Holy shit this game feels so good. Being Trigger was so goddamn cool. The Spare Squadron missions were pure kino...

I'm playing 4 right now and gonna play 4,5,0 on ps2, 6 on threeshitty and then buy 7. so far 4 has been really great. looks and plays fantastic for an early ps2 title. also saving translated jp version of 3 as an icing for the marathon.

It references the older games a lot, but the main story is it's own thing mostly.

Only major point that kinda matters is Harling.

You'll miss out on the fanservice so I'd recommend you to play the ps2 trilogy first.

actually if you want to start out i'd go with AC5, since it gives you a little bit of insight into the characters, events, and general lore since it's literally a prequel.
Also, AC4 sets in Erusea, so you understand a lot better some of the places and chars in AC7

As someone who jumped into the series with 7 I'm definitely satisfied although have absolutely no idea about the world of Strangereal. The story of Trigger is wonderful though.

If you want to know 99% of the big picture or references of previous Ace Combats, play 4, 5, 0 then 3 and X.

>Sheit I don't know if my PC can handle a 360 emulator
Don't worry, pretty much no one can, and those who do have to deal with an incredibly broken and glitchy mess

Depends on exactly what you want from them.
2 has next to no plot and is really primitive since it's on PS1 and early in the series, but if all you want to do is kill things then it's great.
3 has kinda bad gameplay (it's worse than 2's, what the fuck) but it does have a good plot and it has branching missions so that's cool. You can play a mission where you defend a base and then start a new campaign and defect to the other side so you get to attack the base instead, stuff like that.
4 has a good plot and introduced a lot of good things to the series but you probably won't appreciate them that much since you'll already be used to them from 7
5 has a lot of gimmick missions and a plot that's very complex but also kinda anime and badly written, not sure if you'd like that or not. Some people do, some people don't.
0 has some good ace squadrons. It's basically a game about ace squadron fights. It also has some really quotable dialogue, which is weird since most of the dialogue is actually really bad since the translation was kinda shit. It's somehow bad but also really entertaining at the same time.
6 has maybe the best gameplay in the entire series, depending on what you like. Planes feel a lot heavier than in 7 and there's a lot of ground support, but it also has massive battlefields so you can just tear things up. You get hundreds of kills per mission, it's crazy. Unfortunately the plot is boring and the dialogue is terrible. It's also 360 exclusive so that's pretty limiting.
X is good but it's on the PSP so that sucks.
X2 is just bad (and still PSP only so that still sucks).
Assault Horizon is fucking terrible since it's built around an autopilot mechanic, avoid it. It was so bad it nearly killed the series. Avoid avoid avoid.
Infinity is shut down, you can't play it, sorry. You missed out on a bunch of shit free to play mechanics and terrible grind, poor you.
It's good, start with it. Emulate the old ones if you like it and want more.

Don't avoid the assault horizon OST tho. That shit is rad.

youtu.be/NofHya92HAo

tfw not enough GiTS or Patlaborlike futuristic settings

Oh fuck, I forgot to mention the very first game. I'd say check it out just out of curiosity, but that's it. I find it way too old to be fun. Serious hardware limitations, serious gameplay limitations since they were still trying to figure out how the series should work.
The custom colour scheme feature in AH was really good too. If only it and the OST were in a good game.

I played ACAH and desu it wasn't that bad. I kinda enjoyed the CQ dogfight mechanic. It wasn't even half as cool as AC7 but I liked it.

What pisses me off is that I didn't get the chance to turn rogue and menace both sides of the conflict.

I mean why would I be loyal to the guys who threw me in jail falsely and sent me on repeated suicide missions? Fuck that.

But did you replay it? Because half the problem with CRA is that it's super scripted so every playthrough is nearly identical. You have to take exactly the same route fighting the same planes in the same order every time. Very dull.

True, I didn't really replay it. And I did replay some AC7 missions.

Probably because they delayed the game several times already and folks already waited like a decade for an ace combat sequel.

Tried playing it again a little bit before ac7 release to see if I was just being hard on it.
Everything just felt really bad.