Assault is aptly named, because this is a two-fold assault of bad game design and joyless flight.
Edit: Just did my research and confirmed that Ace Combat X and Joint Assault did not share the same director, lead game designer, or assistant game designers. Totally different teams, and that explains
everything.
