Ace Combat Assault Horizon Legacy Plus (3DS) Review

Ace Combat Assault Horizon Legacy Plus, as ridiculous as the name is, is a sort of re-issue of Ace Combat Assault Horizon, which hit the 3DS back in 2011. Assault Horizon itself was a remake of 1997’s Ace Combat 2. So as you can imagine, this game has received quite a beating if it were to be a dead horse. Presumably the last time that the game will be touched, it’s a question that’s worth asking – does Legacy Plus warrant another purchase or is it simply not worth bothering with at all? Unfortunately, it looks to be the latter rather than the former.

Surprisingly, the game has a story that follows you through most of the main campaign. You play as an ace fighter pilot named Phoenix, who is trying to suppress rebel forces as they attempt to mount a coup de grace to the USEA allied forces. While the presence of a story in the game was surprising, the execution of the story was not – it’s merely a very shallow contextual backdrop to the game’s multiple battles and dogfights you’ll participate in throughout the game.

Similar to games like Starfox and other games of this ilk, Legacy Plus tells most of its story to you through babbling talking heads during battle. Most of the game consists of rather simplistic missions that require you to eliminate both ground and air units using a selection of weapons, although this selection is unusually sparse for a game of this style.

Legacy Plus’ existence is a bizarre one, to the point where it feels like somebody somewhere was insisting that another game get put out to show off the functionality of the New 3DS consoles. One of these is the new control options which don’t necessarily justify their inclusion (or an entirely new retail re-issue) but still are a nice touch. The C-Stick gives players controls over the camera during flight while the extra shoulder buttons help adjust the tilt of the plane itself.

The big shame about Legacy Plus is just how monotonous its gameplay is. You pick an aircraft, you get subjected to a relatively tiring story, and you find a target and destroy it. You eventually work your way up through the game from simple battles between two to three ships to full on dogfights with larger crews. It’s something that we’ve seen work really well in games like Starfox and Panzer Dragoon but in Legacy Plus it just amounts to chasing an enemy, holding a button until they explode, and then moving onto the next. There’s no variety and nothing interesting and quite frankly it gets quite tedious at times.

Without a doubt the biggest attention bringer to Legacy Plus is the integration with the Amiibo figurines. It’s a simple feature – utilising certain figurines unlocks new planes for the player. It’s positively bizarre and to make things better these planes have new weaponry too. Unfortunately, most of this weaponry can be unlocked naturally in the game later on, meaning that the Amiibo do nothing more than add skins. The functionality is nice but personally I don’t think it would warrant a purchase, especially if you’ve previously played or purchased Assault Horizon.

Visually speaking the game looks pretty good but it doesn’t look any different from the original game, although load times have been improved slightly thanks to the new hardware. A game like this works well with a 3D presentation too, and the super stable 3D especially is helpful here since so much can be going on screen and the effect doesn’t break when such a thing happens. There are some low resolution textures (especially when closer to the ground) but generally speaking the game looks very crisp.

There’s no denying that Ace Combat Assault Horizon Legacy Plus will appeal to any fans of aviation or flight simulators, albeit with a few dips into the unrealistic. But this re-release feels lazy. There’s little to no new content, the additions that are exclusive to the New 3DS consoles aren’t necessarily game changers and the Amiibo support is nothing more than a few extra skins.