AC7 has the worst campaign gameplay in the series

I finally picked up the Ace Combat series after listening to and loving the music for years. I decided to play the games in chronological order. For AC4, AC5, and Zero, I used a PS2 emulator on my computer, while AC6 and AC7 I played on my Xbox One.

In my opinion, AC5 is the perfection of the series. Fantastic story, fantastic gameplay, and "Journey Home" will always leave me in tears. In my 15 or so years of gaming, no moment has been more powerful and happily tear-jerking to me than everyone joining you for that final mission to destroy the SOLG's control facility.

But AC7 takes the gameplay that made AC5 amazing, and throws it out of a 20-story window. There's no wingman commands, there's no ability to interact with your wingmen like choosing their planes like the last two games had, and your allies do literally nothing. I've watched friendlies hit targets with missiles and it doesn't do anything to the target. And the enemies just ignore them, putting a ton of unnecessary pressure on you.

I understand that AC7 was going for the whole "one man army" thing, but AC4 and Zero did it so much better. At least in those games, your allies could actually distract the enemy for you and even kill some things. Granted, not much (I think in my playthrough of Zero as a Knight Pixy had all of 20 aerial kills) but it was enough to make a difference.

AC7 just becomes more frustrating as the levels go on with how utterly incompetent the friendly AI is and the removal of mechanics that made previous games great. While the story of AC7 to me is pretty good, it's really just a rehash of every other story in the series involving Osea. Same shit, different day, and it's becoming stale. The story relies on nostalgia from previous games, and to me that actually degrades its narrative.

Here's to hoping an AC8 is original and brings back good AI and game mechanics.