Today Ugamehome opened pre-registration in Japan for an upcoming Nintendo Switch game titled Ranten Eishi: Blue Guardians.
The title simply means "Guardians of the Blue Sky" in Japanese, and the game can be acquired with a 30% discount on the 6,600 yen price ($47 at the current exchange rate) upon pre-registration, bringing it down to 4,800 yen ($34). The release date in Japan is July 20, 2023, exclusively for the Switch.
Customers who pre-register also get a special "Phoenix" skin for the FC-1 Xiaolong fighter in the game, portrayed above.
If the name of the fighter I mentioned did not clue you into the nature of the game, it's basically an Ace Combat knockoff bearing obvious similarities with the popular franchise by Project Aces and Bandai Namco, but featuring primarily Chinese-built fighters, including the Shenyang FC-31 Gu Ying, the Chengdu J-20 Weilong, and the Shenyang J-15 Feisha. It's defined as "a military simulation and flight shooting game in which you fly state-of-the-art Chinese fighters and go from soldier to general."
It features a variety of missions, 2v2 and 5v5 multiplayer, and promises (sic) "a realistic experience that cannot be found in any other game" and faithfully reproduced battlefields that reproduce real exercises, claiming that "you're the only one that can defend the peaceful blue sky!".
The announcement goes on to claim that the game features "high-quality graphics that make full use of a proprietary flight simulation engine reproducing the smallest details realistically" and a "realistic weather system" using "real-time simulation to reproduce an unpredictable battlefield environment."
There is also a survival mode and story mode that lets players enjoy "an operational environment that reproduces an actual training exercise, battles between state-of-the-art fighter jets, and even combat against futuristic weapons like giant battle drones, all permeated by an immersive sense of intensity." Details on the actual content and themes of the story have not been disclosed at the moment.
Very little information is available about Ugamehome, besides the fact that the company is based in Xiamen, China, and it was previously specialized in outsourcing services. It now focuses on publishing local games overseas, "to allow more foreign players to appreciate the depth of Chinese games."
You can check out a trailer released today below. One thing is for sure: given the current situation in the Indo-Pacific and around Taiwan, this doesn't sound suspicious at all, right? ...right.
Incidentally, if you want to enjoy an actual Ace Combat game, just yesterday we saw the release of a full fan translation for the PlayStation classic Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere.
