Players fly fighter aircraft and must complete a variety of mission objectives, such as destroying squadrons of enemy planes or protecting a base from an invading unit.

The Japanese release of Electrosphere has since been re-evaluated, with critics praising its ambition, overarching story, and additions to the series' gameplay formula.

[3] An automatic search engine which documents relevant information on the game's organizations, locations, characters, and technology, can be accessed between missions.

[4][5] The most notable of these are the branching paths: depending on decisions made by the player in certain parts of the game called "Turning Points," the plot will change, leading to one of five possible endings.

Both megacorporations, locked into a fierce power struggle in the continent of Usea, eventually declare direct corporate warfare against each other in 2040, prompting the Universal Peace Enforcement Organization (UPEO), an international peacekeeping force with dwindling influence, to respond to stop the Intercorporate War from worsening.

The characters of Ace Combat 3 include peacekeepers, mercenaries, company men, diplomats, scientists, news presenters, and terrorists.

The main cast is composed of fighter pilots affiliated with either a peacekeeping organization, one of two rivaling private military companies, or a group of revolutionary terrorists.

In 2040, UPEO deploys their Special Armed Response Force (SARF), a fighter squadron led by Commander Park that includes Nemo, the player character, and Rena Hirose, a prodigous flying ace, to respond to incursions by Neucom in no-fly zones.

It is ultimately revealed that the conflict was orchestrated by Ouroboros, led by Dision, who had secretly been "sublimated" into the Electrosphere and made into an AI copy following a cover-up assassination attempt by General Resource aimed at destroying the mind-uploading technology he was testing.

[8] Due to development constraints, the plot in the international versions of Ace Combat 3 was heavily cut down, with characters, backstory, and its multiple endings being completely removed.

Directors Takuya Iwasaki and Atsushi and producer Takashi Fukawa led a team of other Namco employees during production, most of whom had worked on Ace Combat 2.

[9][10] The team focused primarily on making the storyline a key mechanic, which would change and affect the gameplay based on player progress and decision.

[11] [12] During development, the team worked to make Electrosphere visually distinct from other combat flight simulators and create new technological breakthroughs.

[9] This led to the game's futuristic, science fiction setting and world, which was created through combining 1970s city designs and modern-day architecture.

Programmer Kenji Nakano created a workaround to this problem by rendering far-away objects with far fewer polygons than they were up-close (level-of-detail), which took two months to implement.

[10] Tetsukazu Nakanishi, who had previously contributed tracks to Ace Combat 2, served as the lead composer and sound director of Electrosphere, which features a techno and electronica soundtrack.

Other tracks in the game were composed by Koji Nakagawa, Kanako Kakino, Hiroshi Okubo, and Go Shiina, along with one contribution from Tomoko Tatsuta.

[17] A small sample of video footage from the game was presented in a bonus disc shipped out with the Japanese release of Ridge Racer Type 4.

[21] Also released was Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere Direct Audio with AppenDisc (a portmanteau of 'appendix' and 'disc') which contained the full game soundtrack as well as supplemental story footage and a 'deadcopy' save file which could be used to access the Mission Simulator mode.

[7] For the North American release, Namco Hometek Inc. removed all characters and considerably altered the original story-line, keeping only the inter-corporate conflict intact.

[24] According to Kaku, when Namco stated that the American release would be heavily cut down and omit the original Japanese storyline, it was met with backlash from fans and publications, causing interest in the game to severely diminish when it was ready to ship.

[26] In 2009, a fan-translation team called "Project NEMO" began work on a text-only English translation for all 52 missions, reaching completion in mid-2010.

[7] An Official Czech PlayStation Magazine reviewer had a similar response, enjoying its futuristic approach, realistic graphics, and refined gameplay.

[40][38] Mielke presented a radically different response to Electrosphere from his preview, writing that its removal of content from the Japanese version and linear approach made the game feel inferior to its predecessor Ace Combat 2.

[38] NextGen's Eric Bratcher agreed that without its branching level system and additional campaign, it felt boring to play and not nearly as refined as earlier Ace Combat games.

[40] Mandip Sandhu of The Electric Playground showed disappointment towards the plot and bland cutscenes for creating a story that had little to no significance over the game itself.

[47][45] Reviewers also praised the game's control scheme for being responsive and easy to use, with Dr. Zombie specifically pointing out its realism to actual aircraft.

[46] Kornifex also praised the game's usage of the PlayStation DualShock controller to great effect, namely with its rumble feature and smoothness.

[34] Although Bratcher praised the graphical style and gameplay mechanics, he felt it ultimately fell short compared to its predecessors, writing that the game "has too many arcade elements to be a serious flight sim.

He compared its story and visual style to that of Neon Genesis Evangelion and Ghost in the Shell, enjoying its larger storyline for being far darker than its predecessors.