Ace Combat 8 rocks. PC Gamer’s reviewer scored it a 92%, and I’ve been savoring the campaign, because I know it could be years until we get another bombastic flight sim melodrama of its kind. Although I do have another Ace Combat lined up to play after: Ace Combat Zero, which was included as a free pre-order bonus with AC8, and subsequently responsible for the majority of the new game’s negative launch day reviews.
Not because Zero is bad—it’s a series fan-favorite—but because Bandai Namco inexplicably bundled it into the AC8 launcher, meaning you can’t download this 3.2GB port of a 2006 PS2 game without the 136 gigabytes of Wings of Theve. This decision was not well received.
But now there’s a happy ending: in an update on the Steam page on Tuesday, Bandai Namco announced that Ace Combat Zero “will be made available as a standalone application on Steam.” That doesn’t mean it will be made available for purchase: Zero was a pre-order bonus, so only those who bought Ace Combat 8 ahead of launch will have it in their Steam libraries. No change there. You’ll just be able to download and launch it independently if you already own it. It’s currently going through “final quality assurance and compatibility testing” ahead of the split.
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The biggest benefit from the change (aside from potentially freeing up 136GB of precious SSD space) is that Zero will now support Steam Cloud saves. Judging by the nearly 400 comments on the post in less than 24 hours, the news has gone over very well—though there are also quite a few requests for the standalone Zero to include achievements, which were part of the console release.
There’s no date given for Zero’s emancipation, but presumably it won’t be too far off.
