Namco significantly truncated the Western release of Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere in 1999, cutting most of the game's story and narrative content to avoid localisation costs. This decision proved shortsighted, as Western audiences' enthusiasm for both Top Gun-style action films and anime entertainment should have made the ambitious narrative-driven game appealing; instead, the stripped-down version underperformed commercially despite strong critical reception for the gameplay mechanics.

The Japanese original featured a complex branching narrative with four different endings, anime cutscenes, voice acting, and additional missions. In contrast, the Western version contained 16 fewer missions, no anime sequences, no voice acting, and only a single ending, essentially reducing the game to a "glorified arcade version." Fortunately, the gaming community has since remedied this by producing an unofficial English localisation of the complete Japanese version, which became available three years ago and remains playable today.