Early entry to Ace Fight 8: Wings of Theve is now accessible to house owners of the sport’s Deluxe Version, however the launch has been soured as a consequence of writer Bandai Namco’s dealing with of 1 explicit pre-order bonus.
Pre-ordering any model of Ace Fight 8 comes with a replica of Ace Fight Zero: The Belkan Warfare, and longtime followers had been particularly wanting ahead to this re-release as a result of this 2006 recreation by no means appeared on something apart from PlayStation 2.
PC gamers had been led to consider their copy of The Belkan Warfare can be a separate product, as a result of that is the best way it really works on PS5 and Xbox Sequence X/S. One thing modified on Steam, nonetheless, to make the sport DLC for Ace Fight 8 as a substitute. Ought to it stay this fashion, it presents plenty of related issues, similar to having to obtain an enormous trendy recreation to entry a relatively tiny previous recreation, and the shortcoming to run The Belkan Warfare individually on weaker {hardware}, such because the Steam Deck.
It isn’t what the sport’s Steam itemizing used to say. Sooner or later, the outline was modified from “Ace Fight Zero: The Belkan Warfare is a standalone software separate from the Ace Fight 8: Wings of Theve full recreation” to: “Ace Fight Zero: The Belkan Warfare (Steam model) is out there as a DLC executable launched individually from the bottom recreation. Ace Fight 8: Wings of Theve have to be put in with a view to make the most of DLCs.”
It isn’t clear when the shop web page was up to date to change the wording of the pre-order bonus, however you possibly can see this Reddit publish from earlier this month the place gamers surprise how The Belkan Warfare was going to be accessible come launch.
Within the publish, a consumer who pre-ordered Ace Fight 8 on Steam was unable to search out The Belkan Warfare of their Steam library. The consumer connected a screenshot of the sport’s Steam web page the place it clearly exhibits the older model of the verbiage, therefore their confusion.
That very same quiet-change is referenced in lots of Ace Fight 8’s damaging Steam opinions, and it is among the many hottest matters on the Ace Fight subreddit in the intervening time, overshadowing discussions concerning the recreation itself.
Making The Belkan Warfare an add-on reasonably than standalone has important drawbacks. For one, you should obtain and set up the complete recreation of AC8 – ~135GB – with a view to play a port of a 2006 recreation that’s itself below 4GB.
As one Reddit consumer famous, this additionally prevents The Belkan Warfare from being simply playable on Steam Deck. “I had no hope of AC8 working on my Steam Deck,” the consumer wrote. “I preordered it on Steam particularly to play Zero on Deck. As a result of we had been promised a standalone app.”
Ace Fight 8 is considerably extra demanding on Steam Deck {hardware}, however a re-release of a 20-year-old recreation is not prone to be. Being nested below a unique recreation additionally means The Belkan Warfare does not have its personal achievements, nor help cloud saves. Play time, captured screenshots and all different profile-related gadgets should now additionally exist below the umbrella recreation.
Provided that The Belkan Warfare has its personal set up folder inside Ace Fight 8’s listing, it could technically be launched individually by finding its .exe file, however the primary recreation must be put in regardless. That is particularly irritating as none of those points exist on consoles, the place the sport is a standalone app with all that entails.
On the time of writing, Ace Fight 8 has a Combined consumer evaluate score on Steam, based mostly on over 1,350 opinions. It will likely be attention-grabbing to see if that modifications when the official 2nd October launch date arrives.
Eurogamer has contacted Bandai Namco for remark.