Im not even sure how this game recieved a great rating. But I have a different point of view.
As far as Ace Combat 5 go I didn't like the gameplay or sound. You could hardly hear the missles being shot out of the plane and worst of all the explosions are terrible. Most of the missions are simple others are somewhat hard. The voice acting is fairly done and there is allot of talking during each mission and of course thats the good thing about the game because it felt like you were part of a movie ( Top Gun ). The other problem is the gameplay when you are flying upside down during certain missions its so hard to tell if your too low to the ground or really high in the sky, plus it can give headaches to certain type of people who aren't use to going upside down and turning around in circles constantly just to hit the target, if you play the game on hard you'll really get killed.
You can command your partners to watch your back and do their job but often the AI is so bad they don't do exacally what you tell them to do. Somtimes they'll play on their own and might leave you wide open for a missle attack. I remember playing the game and someone was behind me shooting me like h*ll and I couldn't figure out who ? what ? when ? and where it was coming from due to the clouds and messy controls.
The graphics are not all that good either when you compare the game to Airforce Delta Strike on the Xbox and its also done by Konami as well. The cut scenes in Ace Combat 5 look really great but the game itself is nothing like that ! At all. When I seen the trailers for the game last year when I first bought the game I was shocked and stunned so I told myself " I have to get this game soon before it becomes rare someday." I went out and bought it, ended up with headaches every time I started a mission and got through 1 hour of gameplay.
Im not putting down the game for anyone who is a fan of the series. I just never got into it. Games involving air crafts, jets, war, etc. Should be well done and feel exacally like your part of the action. Ace Combat 5 felt slow, and boring at the same time. You have to literly mash down your button just to fly the d*mn planes faster and even though the planes show how fast your moving it still looks extremelly slow.