Watch Out For Fireballs!

What if combat was less about hitting your opponent, and more about circling around them at very high speeds? Ace Combat 4 is one of the genre standards for the dog-fighting genre. There aren't that many games in there, so when people like one it generally stands out. But is there enough there to entertain the non-fan of the genre? And how did they manage to add an alternate reality plot to this?