🎯 ShireHub Score: 8.5 / 10

A 21-mission campaign, a 43-mission roguelite mode, and a soundtrack that competes with anything in the genre, made by three people over five years. If you've been waiting for an arcade flight game that takes itself seriously, this is still the best option available.

How it got made

Ace Combat 6 released in 2007. The next mainline entry — AC7 — didn't arrive until January 2019. Twelve years.

In 2015, three Ace Combat fans in Australia had been waiting long enough. Abi Rahmani (developer and artist), Matthew Nguyen (writer and producer), and Jose Pavli (composer) founded Sector D2 and started building their own. Rahmani had no prior Unreal Engine experience. He taught himself from scratch.

December 1, 2020: Project Wingman launched. By that point, AC7 had been out for a year, but what Sector D2 built stood on its own.

What the game is

You play Monarch, a mercenary pilot for Sicario Corps, hired by United Cascadia in a war of independence against the Pacific Federation. The setting is an alternate Earth reshaped by Ring of Fire tectonic disasters — new geography, new resources, and a war built around both.

Two modes: Campaign and Conquest.

✅ The Good

• Conquest Mode. 43-mission roguelite, single life. Start with basic jets, capture territories, upgrade your aircraft, watch Federation resistance escalate as your run progresses. Die once and it's over. This is where the game lives, and why it still has players.

• Soundtrack. Composed by Jose Pavli. Orchestral, escalates correctly with mission tension. Community consensus puts it on par with Ace Combat 7.

• 30+ aircraft with real differentiation. Smaller frames: nimble, 1–2 special weapon slots. Larger frames: 2–3 slots, trade agility for firepower. The AOA limiter toggle on advanced aircraft unlocks supermaneuverability. Loadout choice matters more here than in most Ace Combat entries.

• The world. Cascadia — alternate Earth reshaped by tectonic disaster. Floating rock formations, flooded coastal cities, storm-lit ocean. The 21 campaign missions don't repeat geography. It has visual identity.

❌ The Bad

• No mid-mission checkpoints. Campaign missions run 20–30 minutes. Die at the end and restart from the beginning. Deliberate design but it will frustrate players who don't want to re-fly the opening half of a long sortie.

• Minimal tutorial. Loadout system, AOA limiter, weapon-to-airframe matching, you work these out yourself. Genre veterans adapt fast. Anyone new will spend their first few missions confused about why their weapons aren't connecting.

• Close-up texture quality. Strong at distance and in motion. Ground structure textures are noticeably low-res up close. Doesn't hurt the flight experience; does show up in slower passes.

• No 5th-gen aircraft. Heavy on 4th-gen analogs — F-15, F-16, Su-27, F-14 variants. No equivalents for the F-22, F-35, Su-57, or J-20.

ShireHub Verdict

Mission Design & Variety-----8 / 10

Flight Model & Aircraft-----8.5 / 10

Conquest Mode-----9.5 / 10

Visuals-----7.5 / 10

Soundtrack-----10 / 10

ShireHub Score-----8.5 / 10

If you've played Ace Combat and want something in that space — this is the best available option right now. The weak points are real but none of them break the game. If you haven't, it's a complete, well-built flight game with more content than most entries in the genre — just expect a learning curve with no hand-holding.

💬 If you've played Project Wingman — which aircraft did you run in Conquest, and how far did you get? If you haven't — what's keeping you?

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