Crimson Skies – One Happy Team…

Zeppelin is amazing. It’s there during all the missions, it actually engages enemies by itself, and you can also land on it at any time to shoot enemies using one of its guns. This kind of tackles the problem I have with most arcade sims: they are sims of one particular style: dogfight or foxfight, usually. While my favorite style is actual capital ships, like Rebel Galaxy did. Here, you kind of can pick between dogfights and capital ships. Kind of, because you don’t control the zeppelin.

The attention to small details is astonishing. Like the moving trains that you need to either rob or protect, and you can grab ammo from its open platforms. Later, there’s also a duel between two trains.
I also like how no-hands-holding new planes are. Nobody tells you there’s a plane you can find. You need to look for it, and usually you’ll find a new one in some bandit hideout.

I’m mindblown how bold this game is. First episode boss was a zeppeling transforming into mechanical spider.

I wasn’t sure what to expect of Crimson Skies High Road to Revenge. Another Ace Combat? As expected from its WW1 aircraft design, it’s much more a dogfight game than a foxfight. Although missiles are still a thing, you don’t get as many of them as in Ace Combat games, and they don’t home as much.
Visually, it’s surprisingly pleasant. It has this softness many Xbox games had, and they really make a point to showcase this with an endless sunset above the ocean.

Since it’s alternative post WW1, they also can immediately show of with huge zeppelins, which is impressive. And there are a few more cool details, like enemy pilots parachuting out of their planes.
There’s an arcade element to the gameplay: sometimes there are health pickups that you need to pick up.
Instead of just replacing your plane with a fancier one, you get upgrade system, albeit very basic and arcady. Basically a plane has three stats: armour, firepower and speed. I’m not a fan of how those upgrades are acquired , though. Instead of getting them by completing missions, you need to search for glinting tokens in the open world, usually performing some flights though tunnels to get them. Which wouldn’t be that bad if they would be marked on the map once you discover them, or if there was at least a count of how many there are in a mission.

Every plane has primary and secondary weapons, but they aren’t the same. First plane is pretty standard, with a machine gun and guided rockets. But the second plane you find has a slower firing cannon and a shotgun.

Instead of a mission, it’s more like a open world game on a smaller scale. You get missions by hailing other planes or stations. The problem though is there are no subtitles in this game, so you need to listen carefully what you ought to do.
Another impressive feature is that you can land into your zeppelin and control one of the three turrets, switching between them.