Ace Combat Zero Knight Ace Style: How to Spare Yellow Targets

Ace Combat Zero Knight Ace Style is the route you get by sparing yellow targets. That means leaving low-threat buildings alone and letting damaged enemy aircraft escape once they’re no longer fighting. You can still shoot down active enemies and finish every mission objective.

There is a good reason to start early: your reputation decides whether you meet Indigo Team in Mission 03, and finishing on the Knight side is needed for the Knight Ace medal and paint scheme. A last-minute change of heart won’t necessarily cancel out several missions spent destroying everything.

How to Get Ace Combat Zero Knight Ace Style

The simplest way to build Ace Combat Zero Knight Ace Style is to concentrate on red TGT objectives and leave yellow markers alone. The mission will tell you which targets you actually need to destroy. Red is required, green is another hostile unit, and yellow represents an optional, low-threat or neutralised target.

1. Open a mission and identify its red TGT markers. Those are your required objectives.
2. Take out the active threats you need to deal with. Green hostile units and red objectives are not the same as yellow optional targets.
3. Leave yellow ground facilities, ships and aircraft alone, even when the extra credits are tempting.
4. If an enemy fighter becomes yellow and is marked NEUTRALIZED, let it withdraw.
5. Complete the mission, then inspect the Ace Style bar on the results screen. Knight is on the right.
6. Repeat that approach in the following sorties until the marker sits comfortably on the Knight side.

Which Yellow Targets Should You Spare?

Here’s the easy-to-miss part of Ace Combat Zero Knight Ace Style: a fighter can start out hostile and then turn yellow after taking critical damage. When it is marked NEUTRALIZED and withdraws, let it go. Shooting it again counts as a Mercenary decision, even if it had been attacking you seconds earlier.

The same rule applies on the ground. Yellow buildings and facilities are not additional mission objectives. You might earn fewer credits by ignoring them, but that’s exactly the trade-off the Knight route asks you to make. Remember that the Ace Style gauge judges the mission as a whole, not just your final target.

Target indicator	What it means	Knight approach
Red TGT	Required mission target	Destroy it to complete the objective
Green enemy	Hostile unit, often optional	Fight it when needed; do not confuse it with yellow
Yellow target	Optional, low-threat or neutralised	Spare it
Yellow aircraft marked NEUTRALIZED	Damaged plane withdrawing from combat	Do not deliver the final hit

Does Helping Allies Count Towards Knight?

Some missions also let you respond to allied distress calls. Diapason and The Inferno are two examples where helping can push your reputation towards Knight. That does not replace the yellow-target rule, but it gives you another meaningful choice.

For Ace Combat Zero Knight Ace Style, check the bar at each debriefing. Your earlier actions still count, and a neutralised aircraft can affect the bar more than a routine yellow ground target. There is no verified number of buildings you must spare to guarantee Knight.

Ace Combat Zero Knight Ace Style: Indigo, Silber and Wizard Teams

The first major payoff for Ace Combat Zero Knight Ace Style is Mission 03, The Round Table. If the gauge is in the Knight section when you enter B7R, you fight Indigo Team’s four JAS-39C Gripens. Mercenary brings Rot Team instead, and Soldier brings Grun Team. Mission 02, Annex, has plenty of yellow targets to shape your reputation before this encounter.

The Knight route changes more than Mission 03. Silber Team appears on the Knight branch of Mission 10, Mayhem, and Wizard Team appears in Mission 16, The Demon of the Round Table. You are still playing the same 18-mission campaign, but some enemy pilots and dialogue are different.

Knight Ace, Supreme Knight and Aircraft Colours

Complete the campaign with Ace Combat Zero Knight Ace Style and you earn the Knight Ace medal. Supreme Knight asks for more: the indicator must be at or very close to the far-right edge, not just anywhere in the Knight section. Check the final debriefing result rather than assuming your medal will unlock because you spared several targets.

A Knight completion unlocks the Knight colour scheme for your aircraft. Some planes also unlock after you clear specific missions on this route: the Gripen C becomes available for purchase after Mission 03 on Knight, while the F-16XL and YF-23A are tied to a Knight clear of Mission 16. These are aircraft unlocks, not free planes. Named Ace Special colours and the F-15C/F-16C wingman paints have different conditions.

Can You Recover a Run That Went Mercenary?

Can you rescue a run that has drifted towards Mercenary? Yes, but Ace Combat Zero Knight Ace Style uses a cumulative gauge. Spare yellow targets from now on and check the result after each mission. Most yellow ground targets appear by Mission 14, so a dramatic correction gets much harder late in the story.

If you’re near the finale with the gauge firmly on Mercenary, start another campaign and use its opening missions to pull the indicator towards Knight. The important catch is that your Ace Style carries into a new campaign; it does not automatically reset to Soldier. Free Mission replays don’t move the campaign gauge, either. Watch the debriefing bar as you work across.

Does Ace Combat Zero Knight Ace Style Work in the 2026 Port?

Bandai Namco says the 2026 version included with eligible Ace Combat 8 preorders is a port of the 2006 game rather than a remaster. Ace Combat Zero Knight Ace Style is therefore part of Zero’s original campaign system; don’t mix in Ace Combat 8’s aircraft tree, medals or online currencies.

Official source: Bandai Namco’s original Ace Combat Zero Ace Style system overview.