First of all I love this game.

Sky Rogue is an arcade rogue-like version of Ace Combat 04 as far as I'm concerned. Ace Combat 04 was the pinnacle of cool and fun. Sky Rogue has great momentum. Weapons that are excellent to use. Rather than have a limited stock they use a reload function where weapons auto reload slowly at first and faster if you upgrade them. It does mean you don't have to count your bullets which is nice. No more going back to base to restock. Instead going back to base gives you two things 1) It lets you repair your ship and 2) It lets you adjust your loadout. Not just of weapons but of planes too. While it sounds great at first maybe you can kit out one plane for dogfighting and another for bombing runs. Start with one finish with the other. But landing at the base will eventually cost the money you've been earning. There's there's no real incentive to setup two planes. Instead you just pick one for the run and stick with it.

I like the polygon graphic design. I like the selection of weaponry. You have a good mix of targeted and untargeted, air and ground and both. There's a few special choices in there as well. You get to skin the planes and you don't even have to pay for them not even in game money. The level can get long for completionist like myself. Killing every plane and every ground target yields the most money so there's something to be gained for it. The controls are tight enough that while I sometimes felt annoyed that my plane is so much faster than the enemies it made it hard to stay behind them to pull off a shot. I never felt like I didn't know how to get where I wanted to go.

As if often the case with games like this enemies that are like you and dangerous the way you are dangerous are often not the most annoying. Enemies with missiles are enemies you can dodge or flare out. It's instead the enemies with guns that are the most annoying because though they are slow and easy to put down. Getting close meaning shaving off a bit of armor that missiles don't touch. Many a run where I had to rearmor myself not because I got hit by any missiles but because I got nicked by like 30 different guns.

I'm only 70 hours into the game and having a lot of fun playing around with it. Almost ready to take it seriously and try to go all the way. I'd really love to see the ribbon flight at the end of a run. In Ace Combat 04 when you finished a mission you'd see a tiny replay of your mission where you were a ribbon with an arrow on it and the enemies were ribbons of a different color. It just a cool little touch that often made you want to watch and see the dogfights from the outside. Because of the lack of orientation that I go into in the QOL section there's entire fight that I'm not sure if the AI is super skilled or I just lost direction. I'd swear sometimes the enemy will loop and twirl faster and tighter than me and being able to do a replay would really help me "study the game tape" as it were.

QOL improvements.

I don't see it happening on this game but there are some Quality of Life improvements I'd like to see in a Sky Rogue 2.

1. Radar - Being able to see where there are planes around you could help immensely as by the time I get to day five plants are just swarming you. You don't really have time to confirm any kills because planes from 3 other directions are targeting you throwing you into a scatter just to escape them. Which means you never really have your bearings and that's frustrating. Both because you lose the ability to plan because I just spent an hour on a day five run that I thought was going rather well until then and had to reheal twice because I kept getting glanced. Radar would be a HUGE improvement allowing me to see even a mini map of the area for bombing runs and being able to orient myself in dogfights. Even if the map is limited in scope even if the map only shows planes and not missiles that would be an incredible help.

2. Landing screen. Since you have unlimited bullets the only reason to go back to the home base is to restock your armor. The first one appears to be free and after that it costs money. That's fair. What's not fair is they don't show how much money it costs to restock until you push the button to land. Here's why that's unfair. A) You can crash into your base B) the land button appears only when you're about 10 feet from the landing strip. Meaning you have a split second to hit land or you crash and die. I propose rather than charging on landing. Charge after. Let me land. Show much how much to repair damage and then i can actually assess whether or not to do so. That introduces a small moment of invincibility since you need to be able to take off regardless of what was heading towards you upon landing but I don't think it's that balance breaking. It would prevent scenes where when racing back to the base you don't realize you don't have enough money because what happens then is by the time you find out how much money you need you're so close you basically wreck on the home base. If I could bounce off the home base or if I could land and then get rejected for the price either would be an improvement. It also doesn't help that the color and placement of the price isn't good. It's light text against what will be the light text of the landing strip.

3. Upgrade Control - This is a personal one as the type of gamer I am. There was a game called Prototype and it was a lot of fun but one of the complaints was that it was too easy. You became too powerful too fast. A reviewer one suggested just not upgrading. Sit on the upgrades until you feel it get hard and then do an upgrade and the game felt much more fun. Similarly I don't like how after a successful run I have to pick upgrades. I'd like to be able to earn the upgrade and then pick them. There's room in the main menu for that. And it would let me pick a single upgrade and then do a run with it and see how it feels rather than earning five upgrades trying to do a run earning three more and then losing track of what upgrades I wanted to play with are. The system of upgrading is fine but I just want more control over when I upgrade.

4. Better Weapon Management - Something like just being able to remove a weapon would be much better than having to scroll and select "No Weapon". When selecting a weapon it should highlight how much Payload and how much Avionics it's using. So when I'm selecting bombs and suddenly find my payload full I can figure out which bomb is using more without having to open the weapon listings and find the numbers or find "No Weapon" and start over.

Wishlist

1. Ribbon Mode - Full replays are great but imo the ribbon mode replay is just small enough to not be intrusive while being fun/useful
2. Attitude Button - I think we have a few buttons left in a controller. Having one that would just level out your attitude would be great. I guess I still reach for it all these years later to level myself out.
3. Bestiary - It's small but something off the targets with a sentence would be useful. I never have time to look at a badget up close as I'm just smacking it and running for instance.
4. Test Mode - When looking through the weapons the numbers don't tell the whole story. While there is a free run mode and that's great. It'd be faster if there was something to put on weapon selection that would just show you. Something like a single attack by a single plan and then you could just see a 10 second clip of what it looked like to fire that. Maybe two clips if it's Air and Ground targeting. It'd be nice but it's like everything in this section it's not like a frothing need.

Peak