Phoenix Squadron : Azure Stars

tl;dr This isn't just too early for Early Access, this is "not even the engine is ready" early. Only hardcore Ace Combat fans who have incredible patience should try this game in its current state. ----- This is such a weird review to type out, so bear with me. While it's not directly stated, Phoenix Squadron: Northern Star's store page clearly bills it as (eventually) a spiritual redo of Ace Combat Infinity, a free-to-play flight arcade game on the PlayStation 3 where up to eight players could take on a six-minute co-op mission with hundreds of enemy targets. The important difference here is that Infinity was developed and produced by Bandai Namco, a multi-billion dollar company, whereas Phoenix Squadron: Northern Star is developed by a single person. That isn't necessarily a bad thing; many games have been developed by one person or a very small group of less than ten people. In fact, [url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/895870/Project_Wingman/]Project Wingman[/url] fits that description and is a massive love letter to the Ace Combat franchise [url=https://steamcommunity.com/id/slycooperfan1/recommended/895870](see my review)[/url]. However, most games developed by such small teams are not multiplayer experiences. Project Wingman itself is a single-player game. If one person wants to develop the next Ace Combat Infinity, it's going to require a lot of skill, a lot of finesse, and a lot of time. None of that is present here at this moment. If you download and run Phoenix Squadron: Northern Star right now, you'll find yourself at a menu screen where half of the options are not available, not completed, or just some plain text. Buttons take two clicks to register. There are zero, absolutely zero, control rebinding options, which really sucks because the control settings that are in the game are kind of hilarious; I've never seen someone use claw hands to play an Ace Combat game on keyboard and mouse until this game. Once you start the first mission, you need to pray that your plane didn't spawn underground for an instant mission failure as other reviews and comments have mentioned. If you survived that hurdle, you're still not safe because you're thrust into the thick of it with missile alerts already going off, and I hope you're using a 1080p monitor or lower because any larger like my 1440p means that the game's effects (including those missiles) only appear in a 1920x1080 area at the top-left of your screen. Once you inevitably get shot down, the menu doesn't even appear, so you'll have to force quit the game. While I understand the developer's position that this is a very early game, and it's clearly labeled as a product in Alpha, it feels like the developer just downloaded Unreal Engine less than a month ago, played around with some things, and put it up on Steam. This game is not in Alpha; this is a pre-alpha [b][i]concept[/i][/b] and the gameplay engine isn't fully constructed yet. Despite this, what's most bizarre is that the developer [b][i]insists[/i][/b] they don't see any bugs on their end. They're constantly blaming Unreal Engine for the issues, and telling people to restart the game to fix them. The idea that restarting a game will magically fix its bugs is beyond me. If that actually works, then there's a problem with initial configuration that needs to be investigated. "Restart the game when you launch it for the first time" is not an instruction any player should ever have to follow. First impressions are everything. Speaking of those first impressions, Phoenix Squadron: Northern Star's Steam presence looks exactly like the game, like the developer just got access to Steamworks a week ago and is tinkering around to figure things out. This is evident from things like a soundtrack DLC being listed with a release date of eight months from now; the game being listed as part of a non-existent "Phoenix Squadron" franchise; those achievements that are typical of poor-quality games like "get hit" or "dat reference lol"; a storage space requirement of 15 GB when the game actually takes up less than 2 GB; improper use of forum topics as categories; and, most egregiously, [b]use of the announcements system, forums, and store page to discourage negative reviews.[/b] It's never a good sign on Steam when a developer reacts harshly to negative reviews that only exist because the game is deserving of negative reviews. The dev's defense for all of this is that they have no one to play-test the game, despite a high number of Ace Combat fans chomping at the bit for a game like this. It's obvious that they simply haven't gone looking for anyone and instead chose to throw the executable onto the Steam store. It's like that surprised Pikachu meme: spend little effort to make a barely-game, post it on the Steam store, then act surprised when people give negative feedback. Even the Early Access notes say "I will take suggestions and some criticism, in-fact I highly request it". Given their actions, these words seem empty. I do look forward to an eventual flight arcade game that offers intense co-op multiplayer like Ace Combat Infinity. If Phoenix Squadron: Northern Star becomes that game, I will be the first person to delete my negative review, praise the game in a new and positive review, and share it with my friends to play with them. But that future is way too far away. For now, I strongly recommend that you stay away from this unless you're an Ace Combat fanatic and you're absolutely, 110% willing to provide detailed feedback on a broken game that is years away from completion.