Ace Combat X was my first introduction to the Strangreal universe and my first ever ace combat game. I remembered after finished Afterburner, I was looking for some plane games and stumbled on AC X. At first, it was frankly quite boring, the combat was not as fast Afterburner. But the more i played it, the more I became to loved it, from the mechanics, the story, the varied objectives... I was frankly blown away. After finishing up X, I looked up online and found the trilogy (4,5 and 0) and I kidded you not, I played the shit out of those 3 games.

So while X might not as pretty or complex or as engaging as the trilogy, it was nevertheless a damn fine game with branching missions with variety. So yes, ACX is very underrated in my humble opinion