I tried playing this a while ago, but I couldn't get a handle of the controls. Then I decided to give Ace Combat 2 a try, and a couple missions (and a Select button press) later and I felt like a real ace pilot. Came back to AC3E with my newfound skills, got every ending, and had a great time. There's a wide variety of planes to fly, in conjunction with a wide variety of missions to take on. The setpieces were so cool too, with the best highlights being Electrosphere, Geopelia, Tunnel Vision, and the Geofront missions. Hell, you even go to space in Zero Gravity! The branching story serves to contextualize the gameplay, and was pretty interesting in its own right too, with all its insane twists and developments. All things considered, AC3E is a great experience.

AC2's soundtrack mogs the FUCK out of AC3E's though. The former's little intro song is hyper than 95% of the latter's OST. Yeah yeah I get it, the lowkey vibing music compliments the tone yadda yadda yadda. Don't care, I like it better when the music dictates the tone with overwhelming force. Hopefully future AC soundtracks are more like 2 and not 3E.