Boring gameplay, embarassing story, good for the trash bin
* Graphics: yeah, yeah, it's very good. Plane models are A+. And, movements are smooth. And, details are fine. And, who cares? All the rest is plain crap.
* Gameplay: muahah @ whoever calls it "slick", "smooth", and good in general. Here is the gameplay of this game, you just have to remember a few rules: a) throttle up up up to reach target, b) throttle down down down when you are close to it, to have faster turning and gaining advantage, c) watch out, doing b) too much leads to stall, d) fire missile or just spray cannons and pray.
The above is horribly annoying as it soon becomes insanely repetitive. Keeping the missile foresight in line using the xbox controller is one of the most effective ways to waste your time, as it's simply impossible at closing distance, and so damn easy at long distances that you'll ask yourself if you are playing or watching a video.
All the above is valid for air targets only, ground stuff is very easy to hit and the only problem is avoiding to crash. But then again, no one wants to use ground-attack planes as in almost every mission your wingmen will show their retardness and be unable to defend you from air attacks, so you'd better take care of that yourself.
* Story: ridiculos. Some kind of trashy manga-style abortion which manages to mix up: european medieval knights, castles, boring-like-hell drama-love story, modern air combat and an ultrafake parallel reality of the real world. I suppose calling the evil guys "Estovakians" instead of "Russians" saves a lot of embarassing moments, but that's really the apotheosis of trash.
A good part of the game Missions are plain unispired, lack a good degree of sense, they are all are repetitive and tend to be regular in their mediocrity. The last mission is broken, as the final boss is, in the best manga style, almost unbeatable - not in the challenging, but in the frustrating way of the word: immense health, missiles 99% don't hit him, he has way more speed/agility/weapons than you, so you just need to devote A LOT of time trying desperate tactics based mostly on luck rather than skill, and just pray to hit him.
Targeting systems deserves a particular de-merit note: first it's very confusing, when you get used to it it turns out to be simply badly made. You'll never find that SAM which is targeting you unless it's a mission target (and it won't...), nor any other threat unrelated to objectives, unless you look really close to the screen, find it with your eyes and manually target it. What a crappy design.
All in all, this game is pure trash save for the graphics. Just forget to play a good modern air combat simulation, you'll find yourself in some sort of fairy-tale story with planes, boring, repetitive and frustrating.